Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn releases a statement following his plea agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller:

It would appear, as CTH has predicted for well over a year, that Flynn brokered a deal with Robert Mueller to admit to misleading statements to the FBI in exchange for Mueller agreeing not to prosecute Flynn for his FARA (lobbying) violations.

As CTH warned in November of 2016 Flynn was involved in lobbying efforts on behalf of the Turkish government.  The financial constructs surrounding the payments to Flynn were sketchy, very sketchy.  CTH anticipated this sketchy behavior would come back to bite Flynn and -by extension- could be an issue for the White House if he took a high level position.  None of that had anything whatsoever to do with the fictitious vast Russian conspiracy story.

It is increasingly clear that Mueller used the sketchy financial arrangement between Turkey and Flynn -specifically how Flynn maneuvered the money- as the leverage in the unrelated Russian conspiracy investigation.

Giving Flynn a pass on his failure to register the arrangement under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and the banking issues (possibly IRS trouble), gets Robert Mueller a dual benefit.

Benefit #1 – Robert Mueller gets Flynn as a notch on his political belt and; Benefit #2 simultaneously sets up a scenario where he can allow Tony Podesta et al, to skate prosecution for similar illegal and sketchy lobbying activity.

This dual benefit approach would, essentially, be an escape valve for Muller to comply with the leverage the Clinton Crime Syndicate have over him (Uranium One etc.) and protect John and Tony Podesta from criminal investigation over their illegal lobbying constructs.

No doubt Mueller would like to shake his way out from under the Clinton controlled Sword of Damocles.

Conversely, the failure of Mueller to indict the Podesta brothers becomes favorable leverage for Paul Manafort who is criminally accused of the same conduct Tony Podesta has thus far avoided.

No doubt Manafort’s legal team would contrast the politics of Mueller charging Manafort for almost identical activity Mueller is unwilling to charge Podesta of.

As we have shared from the beginning – this is all about DC politics, not judicial crimes in the same vein as everyone else would be charged.

You cannot view the current action through the transactional prism of modern judicial proceedings as they relate to you and me. These are political struggles taking place inside the venue of the legal system. The players use the legal system to game out the optics and narrative of political battles for ideological wins and losses.

In essence, this is about leverage for political use.

The 2016 election caused the balance of power to shift favorably toward political forces that are external to the DC machine, ie. President Trump and the deplorables.

The subsequent action by Robert Mueller, Democrats, the Media (writ large), and President Trump is a confrontation over political goals and objectives. The DC machine, the “swamp” per se’, is attempting to frame leverage against actions adverse to their political interest.

The Sword of Damocles is swinging, President Trump is fanning the candle flame and Robert Mueller is attempting to reinforce the horsehair.

The charging documents unsealed in the Manafort indictment are a case study in leverage and narrative exploitation. To save time, and rather than go through the entire indictment, Andrew McCarthy has a good deconstruction OUTLINED HERE.  The charging documents today against Michael Flynn represent a similar leveraged construct. Again, Andrew McCarthy has a solid outline on the issues SEE HERE.

Paul Manafort is being leveraged toward a political objective; his legal jeopardy is negligible. The documents, and the underlying charges, are intended to make life miserable for Mr. Manafort – not to end with some traditionally framed criminal consequence, ie. prison.

Likewise Michael Flynn was being leveraged toward a similar political objective; his legal jeopardy is just as minimal, but Flynn is not as well-off as Manafort, thus the plea agreement was likely driven as much by money as it was the underlying unfounded and inconsequential nature of the entire accusation to the larger issue of ‘Muh Russia‘.

Both Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort’s wealth were/are being held as leverage, compliance, toward acquiescence within the game; nothing more. Both likely end up with some charge, a financial fine good enough for media optics and perhaps -at worst- some probation for not following the FARA rules (Manafort). That’s it.

Conversely, on the other side of the political continuum, Tony and John Podesta are within the leverage process yet hold the larger political clout of the Clinton Crime Syndicate.   Like Manafort and Flynn, Tony Podesta most likely will not face legal jeopardy, if any at all, beyond a similar outcome; thanks in part to Podesta’s connection to the deeper part of the swamp where the Clinton Crime Syndicate previously held court.

In the bigger picture of the Clinton dynamic you have Robert Mueller putting that deeper part of the Deep Swamp and remaining black hat intelligence community, on notice to knock-it-off with the selling of U.S. policy toward gaining their own financial indulgences. Mueller is generally positioning himself to exhaust all of the player’s political leverage.

K-Street lobbyists, writ large, are also part of the intended recipient group of this message. There’s also a part of this dynamic where the familiar tug-of-war between Clinton camps and Obama camps are playing out within the party apparatus.

You can spot the internecine “leverage/tug-of-war” within the original Washington Post (intelligence community leak) sacrificing Clinton to protect Obama over the Fusion GPS funding; in direct connection to Tony Podesta leaving the (Clinton Matrix of Influence) Podesta Group lobbying firm.

The optical play is to create somewhat of a narrative where Podesta is to Clinton as Manafort/Flynn is to Trump.

Setting aside the Clinton leverage over Mueller for a moment, this is the magnanimous and patriotic legacy optic Robert Mueller is trying to project by playing the role of Solomon, splitting the baby and giving each political group a narrative for their purposes.

In the background Mueller also appears to want foreign policy influence sales, and the larger risk from foreign policy influence sales becoming dangerous to U.S. policy, stopped. Unfortunately, Mueller previously exposed himself to this toxic process (Uranium One) and to this day carries some of the infection with him.

Selling U.S. foreign policy for money and ideological benefit is damned dangerous. However, there are billions of dollars to be made in the process therein.

It still seems as if Robert Mueller, while compromised by his conduct in prior administrations’ who engaged in this process, is trying to position himself as The Good Shepherd and break the leverage holdings of the various political camps.

In addition to taking away all of the ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ leverage cards, this is also the theater of pure politics. Optics are everything in DC and political narratives are built from inferences as well as reality.  If President Trump has political leverage he can execute his agenda; if Pelosi/Schumer have political leverage they can block Trump’s agenda. In many ways Robert Mueller is mediating the ideological battle through the prism of his role within the system.

Again, the gamesmanship -currently being pitched through the media- is about political leverage. That leverage in DC is traded like baseball cards amid the upper tier of those who float in an entirely different orbit of influence from everyone else.

Chuck Schumer plays out his knowledge of the current situation by claiming “Trump needs to stay away from Mueller”. The media sells Schumer’s claim as if Bad Trump would impede an investigation; but that’s not the accurate dynamic.

Senator Schumer wants to keep his leverage right where it is currently; and stop ‘his side’ from feeling the effects of Mueller’s legal admonishments. If Mueller indicts Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort Pelosi/Schumer have political leverage.  If Mueller focuses on Tony Podesta Pelosi/Schumer lose political leverage.

Nothing about the current dynamic is factually encompassing President Trump; it is all about optics, narratives and political leverage. However, everything about this dynamic is factually encompassing the existential threat that outsider Trump represents to the established way of life in the DC Swamp.

Toward the end goal of disrupting DC swamp-life, Mueller and Trump appear aligned in common cause.  Robert Mueller from the perspective of trying to get the external influence agents to the U.S. stopped and retrieving all existing leverage; and President Trump from the policy perspective of America-first, which coincidentally is in alignment with Mueller’s projected patriotic goals to stop influence agents.

That’s the bigger part of the BIG picture.  Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

Again, if you drop the legal prism and review everything from the perspective of gaining or losing political leverage it all makes sense.

“Today, Michael Flynn, a former National Security Advisor at the White House for 25 days during the Trump Administration, and a former Obama administration official, entered a guilty plea to a single count of making a false statement to the FBI.

“The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year.

Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The conclusion of this phase of the Special Counsel’s work demonstrates again that the Special Counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion.”

~ Ty Cobb,  (statement above) Attorney for President Trump

Former National Security Adviser General Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to a process crime of lying to FBI investigators about the content of a December 29th phone call with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. The conversation occurred the same day that then-president Barack Obama announced sanctions against Russia for its interference in the 2016 election.

This is the same misleading information that led to the White House firing Michael Flynn.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has charged Flynn (full pdf below) with falsely telling FBI agents that he did not ask the ambassador “to refrain from escalating the situation” in response to the sanctions.

According to the plea, while being questioned by FBI agents on January 24, 2017, Flynn also lied when he claimed he could not recall a subsequent conversation with Kislyak, in which the ambassador told Flynn that the Putin regime had “chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of [Flynn’s] request.”

Furthermore, a week before the sanctions were imposed, Flynn had also spoken to Kislyak, asking the ambassador to delay or defeat a vote on a pending United Nations resolution. The criminal information charges that Flynn lied to the FBI by denying both that he’d made this request and that he’d spoken afterward with Kislyak about Russia’s response to it.

There was nothing wrong with the incoming national-security adviser’s having meetings with foreign counterparts or discussing such matters as the sanctions in those meetings. However, lying to the FBI is the process crime that has led to Flynn’s admissions herein:

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/366062176/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-QHaNTpsHk3My0BRqqECU

As Andrew McCarthy writes:

If Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador had evinced the existence of a quid pro quo collusion arrangement — that the Trump administration would ease or eliminate sanctions on Russia as a payback for Russia’s cyber-espionage against the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic party — it would have been completely appropriate, even urgently necessary, for the Obama Justice Department to investigate Flynn.

But if that had happened, Mueller would not be permitting Flynn to settle the case with a single count of lying to FBI agents. Instead, we would be looking at a major conspiracy indictment, and Flynn would be made to plead to far more serious offenses if he wanted a deal — cooperation in exchange for sentencing leniency. To the contrary, for all the furor, we have a small-potatoes plea in Flynn’s case — just as we did in Papadopoulos’s case.

It is becoming increasingly palpable that, whatever “collusion” means, there was no actionable, conspiratorial complicity by the Trump campaign in the Kremlin’s machinations. (read more)

 

We’ve had ENOUGH !  Just Build It…

Deep State Swamp Hits Back

The New York Times narrative engineers: Maggie Haberman, Peter Baker and Gardiner Harris are attempting to create division between President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in an entirely manufactured hit piece against the Trump administration.

According to their script, which again requires “anonymous or invisible sources“, the White House is considering a replacement for Secretary of State Tillerson.

Nonsense.

Beyond the customary pro-active contingency plans, that are always in place for succession planning amid top level leadership, the narrative as being distributed is 100% pure agenda-driven horsepucky.

The media agenda here is clear.  Secretary of State Rex is methodically downsizing the State Department and reversing the current mission of the agency away from interventionist globalism, and back toward common sense foreign policy.

The position of hundreds of pontificating sanctimonious career bureaucrats are being dissolved.  The Deep State is being deconstructed and the globalists are apoplectic.

That reality has created the need for left-wing propaganda pushers like the New York Times to create narratives to defend their Deep State Swamp interests. Nothing more.

Additionally, the objective in this media endeavor is a familiar pattern; try to create a self fulfilling prophecy by creating division between the ranks of key administration officials. In these efforts the Murdoch Clan (Fox News) is in direct alignment with the Slim Clan (New York Times).

Remember, the entrenched swamp professional political embeds from the State Dept leak to CNN and the New York Times.  The Intel embeds leak to the Washington Post.

To drive the wedge between T-Rex and President Trump the NYT relies on dredging up old previously used division stories and attempt to present them as a backdrop for their renewed efforts.  THIS TOO WILL FAIL.

We noted yesterday the first indications that something was shuffling around in the shadows near the horizon.  President Trump has pushed through all attempts to destabilize his agenda advancement.

With momentum in the tax reform agenda and with economic reality of a growing economy, POTUS Trump has the aggregate political enemy on its heels. It should be obvious to political followers now how the collective DC UniParty apparatus attempts to reposition when in retreat.

The GOPe and Democrat opposition, the UniParty, utilize their familiar media engineers to push back.  That’s why we saw Marco Rubio on the FOX TeeVee last night with his Rubio/Schumer amendment (Rubio and Schumer… I mean c’mon, duh), and that also leads toward this insufferable New York Times attack approach.

It’s all connected.

The “Big Ugly” is a 360° battlespace.

There’s a big con job just over the horizon.  All of the elements are there.  The timing, the platform, the personalities, the discussion topics, etc., it’s a familiar script.  CTH would like to direct attention to this interview which took place last night on Laura Ingraham’s new Fox News show.  Listen carefully to three elements:

♦On Tax Reform – on one side of Rubio’s ‘full-throated‘ mouth he wants higher taxes on corporations 22% -vs- 20%. In the almost the same breath, inside the same argument, he says “it’s not their (the government’s) money”.   Try to reconcile that.

♦On DACA – [Remember, three months ago President Trump gave congress six months to fix DACA]  Rubio says the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) program is not the “Dreamers”.  What? Yes it is. The childhood arrivals ARE the so-called ‘dreamers’.

♦However, much more importantly, listen to what is said on “chain migration“.  Ingraham asks if Rubio supports “chain migration”.   Rubio says no, then immediately says: “I’ve always agreed to limiting chain migration to immediate family members”. WHAT? That is chain migration.

Laura Ingraham suffers from the same interview issue as Sean Hannity. Both conduct interviews where they ask questions but are not listening. Instead, they are waiting to talk. There’s a big difference.

Given the nature of the topics, and the interview on Fox, and knowing the specifics of the 2013/2014 immigration agenda of the Murdoch family specifically on Fox… and the relationship between Murdoch and Rubio… there’s justifiable room for skepticism and cynicism in the narrative construct of this entire interview.

Any reasonable person, receiving those responses, would have called Marco Rubio out for those three jaw-dropping, virtually simultaneous, hypocritical and mutually exclusive positions… Especially the last one on chain migration. Yet Laura Ingraham skipped right over them as if the answers provided were irrelevant and she was simply checking off a list.  [Insert Suspicious Cat Here]

Something is going on in DC that precipitated this interview.

Battered Conservative No-More !

I’m getting really sick and tired of economic analysts talking down the U.S. economy even when they are surrounded with resoundingly good news.  These economic control agents are furious that President Trump is deconstructing their decades-long lies; and showing just how manipulated the U.S. economy has been – by elites, to the detriment of the middle-class…. I digress:

Despite the devastating hurricanes in August and September the Third-Quarter GDP grew at a revised upward rate of 3.3%. Third quarter growth was initially reported at 3%.

BLOOMBERG – The U.S. economy’s growth rate last quarter was revised upward to the fastest in three years on stronger investment from businesses and government agencies than previously estimated, Commerce Department data showed Wednesday.

The 3rd quarter (July, Aug, Sept) growth was led by business-equipment spending which rose at a 10.4% pace, a three-year high, revised from the initial report of 8.6%. CTH has continually highlighted that capital investment and capital equipment purchasing is a key to see how confident businesses are in the future.

BLOOMBERG – […] While the revised growth rate is in line with President Donald Trump’s goal, economists generally see such a pace as unsustainable and expect growth to slow sometime in 2018. Trump and congressional Republicans are pushing a tax-cut plan with the aim of lifting GDP gains to 3 percent annually, though analysts expect any economic boost to be modest, on balance, if the proposal becomes law.

[…] Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, continues to be the main driver of growth, though revisions showed it was slightly weaker than previously estimated on purchases of both durable and nondurable goods.

The biggest improvement came in business investment, which made a 1.2 percentage-point contribution to growth, up from 0.98 point in the initial estimate a month ago. (read more)