Yesterday CTH noted 2020 as the year when a variety of prior democrat operations will converge with a single goal in mind. We will see several years effort merging.  Today, more evidence toward that objective is visible.

The House Judiciary Committeee (HJC) argued in the DC court of appeals to obtain the Mueller grand jury information [6(e) material], and compel testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn.  Also today, more leaks from the inside the administration.

The House has a group of dozens of various DOJ and former Obama officials working on their behalf. That House network also has several currently employed DOJ, FBI, State Department and Intelligence Community officials feeding them information on current real-time events. The HJC are currently arguing the Mueller material and the McGahn testimony are needed for the impeachment trial of President Trump.

First, if the HJC team wins the argument to the three member DC Appellate Court, the DOJ will likely file for a full ‘en banc’ review by the entire panel. If the HJC wins the ‘en banc’ argument the DOJ will likely appeal for an administrative stay by the Supreme Court.

However, if the HJC team loses, they will most likely not file an appeal and will quickly release the impeachment articles to the Senate. The impeachment articles (Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress) are currently withheld in an effort to bolster the DC appeals court argument; lose the legal argument and the Dems just start leaking anyway.

Second, the primary goal is to gain the Mueller material. By design the impeachment process was/is a means toward that end. Impeachment is not the end; impeachment is the means to an end. Impeachment is the legal standing to exploit the Mueller Dossiermaterial.

It is the year-long contention of CTH that Team Nadler (HJC) already has the Mueller material. The Mueller Dossier is opposition research. The Mueller team was/is designed, and specifically constructed, to deliver that opposition research to the resistance group now represented inside the House by the aforementioned dozens of contracted lawyers.

It is our further contention to the Mueller material was collected with the intention to deliver this material to the House crews: Team Schiff (HPSCI) and Team Nadler (HJC).

Meaning, and it is important that everyone understand this:

…the Mueller investigation used their massively expanded scope authority (2017 and 2018), and purposefully went into a bunch of irrelevant sideline issues (unrelated to Trump-Russia) because they were using their legal authority to assemble massive files of political research material – to leave for discovery and/or leak-use in 2020.

The outcome of the Mueller investigation is irrelevant.

What Mueller wrote in his report is irrelevant.

The investigation itself was purposed to dig, legally, into every aspect of Donald Trump, his family, his friends, his finances, his companies, his legal holdings, his lawyers, his accountants, his history… all of it… and they did so under both Title-1 and Title-3 surveillance authority because the Mueller probe was a counterintelligence operation.

President Trump: travel records, phone records, electronic files, electronic communications, emails, electronic records, family files, medical records, bank records, tax records,… THE WORKS …all with unlimited surveillance authority as granted by former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the useful status of an unlimited counterintelligence operation.  Think about the scale of the material Weissmann and Mueller gained access to.

Think about the scale of these Trump files we now call the Mueller Dossier.

Mueller was the insurance policy.  What Weissmann and Mueller assembled was the insurance policy files.  They legally spied on President Trump for more than two years; and they legally dug into his background for the same amount of time.  This is the massive Mueller edition of the “Trump Dossier”.

Remember, dozens of Democrat operatives behind Nadler have much of that Mueller collected material already; or they have been told about the content.

The HJC lawsuit is an attempt to gain legal authority to exploit it. However, if they don’t get the legal authority, meaning they lose the lawsuits, they will use it anyway – through a system of leaks to their resistance allies in the media.

Which brings us to the new phase….

♦ Understanding this ongoing process is the key to understanding a new “Leak Clearing House” created with this intent in mind. The clearing house is JustSecurity.Org

The “Just Security” group is similar to the “Lawfare” group. Their purpose is to receive and then distribute leaked material. They will be leaking material from Mueller, via the House teams, as well as material from current insider operations from the resistance.

As rcogburn discovered:

Justsecurity.org is part of the Reiss Center at NYU Law. Article on them in, of all places, the World Socialist Web Site. Most of it is easily verifiable (e.g. Andrew Weissman is a distinguished fellow and the place is run by ex-Obama people) and seems truthful, judge for yourself.

Highlights here. Article is in two parts, linked:

“A think tank for the national security establishment and the Democratic Party.”

“the Center’s research is intimately integrated with the Democratic Party wing of the State Department and intelligence agencies. Its leading bodies are staffed with top national security and foreign policy officials from the Obama administration. Out of the 18 people on its list of Fellows and Affiliates, 14 are ex-Obama administration officials. Two members of its Board of Advisors and two of its Leadership Team are also former Obama administration officials.”

“In 2018, following Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency, the center integrated the publication JustSecurity.org, which is playing a central role as a resource for pro-Democratic party media in the impeachment crisis. ”

“Through both its fellows and its publication, JustSecurity.org, the Reiss Center is closely integrated into the anti-Russia campaign of the national security apparatus and the Democratic Party, and their efforts to impeach Trump on a pro-war and anti-democratic basis. There is a direct connection to the anti-Russia campaign and impeachment efforts by the Democratic Party and intelligence agencies through Andrew Weissman, who is a distinguished senior fellow at the Reiss Center.

“Rachel Goldbrenner, the center’s Executive Director and a professor of law at NYU, served as a senior advisor to Samantha Power…has connections to Eric Ciaramella.”

“David S. Cohen, an advisor to the Center, was working in the Treasury Department in the Obama administration and was the deputy director of the CIA between 2015-2017. … Cohen played a critical role in whipping up anti-Russian hysteria with unsubstantiated claims of interference in the 2016 election”

“Lisa O. Monaco… distinguished senior fellow…was the Homeland Security Advisor of Obama from 2013 to 2017. Jon Finer is another fellow who is the ex-Chief of State at US State Department, where he served as the senior advisor to John Kerry. He was also the US lead negotiator at the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal and the 2016 Paris Climate Accord.

The co-editor of JustSecurity.org is Ryan Goodman…he served as special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense in 2015-2016”

“The Reiss Center’s public involvement proceeds through its JustSecurity.org publication. First established in 2013, the website was based at the Law School’s center for Human Rights and Global Justice, before being relocated to the Reiss Center in September 2018, shortly after the latter’s renaming. It is funded by NYU’s School of Law as well as the Atlantic Philanthropies and Open Society Foundations—both founded and chaired by George Soros.”

Part 1
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/10/nyu1-d10.html
Part 2
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/11/nyu2-d11.html

Justsecurity.org and the Reiss Center are hosting a panel on Jan 16, “Reforming the FISA Process: Proposals for the Future.”

Featured speakers: Andrew McCabe and Andrew Weissman. You can’t make this stuff up.

https://www.lawandsecurity.org/calendar/reforming-the-fisa-process/

The Just Security group will leak material which will then be picked up by specific Democrat politicians and used as evidence to attack and undermine President Trump.

That effort began yesterday:

[…] Last month, a court ordered the government to release almost 300 pages of emails to the Center for Public Integrity in response to a FOIA lawsuit. It released a first batch on Dec. 12, and then a second installment on Dec. 20, including Duffey’s email, but that document, along with several others, were partially or completely blacked out.

Since then, Just Security has viewed unredacted copies of these emails, which begin in June and end in early October. Together, they tell the behind-the-scenes story of the defense and budget officials who had to carry out the president’s unexplained hold on military aid to Ukraine. (read more)

Democrat operatives inside government, and inside the Trump administration, leak the material to Just Security. Those leaks are then used by Democrat Politicians:

And that effort continues today:

None of this is organic. All of this has been pre-planned.  Just like the planning by Team Mueller when they were investigating President Trump with the intent to deliver the material to their political allies.

What Mueller assembled over two years was a “Trump Dossier” similar to the Steele Dossier.

The political opposition research against President Trump will either come out legally via HJC, or it will come out illegally via leaks.  However, it will come out. The DC Appeals Court and/or the Supreme Court decisions will determine which path.

Most of the Mueller team material is irrelevant for the purpose of Trump-Russia. There is no there ‘there’, and there never was. The Mueller investigation in 2017/2018 was never really designed to find evidence of Trump-Russia… it was designed to find dirt on Trump and his family.  That dirt, under the guise of investigative evidence, was then assembled into a political dossier.

Anyone who could deliver rumor, innuendo, gossip or manufactured evidence toward that end, similar to the Steele Dossier was used and included in the Mueller material.

Forget about arguing the Mueller probe found nothing on Trump-Russia therefore… (fill in blank). That argument is moot. The purpose of the Mueller effort was dirt on Trump; it didn’t (and doesn’t) matter what that dirt is. Essentially: find dirt, put in file.

Resistance 2020 is now the use of that material.

♦ The other aspect that will be used in this 2020 effort will be for current insiders to direct those outside government exactly what the specifics are for targeted FOIA requests. All effective FOIA is a matter of knowing where to look. The inside groups will be telling the outside teams the agencies, people, dates, times and subjects of specific material that will be helpful in discovering the information. [Example Here]

(Buzzfeed) […] The hundreds of pages of documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, were the subject of a protracted legal dispute between the Justice Department and the House Judiciary Committee, which sought them over the summer as part of its impeachment inquiry. The committee had requested access to an unredacted copy of the Mueller report, grand jury testimony from the investigation, and the FBI’s summaries of 33 interviews. The Justice Department resisted, claiming the impeachment inquiry does not entitle the panel to see those records. A federal judge disagreed, ruling in October that “DOJ is wrong” and that the White House and the Justice Department were “openly stonewalling” the committee. (link)

This is the background context for everything that will be taking place.

CTH cannot duplicate this explanation every time the activity is discovered and highlighted, therefore if you need to share it to someone coming in mid-story, bookmark it now.

This is the 2020 baseline.

Think about all of the media panel discussions on gun ownership you have watched; segments where second amendment advocates were ridiculed by media pundits for daring to bring up the possibility of the U.S. government using arms against U.S. citizens who hold opposing political views…  There are hundreds of recent reference points.

Now consider, earlier today U.S. House of Representatives Legal Counsel, Douglas Letter, argued in court it would be a possible remedy -for a conflict between branches of government- for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to order an armed “gun battle” between the House and the United States Department of Justice.   Yes, this actually happened.

At the same time as national Democrat political candidates are arguing to remove the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners, the highest ranking Democrat in the United States; a person only two succession-steps away from the presidency; is arguing in DC federal court the House could begin an armed conflict against the Dept. of Justice.

.

Hat Tip Michael Sheridan for the segment – Full Hearing Audio is HERE Via CSPAN

BACKGROUND – Federal appeals court judges aggressively grilled lawyers for the Justice Department and the House of Representatives Friday in a pair of intertwined cases that could have major implications for Donald Trump’s presidency and the Democrats’ ongoing efforts to remove him from office.

During back-to-back hearings spanning about three hours, the judges drilled in on the House Judiciary Committee’s dual quests to learn special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury secrets and to secure testimony from Don McGahn, Trump’s former top White House lawyer. The two hearings were overseen by two partially overlapping, three-judge panels. (read more)

This court case is the background to remove President Trump.  Everything else, including the impeachment effort, is chaff and countermeasures. Conservatives are oblivious.

Today the DC Circuit Court heard oral arguments from House legal subcontractors representing lawmakers, in their attempt to unseal grand jury testimony and documents from the Mueller investigation. [Remember, the subcontracted lawyers were part of Nancy Pelosi’s changed House rules in 2018… These moments were all pre-planned.]

To give further indications of the landscape, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr sent his weakest constitutional lawyers, Mark Freeman, Justice Department Civil Division Appellate Staff Director, and Deputy Asst Attorney General Hashim Mooppan to face-off against Douglas Letter, U.S. House of Representatives General Counsel, and approximately two dozen House contracted lawyers.

The hearing lasted for an hour and thirty-seven minutes.  [Full Audio Here] The three panel judges are tackling the unprecedented attempt by House lawyers to gain access to the Mueller material.

During one segment of the hearing House Lawyer Douglas Letter discussed the serious possibility of sending armed House officers to the DOJ to engage in a gun battle with the Dept. of Justice if needed. Not joking – serious stuff:

Reminder, WARNING from 2018: “Speaker Pelosi is creating her own mini DOJ inside the legislative branch. And, with additional investigative powers granted to House committees, we might even see a mini-FBI units, dispatched to conduct investigations and spy operations, accountable only to speaker Pelosi. Heck, considering congress already has subpoena power, there’s no telling where this might end.”

Democrats together with the alliance of Lawfare operative and their media allies know what this is all about.  Republicans and conservative pundits (writ large)  are oblivious to it; they don’t take it seriously…. keep watching, you’ll see how serious this is… the Tick Tock Club and Trusty Planners will catch up in a few weeks/months.

WASHINGTON DC – […] During back-to-back hearings spanning about three hours, the judges drilled in on the House Judiciary Committee’s dual quests to learn special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury secrets and to secure testimony from Don McGahn, Trump’s former top White House lawyer. The two hearings were overseen by two partially overlapping, three-judge panels.

While the judges didn’t announce firm positions in the two cases, their pointed questions for both sides suggested the House had a stronger chance of prevailing in the grand jury records fight, with the outcome more uncertain in the McGahn battle. The two impeachment-related cases, being heard before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, are on something of a fast track that set them up as the court’s first public business for 2020.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Trump’s ability to stave off a Senate conviction after last month’s House votes to impeach him is essential to his political survival. But court losses for the president in either or both cases argued Friday will help to keep the impeachment issue alive throughout 2020, while giving House Democrats their own boost in a consequential constitutional showdown with Trump’s Justice Department that ultimately appears headed to the Supreme Court.

“This is it,” Doug Letter, the lead House counsel, argued during the second half of Friday’s proceedings over the Mueller grand jury material. “There is nothing more important than determining whether the president of the United States should remain the president of the United States.”

Letter also argued that Trump shouldn’t rest easy just because the House has already voted to impeach the president over his efforts to pressure Ukraine leaders into investigating his political rivals. How the courts rule in the Democrats’ bid for more testimony and documents connected back to the Mueller probe into 2016 Russian election interference could still yield additional impeachment articles against Trump, he said.

“Yes, that is on the table. There’s no doubt,” Letter said, while also confirming to the judges that his remarks had sign off from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The historical significance of Friday’s arguments was apparent in pretty much every exchange before the D.C. Circuit panels, which were composed of two Republican presidential appointees and one judge named by a Democrat. For example, a GOP-appointed judge assigned to both cases, George W. Bush nominee Thomas Griffith, pressed the Justice Department over whether Trump’s blanket refusal to cooperate with House impeachment probes was an unprecedented act of contempt for the legislative branch.

[Judge] Rao seemed to accept that Howell could release the court’s veil of secrecy over the records, but she also suggested that forcing the executive branch to fork them over to Congress raised thornier questions.

That prompted Letter, the House counsel, to repeatedly raise the specter of Congress returning to use of force to enforce its subpoenas — a practice not attempted for nearly a century. But as the House lawyer spoke of the potential for such confrontations leading to violence, it appeared he was highlighting the dangers of such an approach rather than seriously suggesting returning to the coercive methods employed until the 1930s.

“I guess what we would do is use the main remedy the House has had from the beginning, we’ll send the sergeant-at-arms over to the Justice Department. I cannot imagine anyone is going to interfere with him doing his duty as an officer of the House,” Letter said.

When pressed by Rao about what would happen if the Justice Department refused to comply, the House counsel added: “We can send the sergeant-at-arms and he can have a gun battle.” (keep reading)