Posted originally on the CTH on June 20, 2023 | Sundance
Today he testified in classified setting before the House intelligence committee. Tomorrow is the public version.
Special Counsel John Durham is scheduled to be questioned tomorrow by members of the House Judiciary Committee in a public setting. The hearing is scheduled for 9:00am ET, Rayburn Office Building [ DETAILS HERE ] – “The hearing will focus on the report of Special Counsel John Durham that examined the origins and justifications of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Crossfire Hurricane investigation against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.”
Questions have been passed along, and hopefully this summary is timed to avoid giving Mary McCord and her Lawfare team prep-time to construct their defensive talking points.
(1) Mr. Durham, having spent four years investigating, researching, reviewing, interviewing and pouring through files related to the overall Trump-Russia collusion story, your report -like the report of Robert Mueller that preceded it- found no substantive predicate existed to ever open an investigation of candidate Donald Trump for any efforts with Russians or foreign actors to interfere in the 2016 election. As a result of your time and diligence, you are likely the #1 subject matter expert in the entire series of events.
♦ Question: In your opinion, was President Obama aware there was no reason in 2016 to investigate Donald Trump, who then became President-elect Trump?
(2) You note in your report that you never re-reviewed any of the material evidence that formed the baseline for the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
♦ Question: Why not?
♦ Question: Who made the decision not to review the 2-year Mueller probe activity as part of your investigative review? Why was that decision made?
(3) Do you agree that both your 4-year review of the U.S government action in the Trump-Russia collusion story crossed several paths with the 2-year Mueller review of the Russian interference in the election story?
Question: In your opinion, how is it possible that Robert Mueller and his team of 19 investigators, 50 FBI agents and 100 administrative staff, could investigate Russian election interference for two years and not discover the Trump-Russia collusion story was a hoax created by the Hillary Clinton campaign?
(4) You questioned several current and former CIA officials about the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment.
♦ Question: How do you reconcile the sanctions placed by Barack Obama against 20 Russian officials in December of 2016, against the reality that there was little substantive confidence Russia interfered in the election?
♦ Question: How do you reconcile your investigative findings with the December 29th, 2016, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) on Russia Cyber Activity about Russian hacking, and with the January 7th, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment that specifically stated -falsely- that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election?
♦ Question: Did Russians hack the 2016 DNC email servers and leak the information to Julian Assange at Wikileaks?
(5) You note in your report [CITATION] how former FBI Director James Comey was intimately involved in the creation of the Carter Page FISA application. You write about Comey continually asking the DOJ National Security Division and FBI counterintelligence investigators, “Where’s the FISA, we need the FISA.” However, you never interviewed James Comey or Andrew McCabe, because the former FBI Director and Deputy refused to cooperate or give testimony to you.
♦ Question: How did you discover details about the demands of Comey?
♦ Question: How did you write specific quotes from Andrew McCabe describing Comey’s demands?
♦ Question: Did you review transcripts of Andrew McCabe’s testimony to Inspector General Michael Horowitz?
♦ Question: Why did Inspector General Michael Horowitz never release those transcripts? And do you have a copy?
(6) The two-year Mueller investigation was headed by a gentleman named Andrew Weissmann. Mr. Weissmann then gave former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein indictments of 17 Russian nationals who were alleged to have interfered in the 2016 election. Those indictments were never made public, and the allegations within them were sealed and placed in the security of the DOJ-National Security Division never to be reviewed or acted upon.
♦ Question: Did you review those indictments?
♦ Question: Are those indictments valid evidence of Russian election interference?
♦ Question: In your opinion, why were those indictments never made public?
♦ Question: Mr. Weissmann created the Russian indictments that were never used, and Mr. Weissmann recently published a lengthy roadmap to guide special counsel Jack Smith in his novel use of the Espionage Act to target President Trump. In your opinion, is there a possible similarity of motive?
(7) In July of 2018, the Dept of Justice informed the FISA Court, that despite the numerous material issues found by Inspector General Horowitz in the Carter Page FISA application, there was still sufficient predicate for the DOJ submission to the court. Excerpts of the letter below:
Mr. Durham, your recent report seemingly contradicts this July, 2018, letter as it was written to the FISA court almost two years after the original Carter Page FISA application was submitted.
♦ Question: Is this letter truthful?
♦ Question: As outlined on Page 8 discussing the April 02, and June 29, 2017 FISA renewals, is it true the FBI factually had no control over the Chris Steele “sub source” now identified as Igor Danchenko – a man you prosecuted?
♦ Question: How do you reconcile the DOJ misleading the FISA court, in July 2018, about the substance of Carter Page FISA application?
(8) Ten days after the Dept of Justice sent this July 12th letter to the FISA Court, the Carter Page FISA application was made public (July 22, 2018).
♦ Question: Who released the Carter Page FISA application?
♦ Question: Given the Top Secret Compartmented and Classified nature of the application, FISA and the processes and systems therein, can you explain why the DOJ publicly released the Carter Page FISA application?
♦ Question: During the course of your investigation, did anyone provide to you or your investigators evidence of corruption, false statements, illegal activity, or involvement by any members of the legislative branch of Congress, in the construct of the Trump-Russia collusion case that you did not pursue?
Posted originally on the CTH on June 20, 2023 | Sundance
This is the big one. The Economic Policy is the distinct and singular policy at the core of Make America Great Again. The MAGA coalition is centered around the principles of America First economics, and Ron DeSantis has just admitted he does not support them.
CTH has long warned about Ron DeSantis’ economic policy being driven by the donors who fund him. When he was in congress, DeSantis voted in support of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) for President Obama, and DeSantis voted in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (TPP).
These are the trade policies supported by the Club for Growth who was congressman DeSantis’ biggest funder. The Club for Growth also held the pre-announcement donor fundraiser in February of this year in support of DeSantis ’24.
The Wall Street billionaire, hedge fund, multinational corporate alliance, that assembles at Sea Island and funds Ron DeSantis, are fully against America First trade and economic policies. DeSantis has just made an admission of his alignment with that corporate “globalist” outlook to a private confab of donors in California.
The DeSantis campaign is in full panic and retreat mode now that his establishment position is exposed. The statements during the secret meeting were leaked.
[CALIFORNIA] […] The Republican snuck in and out of the Coalinga landmark undetected by the public nor the media, by design. He flew in and out of the nearby Coalinga airport, ushered to the back loading docks by unmarked Fresno County Sheriff’s vehicles.
The Central Valley lunch stop for 60 donors — paying $3,300 — was in between a breakfast event in Sacramento, and an evening in southern California. The only indication that something special was going on was a “private event” sign. Most of the questions for the security guard related to the location of the restrooms.
[…] John Harris, the rancher and entrepreneur, hosted the DeSantis event at his eponymous resort, along with Fresno developer Richard F. Spencer. Harris was unable to attend, but Spencer did grant a rare media interview with GV Wire.
[…] The Florida governor also talked about global supply chain problems and China, and “how to make life better for the people here in the United States,” Maher said. Others reported that DeSantis said Trump’s tariffs were “not effective.” (read more)
More about the donor event is HERE – “Around 50 people joined DeSantis for lunch at Harris Ranch in Coalinga, which was hosted by Harris Farms Chairman John Harris and Richard Spencer, the owner of Fresno-based Harris Construction.” (link)
In addition, while in California, DeSantis also went to another Big Club fundraiser. “Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis’s Silicon Valley Peninsula fundraiser was hosted by John Hamilton, a real estate investor who has donated tens of thousands to RINOs and former presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and John McCain.” (more)
Ron DeSantis aligning against the core values of America First economics is a HUGE warning flare. We have discussed this issue on these pages and in every platform we can reach for a long time. The DeSantis team is trying desperately to recover from sunlight upon their donor influence, but they cannot refute the words of their candidate in support of those donor priorities.
Keep in mind also that Donald Trump recently announced the sweeping “Economic Agenda 47“, which includes baseline tariffs against all imported goods.
♦UNIVERSAL BASELINE TARIFFS: President Trump has announced a plan to replace the Biden system of punishing domestic producers and rewarding outsourcers with a new system that rewards domestic production while taxing foreign companies.
Rather than raising taxes on American producers, President Trump will impose tariffs on FOREIGN producers through a system of universal baseline tariffs on most imported goods. Higher tariffs will increase incrementally if other countries manipulate their currency or otherwise engage in unfair trading practices. (link)
Candidate Ron DeSantis now stands in opposition to this approach, and the current tariffs against imported Chinese goods which have been exceptionally effective. So effective, even the Biden administration has admitted their value.
As long as Donald J. Trump singularly represents the only counterforce against this UniParty globalist construct, he will continue to be targeted by the system of financial controllers who fund the political system. For the sake of brevity, this alignment of multinational corporate and financial economic interests is called the “Big Club.”
As part of the strategic political effort, the Republican wing of the Big Club needs to carve up the supporters of Donald Trump into smaller, easier to target, pieces. This is where the value of the culture war, what is now considered as ‘wokeism’, plays into the strategy of those who seek to control political outcomes and remove the threat that Trump represents to their financial interests.
In many ways, this is why we are seeing prominent Republican officeholders pushing the culture war as a tool for their own political advancement. The same Big Club members who are directly fighting against the America-First economic agenda, are the same Big Club members who are funding the Republican politicians to push the culture war.
The corporations, billionaires and multinationals who are funding the Republican candidates do not have any vested interest in the culture war. For them the social issues are a tool, technique or insurance policy to guarantee security of the interest that does matter – their financial status.
There are trillions at stake, literally trillions. Additionally, decades of their prior investment interests are contingent upon the ‘service driven economy’ being maintained.
Dollars drive the U.S. global trade and financial exchanges. The multinationals, both corporations and banks, have pre-deployed investments all around the globe. However, many of those investments are entirely contingent upon the retention of the U.S. economic system they pre-established before the investment was made. President Donald J. Trump represents the threat to that entire financial system.
Once you understand this, then a great deal of the more nuanced and granular U.S. political moves, almost all of which are funded by the corporations and billionaires who are attached to the global investment process, begin to make sense.
Every non-Trump candidate, funded to create the opposition to America First, is part of this process to use anti-wokeism as a strategy.
With this level of money at stake, do not be surprised when you look at how much is being spent to construct the system that guarantees the continuation of globalism. The money spent in funding the Republican candidates to advance the distracting cultural war pales in comparison to the amount of money at risk in the 2024 election outcome.
We know it works, because we have the results to cite.
It was the Fourth Quarter of 2019…..
Right before the pandemic would hit a few months later, despite two years of doomsayer predictions from Wall Street’s professional punditry, all of them said Trump’s 2017 steel and aluminum tariffs on China, Canada and the EU would create massive inflation – it just wasn’t happening!
Overall, year-over-year inflation was hovering around 1.7 percent [Table-A BLS]; yup, that was our inflation rate. The rate in the latter half of 2019 was firmed up with less month-over-month fluctuation, and the rate basically remained consistent. [See Below] The U.S. economy was on a smooth glide path, strong, stable, and Main Street was growing with MAGAnomics at work.
A couple of important points. First, unleashing the energy sector to drive down overall costs to consumers and industry outputs was a key part of President Trump’s America First MAGAnomic initiative. Lower energy prices help the worker economy, middle class and average American more than any other sector.
Which brings us to the second important point. Notice how food prices had very low year-over-year inflation, 0.5 percent. That is a combination of two key issues: low energy costs, and the fracturing of Big Ag’s hold on the farm production and the export dynamic:
(BLS) […] The index for food at home declined for the third month in a row, falling 0.2 percent. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs decreased 0.7 percent in August as the index for eggs fell 2.6 percent. The index for fruits and vegetables, which rose in July, fell 0.5 percent in August; the index for fresh fruits declined 1.4 percent, but the index for fresh vegetables rose 0.4 percent. The index for cereals and bakery products fell 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.3 percent in July. (link)
For the previous twenty years, food prices had been increasingly controlled by Big Ag, and not by normal supply and demand. The commodity market became a ‘controlled market’. U.S. food outputs (farm production) was controlled and exported to keep the U.S. consumer paying optimal prices.
President Trump’s trade reset was disrupting this process. As farm products were less exported, the cost of the food in our supermarket became reconnected to a ‘more normal’ supply and demand cycle. Food prices dropped, and our pantry costs were lowered.
The Commerce Dept. then announced that retail sales climbed by 0.4 percent in August 2019, twice as high as the 0.2 percent analysts had predicted. The result highlighted retail sales strength of more than 4 percent year-over-year. These excellent results came on the heels of blowout data in July, when households boosted purchases of cars and clothing.
The better-than-expected number stemmed largely from a 1.8 percent jump in spending vehicles. Online sales, meanwhile, also continued to climb, rising 1.6 percent. That’s similar to July 2019, when Amazon held its two-day blowout Prime Day sale. (link)
Despite the efforts to remove and impeach President Trump, it did not look like middle class America was overly concerned about the noise coming from the pundits. Likely that’s because blue collar wages were higher, Main Street inflation was lower, and overall consumer confidence was strong. Yes, MAGAnomics was working.
Additionally, remember all those MSM hours and newspaper column inches where the professional financial pundits were claiming Trump’s tariffs were going to cause massive increases in prices of consumer goods?
Well, exactly the opposite happened [BLS report] Import prices were continuing to drop:
This was a really interesting dynamic that no one in the professional punditry would dare explain.
Donald Trump’s tariffs were targeted to specific sectors of imported products. [Steel, Aluminum, and a host of smaller sectors etc.] However, when the EU and China responded by devaluing their currency, that approach hit all products imported, not just the tariff goods.
Because the EU and China were driving up the value of the dollar, everything we were importing became cheaper. Not just imports from Europe and China, but actually imports from everywhere. All imports were entering the U.S. at substantially lower prices.
This meant when we imported products, we were also importing deflation.
This price result is exactly the opposite of what the economic experts and Wall Street pundits predicted back in 2017 and 2018 when they were pushing the rapid price increase narrative.
Because all the export dependent economies were reacting with such urgency to retain their access to the U.S. market, aggregate import prices were actually lower than they were when the Trump tariffs began:
[…] Prices for imports from China edged down 0.1 percent in August following decreases of 0.2 percent in both July and June. Import prices from China have not advanced on a monthly basis since ticking up 0.1 percent in May 2018. The price index for imports from China fell 1.6 percent for the year ended in August.
[…] Import prices from the European Union fell 0.2 percent in August and 0.3 percent over the past 12 months.
So yes, we know President Trump can save Social Security and Medicare by expanding the economy with his America First economic policy. We do not need to guess if it is possible or listen to pundits theorize about his approach being some random ‘catch phrase’ disconnected from reality. Yes folks, we have the receipts.
This was MAGAnomics at work, and this is entirely what created the middle class MAGA coalition. No other Republican candidate has this economic policy in their outlook, because all other candidates are purchased by the Wall Street multinationals.
America First MAGAnomics is unique to President Trump, because he is the only one independent enough to implement them.
That’s just the reality of the situation. They hate him for it…
This is what Donald Trump said: “Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country. Very sad thing to watch, a corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges of which he and numerous other presidents would be guilty, right in the middle of a presidential election in which he’s losing very badly.”
Let’s look at some REAL chilling quotes by modern American politicians. Actually, let us just focus on President Joe Biden’s statements because I could go on for ages regarding chilling comments that have been uttered by American politicians who clearly do not care about human life.
Joe Biden almost initiated World War III after suggesting removing Vladimir Putin from power. The White House retracted his statements, as they often do, but the damage had already been done. Suggesting a regime change for a leader with nuclear capabilities is insane.
Who can forget the winter of death that the POTUS wished upon the unvaccinated AND their families? This further divided the vaccinated vs the unvaccinated at a time when those who chose not to receive the experimental vaccines were demonized and outcasts of society.
A nuclear Armageddon. Unbelievable. Talk about fear-mongering to persuade the people into believing that Russian aggression is real. Any mention of nuclear war should be completely off the table.
And they wonder why military recruitment is at a record low. Biden offended the very people who put their lives on the line to defend out country. There is nothing “selfish” about our troops who are willing to die for these neocons war games.
“To the LGBTQI+ Community – the Biden-Harris Administration has your back. These are our kids. These are our neighbors. Not somebody else’s kids; they’re all our kids. And our children are the kite strings that hold our national ambitions aloft. It matters a great deal how we treat everyone in this country. LGBTQ Americans, especially children, you are loved, you are heard, and this administration has your back.” – Joe Biden
Indoctrinate the children from a young age. The government is your family. You will obey the government’s authority above that of your parents. Traditions have no place in Biden’s America and the children have become vulnerable to the woke agenda psyops.
The president has a cognitive disability and often does not realize he is the man in power. He has also referred to himself as a senator and even called his wife the president at one point. There are numerous instances where Joe Biden clearly did not know where he was or who he was. It is chilling to me to know that the commander-in-chief is wholly lost.
The list of dangerous comments spoken by Joe Biden far outweighs anything Trump has said. This list could go on for pages. Trump stating that he is being unjustly prosecuted by the deep state is not chilling. Trump did not lie in his statement, as Joe Biden is completely corrupt, and mounting evidence supports that claim.
Posted originally on the CTH on June 19, 2023 | Sundance
Attorney Robert Barnes does a good job framing the motive of the DC administrative state, specifically the Lawfare ideologues currently in control of the DOJ, to create a precedent to usurp constitutional power by targeting President Trump.
Posted originally on the CTH on June 19, 2023 | Sundance
Earlier this evening, President Trump sat down for an extensive interview with Fox’s human cabbage patch doll, Brett Baier. {Direct Rumble Link} Many people were apprehensive about President Trump talking to DC gatekeeper Mr. Baier given that Fox News would like to support the prosecution effort against Trump.
President Trump appears with Baier because President Trump has done nothing wrong. The legal arguments against him, and more succinctly against the power of the office of the president, are nonsensical. There is no person, agency, bureaucracy or process that exists above the executive office of the president.
The President has every right to any and all documents that are created, distributed, reviewed and/or utilized during his administration. WATCH:
Anyone who is saying President Trump did not have the unilateral right to define his presidential records -as he sees fit- needs to answer this question:
Who is this power that supersedes the executive office of the President? and where are they outlined in the constitution?
WE THE PEOPLEare the only entity that grants and/or removes presidential authority. We vest and affirm our power every 4 years to the President of the United States. We do not vest power to a bureaucracy or administrative state that believes they are above the power of We The People. The President reports to us, and we affirm or deny our support with reelection.
There is no governmental system or constitutional process that supersedes the Office of the President within the executive branch.
There are co-equal branches outside the Executive, the Legislative and Judicial branches, with their own constitutional power. However, the Legislative and Judicial cannot impede or reach into in the structure of the Executive to limit the power outlined in the constitution and granted by We The People.
A little more than a week before Special Counsel Jack Smith released his indictment against President Trump, Andrew Weissmann, Norm Eisen and fellow lawfare travelers, wrote an internal prosecution memo for current Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco to use on behalf of the conscripted Special Counsel. [SEE 186-page Guidance MEMO HERE]
When Jack Smith revealed his indictment in Florida, not accidentally it was almost identical to the guidance memo that Weissmann had written. Even the novel use of the Espionage Act was identical in format to the outline by Weissmann, Eisen and their crew.
[NOTE: In the post 9-11 surveillance state, this approach by the DOJ-NSD is a pillar holding the Fourth Branch of Government in place, as we have outlined. The other pillars are (2) the Dept of Homeland Security, (3) the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and (4) the secret FISA Court system. All four pillars maintain an omnipotent fourth branch of government that operates entirely without oversight. As you can see in the 11th Circuit Court ruling, there is no check or balance in the post 9-11 national security state.]
Essentially, what we are witnessing is what Lawfare researchers would expect.
The Lawfare operatives, represented by Weissmann, Eisen and company, are all ideological agents connected directly to the anti-Trump efforts. Their ally in the DOJ is Deputy AG Lisa Monaco.
I use the term “Lawfare” to describe their general group association, as well as the actual organization funded by the Brookings Institute that carries the same name.
Essentially, Lawfare et al, are the group of current and former Dept of Justice ideologues that we find throughout the deployment of all Main Justice weaponization, activism and corruption.
The Muller team were all Lawfare members. The legal team in/around the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, what Christine Blasey-Ford called “beach friends,” are all Lawfare members. The legal team behind both of Trump’s impeachment efforts were all Lawfare members. It is one large network of legally minded ideologues working toward a common goal; they are inside government and connected to the same DOJ minds outside government.
The second thing they have in common is their collective risk within their action. Many of their activities were/are unlawful (spygate, FISA, Mueller probe, impeachment background etc), so to the extent the Lawfare group can mitigate risk by attacking anyone who would be a threat to them, this is what we see.
Andrew Weissmann and Norm Eisen are two of the most well-known members of this politically motivated group. Together they have created novel legal theories to use by the DOJ against their political opposition. They write the legal filings for Main Justice to use inside government.
The fact the DOJ uses these novel theories and legal filings in the actual practice of law and prosecution shows how deeply connected the outside Lawfare group is to the Lawfare group inside DC.
Much of their Lawfare approach, that is using the law as a weapon, is based on a goal of attrition. Wear down the target until they are eventually destroyed. The same approach and motive is intended toward the supporters of the target. Wear down the psyche of the target’s supporters until they too are destroyed.
Creating demoralization is a very familiar approach from the Saul Alinsky methods rulebook. It is another way to create fear through isolation, ridicule and marginalization of their opponent. Threatening to make any defender a target is exactly the key behind Andrew Weissmann’s entire tenure as a prosecutor. You will note, they did this Lt Gen Mike Flynn when Weissmann expanded their scope and then threatened Flynn’s son, Mike Flynn Jr.
On June 2, 2023, Andrew Weissmann and Norm Eisen published their “Model Prosecution Memo” for use inside the DOJ and for the legal scribes in media to review prior to the DOJ making any Trump indictment announcement. {SEE MEMO HERE} This is the same playbook they have used successfully in the past to get all of their allies on the same page for the preferred narrative.
Anticipating that Lisa Monaco would then be distributing the talking points and giving Jack Smith the groundwork for his upcoming novel indictment effort, Andrew Weissmann then appears on MSNBC to discuss.
So this shows that Comey is now officially a part of the Lawfare group that is outside the US DOJ and is throwing out a dog whistle for those inside the DOJ to start getting their resistance setup. pic.twitter.com/WRMLc4HUBz
— Positive Comrade Ziiggii (@realZiiggii) June 5, 2023
Posted originally on the CTH on June 19, 2023 | Sundance
Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart is the judge who authorized the fraudulent search warrant used by the DOJ and FBI in the Mar-a-Lago raid against President Trump in August of last year. Today, Judge Reinhart accepted the position of Special Counsel Jack Smith and puts restrictions on President Trump’s ability to defend himself.
Judge Reinhart has approved the motion filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith to restrict President Trump’s access to the materials the DOJ claims to use against him and block the ability of President Trump to state publicly his defense against the evidence. The star chamber of the DOJ Lawfare operation is continuing unabated.
(Via ABC NEWS) – A federal judge on Monday approved a protective order sought by special counsel Jack Smith to keep former President Donald Trump from disclosing sensitive information in his classified documents case.
Smith sought the order to ensure that neither Trump nor codefendant Walt Nauta, Trump’s presidential valet, disclose sensitive information obtained during the discovery process, where prosecutors will show the defense what evidence it has amassed during their investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents since leaving office. (read more)
“The Discovery Materials, along with any information derived therefrom, shall not be disclosed to the public or the news media, or disseminated on any news or social media platform, without prior notice to and consent of the United States or approval of the Court,” Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said in the order.
“Defendants shall only have access to Discovery Materials under the direct supervision of Defense Counsel or a member of Defense Counsel’s staff. Defendants shall not retain copies of Discovery Material,” the ruling said.
“The materials also include information pertaining to ongoing investigations, the disclosure of which could compromise those investigations and identify uncharged individuals,” their Friday filing said.
Furthermore, the protective order limits Trump’s access to the material, stating that he can only view the discovery materials under the direct supervision of his defense counsel or a member of the counsel’s staff. As demanded by the Special Counsel, Trump is not allowed to retain copies of the discovery material.
The order applies to both Trump and his co-defendant, Walt Nauta, and prohibits them from disseminating any evidence provided to their lawyers during the discovery process. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart emphasized that the discovery materials, along with any derived information, should not be made public or shared on news or social media platforms without prior consent from the United States or approval from the court.
The DOJ wants to limit public knowledge of the material evidence, not because it would harm national security – but rather because the nature of the evidence itself would highlight to the nation how fraudulent the targeting is. This is the guaranteed DOJ motive, that’s why everything is under seal and even the media will not talk about how they are gaining their leak knowledge. This is LAWFARE narrative engineering at its apex deployment. (more)
Hopefully everyone can see now why I created so much context for the Fourth Branch of Government. The DOJ is essentially arguing that some unknown administrative state has a superior position to the executive branch of government.
Posted originally on the CTH on June 18, 2023 | Sundance
Bill Barr continued his Sunday Talk appearances this week, specifically organized by the apparatus in control of DC, to attack Donald Trump and position the executive branch of government as subservient to the interests of the United States Intelligence Community.
Don’t miss the forest when you are looking at the trees.
Barr is advocating for a system of government that has institutional interests above the constitution. According to Bill Barr, the DOJ, FBI and US Intelligence Community control the Office of the President. Look at what he is saying. The bureaucracy of the administrative state is above the chief executive office holder. The intelligence community supersedes the President.
I’m not putting words in his mouth. Barr believes the President is a functionary of, and in a lesser position than, the unelected people who control institutions that make up the executive branch of government. THIS is what he believes. Get past the parseltongue and obtuse linguistics; this is Barr’s advocacy position. WATCH:
Why? Why is he doing this? Does he really believe this? The answer is yes, and essentially what Bill Barr is doing is protecting the system that George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama constructed and then used respectively. Barr is defending the surveillance state, the post-Patriot Act state of intelligence agency control over government.
Bill Barr is protecting the weaponized institutions of the Director of National Intelligence (Bush/Cheney), the Dept of Justice – National Security Division [DOJ-NSD (Obama/Holder)], the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA Court), and the Dept of Homeland Security (Bush/Cheney). These institutions, according to AG Bill Barr, are now in full control of the executive branch, full control of government, and now more powerful than the Office of the President of the United States.
This is the position of the DC system and everyone within it. This is why Bill Barr is positioning himself as the tip of the spear. This position is the entire reason why President Trump was told to hire Bill Barr, because Bill Barr had a job to do…. preserve the institutions, he helped build, at all costs. This is also why Bill Barr protected Robert Mueller, and never impeded the Andrew Weissmann effort.
Bill Barr knows what Jack Smith, Lisa Monaco, Andrew Weissmann, Barry Berke, Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, David Laufman and Lawfare are doing. Bill Barr supports that effort, because ultimately it preserves the institutions from the corrective action of Donald Trump.
We cannot fight our way through the issues until we first realize what lies at the root of the problem.
Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act. What Obama and Holder did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum.
This point is where many people understandably get confused.
Elevator Speech:
(1) The Patriot Act turned the intel surveillance radar from foreign searches for terrorists to domestic searches for terrorists.
(2) Obama/Biden then redefined what is a “terrorist” to include their political opposition.
In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus, instructed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.
After 9/11/01, the electronic surveillance system that was originally created to monitor threats from abroad was retooled to monitor threats inside our country. That is when all of our electronic ‘metadata’ came under federal surveillance.
That inflection point, and the process that followed, was exactly what Edward Snowden tried to point out.
What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their political opposition became the target of this new national security system.
The problems we face now as a country are directly an outcome of two very distinct points that were merged by Barack Obama. (1) The post 9/11 monitoring of electronic communication of American citizens, and (2) Obama’s team creating a fine-tuning knob that it focused on the politics of the targets. This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.
Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01. The Department of Homeland Security came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was formed.
When President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.
The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus – a domestic surveillance state. However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology.
The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution. Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.
We were not sleeping when this happened, we were wide awake. However, we were stunningly distracted by the economic collapse that was taking place in 2006 and 2007 when the engineers behind Obama started to assemble the design. By the time Obama took office in 2009, we sensed something profound was shifting, but we can only see exactly what shifted in the aftermath. The four pillars were put into place, and a new Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created.
As time passed, and the system operators became familiar with their new tools, technology allowed the tentacles of the system to reach out and touch us. That is when we first started to notice that something very disconcerting was happening. Those four pillars are the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated, questions about this current state of perpetual angst will start to make sense.
If we take the modern construct, originating at the speed of technological change, we can also see how the oversight or “check/balance” in our system of government became functionally obsolescent.
After many years of granular research about the intelligence apparatus inside our government, in the summer of 2020 I visited Washington DC to ask specific questions. My goal was to go where the influence agents within government actually operate, and to discover the people deep inside the institutions no one elected, and few people pay attention to.
It was during this process when I discovered how information is purposefully put into containment silos, essentially a formal process to block the flow of information between agencies and between the original branches. While frustrating to discover, the silo effect was important because understanding the communication between networks leads to our ability to reconcile conflict between what we perceive and what’s actually taking place.
After days of research and meetings in DC during 2020, amid a town that was serendipitously shut down due to COVID-19, I found a letter slid under the door of my room in a nearly empty hotel with an introduction of sorts. The subsequent discussions were perhaps the most important. After many hours of specific questions and answers on specific examples, I realized why our nation is in this mess. That is when I discovered the fourth and superseding branch of government, the Intelligence Branch.
The Intelligence Branch is an independent functioning branch of government, it is no longer a subsidiary set of agencies within the Executive Branch as most would think. To understand the Intelligence Branch, we need to drop the elementary school civics class lessons about three coequal branches of government and replace that outlook with the modern system that created itself.
The Intelligence Branch functions much like the State Dept, through a unique set of public-private partnerships that support it. Big Tech industry collaboration with intelligence operatives [Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Meta, Instagram, Twitter, etc] is part of that functioning, almost like NGOs. However, the process is much more important than most think. In this problematic perspective of a corrupt system of government, the process is the flaw – not the outcome.
There are people making decisions inside this little known, unregulated and out-of-control branch of government that impact every facet of our lives.
None of the people operating deep inside the Intelligence Branch were elected, and our elected representative House members genuinely do not know how the system works. I assert this position affirmatively because I have talked to House and Senate staffers, including the chiefs of staff for multiple House & Senate committee seats. They are not malicious people; however, they are genuinely clueless of things that happen outside their silo. That is part of the purpose of me explaining it, with examples, in full detail with sunlight.
We begin….
In April of 2016, the FBI launched a counterintelligence operation against presidential candidate Donald Trump. The questioning about that operation is what New York Representative Elise Stefanik cites in March of 2017, approximately 11 months later (First Two Minutes).
♦ Notice how FBI Director James Comey just matter-of-factly explains no one outside the DOJ was informed about the FBI operation. Why? Because that’s just the way things are done. His justification for unilateral operations was “because of the sensitivity of the matter“, totally ignoring any constitutional or regulatory framework for oversight; because, well, quite simply, there isn’t any. The intelligence apparatus inside the DOJ/FBI can, and does, operate based on their own independent determinations of authority.
♦ Notice also how FBI Director Comey shares his perspective that informing the National Security Council (NSC) is the equivalent of notifying the White House. The FBI leadership expressly believe they bear no responsibility to brief the Chief Executive. As long as they tell some unknown, unelected, bureaucratic entity inside the NSC, their unwritten responsibility to inform the top of their institutional silo is complete. If the IC wants to carve out the Oval Office, they simply plant information inside the NSC and, from their perspective, their civic responsibility to follow checks-and-balances is complete. This is an intentional construct.
♦ Notice how Comey obfuscates notification to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), by avoiding the fact James Clapper was the DNI from outset of the counterintelligence operation throughout the remainder of Obama’s term. When I get deeper into the process, we will understand how the Intelligence Branch has intentionally used the creation of the DNI position (established post 9/11/01) as a method to avoid oversight, not enhance it. Keeping an oblivious doofus like James Clapper in position held strategic value [Doofus Reminder HERE].
That video of James Comey being questioned by Elise Stefanik was the first example given to me by someone who knew the background of everything that was taking place preceding that March 20, 2017, hearing. That FBI reference point is a key to understand how the Intelligence Branch operates with unilateral authority above Congress (legislative branch), above the White House (executive branch), and even above the court system (judicial branch).
Also, watch this short video of James Clapper, because it is likely many readers have forgotten, and likely even more readers have never seen it. Watch closely how then White House national security adviser John Brennan is responding in that video. This is before Brennan became CIA Director, this is when Brennan was helping Barack Obama put the pillars into place. WATCH:
[Sidebar: Every time I post this video it gets scrubbed from YouTube (example), so save it if you ever want to see it again.]
The video of James Clapper highlights how the ODNI position (created with good national security intention) ended up becoming the fulcrum for modern weaponization, and is now an office manipulated by agencies with a vested interest in retaining power. The Intelligence Branch holds power over the ODNI through their influence and partnership with the body that authorizes the power within it, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
Factually, the modern intelligence apparatus uses checks and balances in their favor. The checks create silos of proprietary information, classified information, vaults of information that work around oversight issues. The silos, which include the exploitation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court, or FISC) are part of the problem.
Ironically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the aftermath of 9/11/01 expressly to eliminate the silos of information which they felt led to a domestic terrorist attack that could have been prevented. The ODNI was created specifically upon the recommendation of the 9/11 commission.
The intent was to create a central hub of intelligence information, inside the Executive Branch, where the CIA, NSA, DoD, DoS, and DIA could deposit their unique intelligence products and a repository would be created so that domestic intelligence operations, like the DOJ and FBI could access them when needed to analyze threats to the U.S. This, they hoped, would ensure the obvious flags missed in the 9/11 attacks would not be missed again.
However, the creation of the DNI office also created an unconstitutional surveillance system of the American people. The DNI office became the tool to take massive amounts of data and use it to target specific Americans. Weaponizing the DNI office for political targeting is now the purpose of the DNI office as it exists.
The illegal and unlawful nature of the surveillance creates a need for careful protection amid the group who operate in the shadows of electronic information and domestic surveillance. You will see how it was critical to install a person uniquely skilled in being an idiot, James Clapper, into that willfully blind role while intelligence operatives worked around the office to assemble the Intelligence Branch of Government.
• The last federal budget that flowed through the traditional budgetary process was signed into law in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008 by George W. Bush. Every budget since then has been a fragmented process of continuing resolutions and individual spending bills.
Why does this matter? Because many people think defunding the Intelligence Community is a solution; it is not…. at least, not yet. Worse yet, the corrupt divisions deep inside the U.S. intelligence system can now fund themselves from multinational private sector partnerships (banks, corporations and foreign entities).
• When Democrats took over the House of Representatives in January 2007, they took office with a plan. Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, and Democrats controlled the Senate where Harry Reid was Majority Leader. Barack Obama was a junior senator from Illinois.
Pelosi and Reid intentionally did not advance a budget in 2008 (for fiscal year 2009) because their plan included installing Barack Obama (and all that came with him) with an open checkbook made even more lucrative by a worsening financial crisis and a process called baseline budgeting. Baseline budgeting means the prior fiscal year budget is accepted as the starting point for the next year budget. All previous expenditures are baked into the cake within baseline budgeting.
Massive bailouts preceded Obama’s installation due to U.S. economic collapse, and massive bailouts continued after his installation. This is the ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ aspect. TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program), auto bailouts (GM), and the massive stimulus spending bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, ie. those shovel ready jobs) were all part of the non-budget spending. The federal reserve assisted with Quantitative Easing (QE1 and QE2) as congress passed various Porkulous spending bills further spending and replacing the formal budget process.
Note: There has never been a budget passed in the normal/traditional process since September of 2007.
• While Obama’s radical ‘transformation‘ was triggered across a broad range of government institutions, simultaneously spending on the U.S. military was cut, but spending on the intelligence apparatus expanded. We were all distracted by Obamacare, and the Republican Party wanted to keep us that way. However, in the background there was a process of transformation taking place that included very specific action by Eric Holder and targeted effort toward the newest executive agency the ODNI.
The people behind Obama, those same people now behind Joe Biden, knew from years of strategic planning that ‘radical transformation’ would require control over specific elements inside the U.S. government. Eric Holder played a key role in his position as U.S. Attorney General in the DOJ.
AG Holder recruited ideologically aligned political operatives who were aware of the larger institutional objectives. One of those objectives was weaponizing the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) a division inside the DOJ that had no inspector general oversight. For most people the DOJ-NSD weaponization surfaced with a hindsight awakening of the DOJ-NSD targeting candidate Donald Trump many years later. However, by then the Holder crew had executed almost eight full years of background work.
• The second larger Obama/Holder objective was control over the FBI. Why was that important? Because the FBI does the domestic investigative work on anyone who needs or holds a security clearance. The removal of security clearances could be used as a filter to further build the internal ideological army they were assembling. Additionally, with new power in the ODNI created as a downstream consequence of the Patriot Act, new protocols for U.S. security clearances were easy to justify.
Carefully selecting fellow ideological travelers was facilitated by this filtration within the security clearance process. How does that issue later manifest? Just look around at how politicized every intelligence agency has become, specifically including the FBI.
• At the exact same time this new background security clearance process was ongoing, again everyone distracted by the fight over Obamacare, inside the Department of State (Secretary Hillary Clinton) a political alignment making room for the next phase was being assembled. Names like Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton were familiar on television while Lisa Monaco worked as a legal liaison between the Obama White House and Clinton State Department.
Through the Dept of State (DoS) the intelligence apparatus began working on their first steps to align Big Tech with a larger domestic institutional objective. Those of you who remember the “Arab Spring”, some say “Islamist Spring”, will remember it was triggered by Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo – his first foreign trip. The State Department worked with grassroots organizers (mostly Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Qatar and Libya. Obama leaned heavily on the organizational network of Turkish President Recep Erdogan for contacts and support.
Why does this aspect matter to us? Well, you might remember how much effort the Obama administration put into recruiting Facebook and Twitter as resources for the various mideast rebellions the White House and DoS supported. This was the point of modern merge between the U.S. intelligence community and Big Tech social media.
In many ways, the coordinated political outcomes in Libya and Egypt were the beta test for the coordinated domestic political outcomes we saw in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community working with social media platforms and political operatives.
Overlaying all of that background activity was also a new alignment of the Obama-era intelligence apparatus with ideological federal “contractors“. Where does this contractor activity manifest? In the FISA Court opinion of Rosemary Collyer who cited the “interagency memorandum of understanding”, or MOU.
Hopefully, you can see a small part of how tentacled the system to organize/weaponize the intelligence apparatus was. None of this was accidental, all of this was by design, and the United States Senate was responsible for intentionally allowing most of this to take place. The tools the government used to monitor threats were now being used to monitor every American. WE THE PEOPLE were now the threat the national security system was monitoring.
That’s the 30,000/ft level backdrop history of what was happening as the modern IC was created. Next, we will go into how all these various intelligence networks began working in unison and how they currently control all of the other DC institutions under them; including how they can carve out the President from knowing their activity.
♦ When Barack Obama was installed in January 2009, the Democrats held a 60-seat majority in the U.S. Senate. As the people behind the Obama installation began executing their longer-term plan, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was a tool to create the Intelligence Branch; it was not an unintentional series of events.
When Obama was installed, Dianne Feinstein was the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and Democrat operative Dan Jones was her lead staffer. Feinstein was completely controlled by those around her including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The CIA was in the process of turning over personnel following the Bush era, and as a result of a massive multi-year narrative of diminished credibility (Iraq WMD), a deep purge was underway. Obama/Holder were in the process of shifting intelligence alignment and the intensely political Democrat Leader Harry Reid was a key participant.
THE TRAP – Many people say that Congress is the solution to eliminating the Fourth and superseding Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. This is an exercise in futility because the Legislative Branch, specifically the SSCI, facilitated the creation of the Intelligence Branch. The SSCI cannot put the genie they created back in the bottle without admitting they too are corrupt; and the background story of their corruption is way too intense to be exposed now.
Every member of the SSCI is compromised in some controlling manner. Those Senators who disliked the control over them; specifically disliked because the risk of sunlight was tenuous and, well, possible; have either left completely or stepped down from the committee. None of the SSCI members past or present would ever contemplate saying openly what their tenure involved.
[Note: You might remember when Vice Chairman Mark Warner’s text messages surfaced, there was a controlled Republican SSCI member who came to his defense in February of 2018. It was not accidental that exact Senator later became the chair of the SSCI himself. That Republican Senator is Marco Rubio, now vice-chair since the Senate re-flipped back to the optics of Democrat control in 2021.]
All of President Obama’s 2009 intelligence appointments required confirmation from the Senate. The nominees had to first pass through the Democrat controlled SSCI, and then to a full Senate vote where Democrats held a 60-vote majority. Essentially, Obama got everyone he wanted in place easily. Rahm Emmanuel was Obama’s Chief of Staff, and Valerie Jarrett was Senior Advisor.
Tim Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 when the joint DOJ/FBI and IRS operation to target the Tea Party took place after the midterm “shellacking” caused by the Obamacare backlash. Mitch McConnell was Minority Leader in the Senate but supported the targeting of the Tea Party as his Senate colleagues were getting primaried by an angry and effective grassroots campaign. McConnell’s friend, Senator Bob Bennett, getting beaten in Utah was the final straw.
Dirty Harry and Mitch McConnell saw the TEA Party through the same prism. The TEA Party took Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts (Scott Brown); Sharon Angle was about to take out Harry Reid in Nevada; Arlen Spector was taken down in Pennsylvania; Senator Robert Byrd died; Senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller in Alaska; McConnell’s nominee Mike Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware; Rand Paul won in Kentucky. This is the background. The peasants were revolting…. and visibly angry Mitch McConnell desperately made a deal with the devil to protect himself.
In many ways, the TEA Party movement was/is very similar to the MAGA movement. The difference in 2010 was the absence of a head of the movement, in 2015 Donald Trump became that head figure who benefited from the TEA Party energy. Trump came into office in 2017 with the same congressional opposition as the successful TEA Party candidates in 2011.
Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 mid-terms. Republicans took control of the SSCI in January 2015. Senator Richard Burr became chairman of the SSCI, and Dianne Feinstein shifted to Vice-Chair. Dirty Harry Reid left the Senate, and Mitch McConnell took power again.
Republicans were in control of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2015 when the Intelligence Branch operation against candidate Donald Trump was underway. [Feinstein’s staffer, Dan Jones, left the SSCI so he could act as a liaison and political operative between private-sector efforts (Fusion GPS, Chris Steele) and the SSCI.] The SSCI was a participant in that Fusion GPS/Chris Steele operation, and as a direct consequence Republicans were inherently tied to the problem with President Trump taking office in January of 2017. Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats was a member of the SSCI.
Bottom line…. When it came to the intelligence system targeting Donald Trump during the 2015/2016 primary, the GOP was just as much at risk as their Democrat counterparts.
When Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election, the SSCI was shocked more than most. They knew countermeasures would need to be deployed to protect themselves from any exposure of their prior intelligence conduct. Immediately Senator Dianne Feinstein stepped down from the SSCI, and Senator Mark Warner was elevated to Vice Chairman.
Indiana’s own Mike Pence, now Vice President, recommended fellow Hoosier, SSCI Senator Dan Coats, to become President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). [Apply hindsight here]
• To give an idea of the Intelligence Branch power dynamic, remind yourself how House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Devin Nunes, tried to get access to the DOJ/FBI records of the FISA application used against the Trump campaign via Carter Page.
Remember, Devin Nunes only saw a portion of the FISA trail from his review of a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) previously given to President Obama. Chairman Nunes had to review the PDB at the White House SCIF due to compartmented intelligence, another example of the silo benefit.
Remember the massive stonewalling and blocking of the DOJ/FBI toward Nunes? Remember the back-and-forth battle over declassification surrounding the Nunes memo?
Remember, after Nunes went directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan for help (didn’t get any), the DOJ only permitted two members from each party within the HPSCI to review the documents, and only at the DOJ offices of main justice?
Contrast that amount of House Intel Committee railroading by intelligence operatives in the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI, with the simple request by Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner asking to see the Carter Page FISA application and immediately a copy being delivered to him on March 17th 2017.
Can you see which intelligence committee is aligned with the deepest part of the deep state?
The contrast of ideological alignment between the House, Senate and Intelligence Branch is crystal clear when viewed through the prism of cooperation. You can see which legislative committee holds the power and support of the Intelligence Branch. The Senate Intel Committee facilitates the corrupt existence of the IC Branch, so the IC Branch only cooperates with the Senate Intel Committee. It really is that simple.
• The Intelligence Branch carefully selects its own members by controlling how security clearances are investigated and allowed (FBI). The Intelligence Branch also uses compartmentalization of intelligence as a way to keep each agency, and each downstream branch of government (executive, legislative and judicial), at arm’s length as a method to stop anyone from seeing the larger picture of their activity. I call this the “silo effect“, and it is done by design.
I have looked at stunned faces when I presented declassified silo product from one agency to the silo customers of another. You would be astonished at what they don’t know because it is not in their ‘silo’.
Through the advice and consent rules, the Intelligence Branch uses the SSCI to keep out people they consider dangerous to their ongoing operations. Any appointee to the intelligence community must first pass through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they get a full Senate vote. If the SSCI rejects the candidate, they simply refuse to take up the nomination. The president is then blocked from that appointment. This is what happened with President Trump over and over again.
• Additionally, the Intelligence Branch protects itself, and its facilitating allies through the formal classification process. The Intelligence Branch gets to decide unilaterally what information will be released and what information will be kept secret. There is no entity outside the Intelligence Branch, and yes that includes the President of the United States, who can supersede the classification authority of the Intelligence Branch. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} This is something 99.9% of the people on our side get totally and frustratingly wrong.
No one can declassify, or make public, anything the Intelligence Branch will not agree to. Doubt this? Ask Ric Grenell, John Ratcliffe, or even President Trump himself.
• The classification process is determined inside the Intelligence Branch, all by themselves. They get to choose what rank of classification exists on any work product they create; and they get to decide what the classification status is of any work product that is created by anyone else. The Intelligence Branch has full control over what is considered classified information and what is not. The Intelligence Branch defines what is a “national security interest” and what is not. A great technique for hiding fingerprints of corrupt and illegal activity.
[For familiar reference see the redactions to Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The Intelligence Branch does all redactions.]
• Similarly, the declassification process is a request by an agency, even a traditionally superior agency like the President of the United States, to the Intelligence Branch asking for them to release the information. The Intelligence Branch again holds full unilateral control.
If the head of the CIA refuses to comply with the declassification instruction of the President, what can the president do except fire him/her? {Again, GO DEEP} How does the President replace the non-compliant cabinet member? They have to go through the SSCI confirmation. See the problem?
Yes, there are ways to break up the Intelligence Branch, but they do not start with any congressional effort. As you can see above, the process is the flaw – not the solution. Most conservative pundits have their emphasis on the wrong syllable. Their cornerstone is false.
For their own self-preservation, the Intelligence Branch has been interfering in our elections for years. The way to tear this apart begins with STATE LEVEL election reform that blocks the Legislative Branch from coordinating with the Intelligence Branch.
The extreme federalism approach is critical and also explains why Joe Biden has instructed Attorney General Merrick Garland to use the full power of the DOJ to stop state level election reform efforts. The worry of successful state level election control is also why the Intelligence Branch now needs to support the federal takeover of elections.
Our elections have been usurped by the Intelligence Branch. Start with honest elections and we will see just how much Democrat AND Republican corruption is dependent on manipulated election results. Start at the state level. Start there…. everything else is downstream.
♦ COLLAPSED OVERSIGHT – The modern system to ‘check’ the Executive Branch was the creation of the legislative “Gang of Eight,” a legislative oversight mechanism intended to provide a bridge of oversight between the authority of the intelligence community within the Executive Branch.
The Go8 construct was designed to allow the President authority to carry out intelligence operations and provide the most sensitive notifications to a select group within Congress.
The Go8 oversight is directed to the position, not the person, and consists of: (1) The Speaker of the House; (2) The Minority Leader of the House; (3) The Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI; (4) The Ranking Member (minority) of the HPSCI; (5) The Leader of the Senate; (6) The Minority Leader of the Senate; (7) The Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI; and finally (8) the Vice-Chair of the SSCI.
Example: When the Chief Executive (the President) initiates an intelligence operation on behalf of the United States, the President triggers a “finding memo.” In essence, the instruction to the intel agency or agencies to authorize a covert operation. When that process takes place, the Go8 are the first people notified. Depending on the sensitivity of the operation, sometimes the G08 are notified immediately after the operation is conducted. The notification can be a phone call or an in-person briefing.
Because of the sensitivity of their intelligence information, the Gang of Eight hold security clearances that permit them to receive and review all intelligence operations. The intelligence community are also responsible for briefing the Go8 with the same information they use to brief the President.
~ 2021 Gang of Eight ~
The Go8 design is intended to put intelligence oversight upon both political parties in Congress; it is designed that way by informing the minority leaders of both the House and Senate as well as the ranking minority members of the SSCI and HPSCI. Under the concept, the President cannot conduct an intelligence operation; and the intelligence community cannot carry out intelligence gathering operations without the majority and minority parties knowing about it.
The modern design of this oversight system was done to keep rogue and/or corrupt intelligence operations from happening. However, as we shared in the preview to this entire discussion, the process was usurped during the Obama era. {GO DEEP}
Former FBI Director James Comey openly admitted to Congress on March 20, 2017, that the FBI, FBI Counterintelligence Division, DOJ and DOJ-National Security Division, together with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA, had been conducting independent investigations of Donald Trump for over a year without informing the Go8. Comey justified the lack of informing Go8 oversight by saying, “because of the sensitivity of the matter.”
Stupidly, Congress never pressed James Comey on that issue. The arrogance was astounding, and the acceptance by Congress was infuriating. However, that specific example highlighted just how politically corrupt the system had become. In essence, Team Obama usurped the entire design of congressional oversight…. and Congress just brushed it off.
Keep in mind, Comey did not say the White House was unaware; in fact he said exactly the opposite, he said, “The White House was informed through the National Security Council,” (the NSC). The unavoidable implication and James Comey admission that everyone just brushed aside, was that President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, was informed of the intelligence operation(s) against Donald Trump. After all, the NSC reports to the National Security Advisor.
Does the January 20, 2017, Susan Rice memo look different now?
Again, no one saw the immediate issue. What Comey just described on that March Day in 2017 was the usurpation of the entire reason the Gang of Eight exists; to eliminate the potential for political weaponization of the Intelligence Community by the executive branch. The G08 notifications to the majority and minority are specifically designed to make sure what James Comey admitted to doing was never supposed to happen.
Team Obama carried out a political operation using the intelligence community and the checks-and-balances in the system were intentionally usurped. This is an indisputable fact.
Worse still, the entire legislative branch of Congress, which then specifically included the Republicans that now controlled the House and Senate, did nothing. They just ignored what was admitted. The usurpation was willfully ignored.
The mechanism of the G08 was bypassed without a twitch of condemnation or investigation…. because the common enemy was Donald Trump.
This example highlights the collapse of the system. Obama, the Executive Branch, collapsed the system by usurping the process; in essence the process became the bigger issue, and the lack of immediate Legislative Branch reaction became evidence of open acceptance. The outcomes of the usurpation played out over the next four years, Donald J. Trump was kneecapped and lost his presidency because of it. However, the bigger issue of the collapse still exists.
The downstream consequence of the Legislative Branch accepting the Executive Branch usurpation meant both intelligence committees were compromised. Additionally, the leadership of both the House and Senate were complicit. Think about this carefully. The Legislative Branch allowance of the intelligence usurpation meant the Legislative Branch was now subservient to the Intelligence Branch.
That’s where we are.
Right now.
That’s where we are.
Term-3 Obama is now back in the White House with Joe Biden.
NOTE: Former Obama National Security aide and counsel to the President, Lisa Monaco, is in her current position as Deputy Attorney General, specifically to make sure all of these revelations do not become a legal risk to Barack Obama and the people who created them. The SSCI confirmed Monaco for this purpose because the Senate is just as much at risk.
Term-1 and Term-2 Obama usurped the ‘check and balance‘ within the system and weaponized the intelligence apparatus. During Trump’s term that weaponization was covered up by a compliant congress, complicit senate intelligence committee, and not a single member of the oversight called it out. Now, Term-3 Obama steps back in to continue the cover up and continue the weaponization.
Hopefully, you can now see the scale of the problem that surrounds us with specific citation for what has taken place. What I just explained to you above is not conspiracy theory, it is admitted fact that anyone can look upon. Yet….
Have you seen this mentioned anywhere? Have you seen this called out by anyone in Congress? Have you seen anyone in media (ally or adversary) call this out? Have you seen any member of the Judicial Branch stand up and say wait, what is taking place is not okay? Have you seen a single candidate for elected office point this out? Have you seen anyone advising a candidate to point this out?
This is our current status. It is not deniable. The truth exists regardless of our comfort.
Not a single person in power will say openly what has taken place. They are scared of the Fourth Branch. The evidence of what has taken place is right there in front of our face. The words, actions and activities of those who participated in this process are not deniable, in fact most of it is on record.
There are only two members of the Gang of Eight who have existed in place from January 2007 (the real beginning of Obama’s term, two years before he took office when the Congress flipped). Only two members of the G08 have been consistently in place from January of 2007 to right now, today. All the others came and went, but two members of the Gang of Eight have been part of that failed and collapsed oversight throughout the past 15 years, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.
♦ TECHNOLOGY – On a global scale – the modern intelligence gathering networks are now dependent on data collection to execute their intelligence missions. In the digital age nations have been executing various methods to gather that data. Digital surveillance has replaced other methods of interception. Those surveillance efforts have resulted in a coalescing of regional data networks based on historic multi-national relationships.
We have a recent frame of reference for the “U.S. data collection network” within the NSA. Through the allied process the Five Eyes nations all rely on the NSA surveillance database (U.K, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.) The NSA database provides the digital baseline for intelligence operations in defense of our allies. The portals into the NSA database are essentially an assembly of allies in like-minded ideological connection to the United States.
Unfortunately, there have been some revelations about the NSA database being used to monitor our allies, like in the example of Germany and surveillance on Angela Merkel’s phone. As long as “the good guys” are operating honorably, allies of the United States can feel confident about having protection from the NSA surveillance of global digital data. We warn our friends if we detect something dangerous etc.
The U.S. has nodes on communication pipelines to intercept and extract data. We have also launched hundreds, perhaps thousands, of satellites to conduct surveillance and gather up data. All of this data is fed into the NSA database where it is monitored (presumably) as a national security mechanism, and in defense of our allies.
However, what about data collection or data networks that are outside the NSA database? What do our enemies do? The NSA database is just one intelligence operation of digital surveillance amid the entire world, and we do not allow access by adversaries we are monitoring. So what do they do? What do our allies do who might not trust the United States due to past inconsistencies, ie. the Middle East?
The answers to those questions highlight other data collection networks. So, a brief review of the major players is needed.
♦ CHINA – China operates their own database. They, like the NSA, scoop up data for their system. Like us, China launches satellites and deploys other electronic data collection methods to download into their database. This is why the issues of electronic devices manufactured in China becomes problematic. Part of the Chinese data collection system involves the use of spyware, hacking and extraction.
Issues with Chinese communication company Huawei take on an added dimension when you consider the goal of the Chinese government to conduct surveillance and assemble a network of data to compete with the United States via the NSA. Other Chinese methods of surveillance and data-collection are less subversive, as in the examples of TicTok and WeChat. These are Chinese social media companies that are scraping data just like the NSA scrapes data from Facebook, Twitter and other Silicon Valley tech companies. [ Remember, the Intelligence Branch is a public-private partnership. ]
♦ RUSSIA – It is very likely that Russia operates their own database. We know Russia launches satellites, just like China and the USA, for the same purposes. Russia is also very proficient at hacking into other databases and extracting information to store and utilize in their own network. The difference between the U.S., China and Russia is likely that Russia spends more time on the hacking aspect because they do not generate actual technology systems as rapidly as the U.S. and China.
The most recent database creation is an outcome of an ally having to take action because they cannot rely on the ideology of the United States remaining consistent, as the administrations ping-pong based on ideology.
♦ SAUDI ARABIA – Yes, in 2016 we discovered that Saudi Arabia was now operating their own intelligence data-gathering operation. It would make sense, given the nature of the Middle East and the constant fluctuations in political support from the United States. It is a lesson the allied Arab community and Gulf Cooperation Council learned quickly when President Obama went to Cairo in 2009 and launched the Islamist Spring (Arab Spring) upon them.
I have no doubt the creation of the Saudi intelligence network was specifically because the Obama administration started supporting radical Islamists within the Muslim Brotherhood and threw fuel on the fires of extremism all over the Arab world.
Think about it., What would you do if you were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Oman or Yemen and you knew the United States could just trigger an internal uprising of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek your destruction?
Without a doubt, those urgent lessons from 2009, 2010, 2011 triggered the formation of the Arab Intelligence Network as a network to defend itself with consistency. They assembled the network and activated it in 2017 as pictured above.
♦ Israel – Along a similar outlook to the Arab network, no doubt Israel operates an independent data collection system as a method of protecting itself from ever-changing U.S. politics amid a region that is extremely hostile to its very existence. Like the others, Israel launches proprietary satellites, and we can be sure they use covert methods to gather electronic data just like the U.S. and China.
As we have recently seen in the Pegasus story, Israel creates spyware programs that are able to track and monitor cell phone communications of targets. The spyware would not work unless Israel had access to some network where the phone meta-data was actually stored. So yeah, it makes sense for Israel to operate an independent intelligence database.
♦ Summary: As we understand the United States Intelligence Branch of government as the superseding entity that controls the internal politics of our nation, we also must consider that multiple nations have the same issue. There are major intelligence networks around the world beside the NSA “Five-Eyes” database. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel all operate proprietary databases deploying the same tools and techniques for assembly.
The geopolitical conflict that has always existed has now shifted into a digital battle-space. The Intelligence Agencies from these regions are now operating as the backbone of the government that uses them and has become dependent on them. [<- Reread that].
Once you accept the digital-era intelligence apparatus of China, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, The United States and Israel, are now the primary national security mechanisms for stabilization of government; then you accept the importance of those intelligence operations.
Once you understand how foundational those modern intelligence operations have become for the stability and continuity of those governments…… then you begin to understand just how the United States intelligence community became more important than the government that created it.
From that point it is then critical to understand that domestic intelligence operations are underway to monitor the electronic communication of American citizens inside our own country. YOU are under surveillance. The parents who confront school boards are under surveillance. The political operatives inside the FBI are monitoring everyone who comes onto the radar, that is why the National School Boards Association asked the White House, then the DOJ, to have the FBI start targeting parents. Are things making sense now?
♦ Public Private Partnership – The modern Fourth Branch of Government is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus. You do not have to take my word for it, the partnership is so brazened they have made public admissions.
The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.
Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus. It might be difficult to fathom how openly they admit this, but they do. Look at this sentence in the press release (emphasis mine):
[…] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”
Think about that sentence structure very carefully. They are “adding to” the preexisting list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a preexisting list created by the Five Eyes consortium.
Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves. This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.
When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States. They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.
The government cannot conduct electronic searches (4th amendment issue) without a warrant; however, private individuals can search and report back as long as they have access. What is being admitted is exactly that preexisting partnership. The difference is that Big Tech will flag the content from within their platforms, and now a secondary database filled with the extracted information will be provided openly for the Intelligence Branch to exploit.
The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.
Previously, the Intelligence Branch worked around the constitutional and unlawful search issue by using resources that were not in the United States. A domestic U.S. agency, working on behalf of the U.S. government, cannot listen on your calls without a warrant. However, if the U.S. agency sub-contracts to say a Canadian group, or foreign ally, the privacy invasion is no longer legally restricted by U.S. law.
What was announced in June 2021 is an alarming admission of a prior relationship along with open intent to define their domestic political opposition as extremists.
July 26 (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.
Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.
The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (read more)
The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives.
In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. The legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize against domestic enemies.
After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. Simultaneously the mission of the intelligence community now encompassed monitoring domestic threats as defined by the people who operate the surveillance system.
The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what the network of President Barack Obama did.
The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons (we should never have allowed to be created) and turned those weapons into political tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation.
Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.
This is the scale of corrupt political compromise on both sides of the DC dynamic that we are up against. Preserving this system is also what removing Donald Trump is all about…. The targeting of President Trump in order to preserve the system, the system that was weaponized during the Obama administration, is what the actions of the DOJ and FBI are all about.
What would powerful people in DC do to stop the American people from finding this out?
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This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America