A few days ago we shared a story from Sara Carter, a frequent guest on Sean Hannity, who surfaced immediately AFTER the inauguration of President Trump and is often utilized to drive explosive headlines that lead to lengthy conversation but go ‘no-where’.

CTH has spent years monitoring the interactions and interplay between the media and the various layers within what’s called “The DC Deep State”.  Almost immediately a very familiar pattern was noted in Carter’s reporting.  Her recent headline was:

“EXCLUSIVE: A top FBI lawyer is allegedly under an investigation for leaking classified information to the media.”

FBI General Counsel James A. Baker is purportedly under a Department of Justice criminal investigation for allegedly leaking classified national security information to the media, according to multiple government officials close to the probe who spoke with Circa on the condition of anonymity.

With the very familiar approach/pattern immediately pegging the needle – When we shared the story, we included the disclaimer:

Consider this report with a measured amount of cynicism. Based on all historic references this could easily be just another example of well presented flak and countermeasures meant to protect the swamp, protect the Deep State, and feed a **distracting narrative.

**The controlled source of the report, Circa, amplifies the possibility this could be simply a distraction intended to deflect criticism from the non-activity of the current DOJ head Jeff Sessions.  Remember, those who live in the swamp, and those whose financial livelihoods are determined by the activity in/around/discussing the swamp, have a vested interest to defend the swamp status quo.  There are trillions of dollars at stake. (link)

You see, there is a pattern, a very predictable shaping pattern with a great deal of media and stories that surround scandals in politics.  The ‘controlled opposition’ pattern is never broken and the outcome of stories that check off each sequential part of that pattern are always the same.

Without going into detail on the specific elements of those patterns, for the sake of this short explainer the important part is to notice the follow-up article from Sara Carter.

Remember, Carter makes a bold claim – she appears on Sean Hannity to expand on that claim – then, with everyone interested and multiple outlets distributing that original claim, she follows up with further investigation of that original presentation.

Check out her follow-up. (emphasis mine):

[Headline]  FBI lawyer allegedly under investigation for purportedly leaking about Yahoo, Inc. program

The FBI’s top lawyer is allegedly under investigation for purportedly leaking classified material featured in a Reuters report last year that disclosed a top-secret U.S. surveillance program built by Yahoo Inc, according to several government officials with knowledge of the investigation.

[…] James A. Baker, the general counsel for the FBI, is allegedly under a criminal investigation for an apparent connection to the story published in October 2016, according to several government officials.

The Reuters report exposed the top secret security program built by Yahoo Inc. in 2015, that has not been disclosed by the U.S. government. The program, which was built at the request of the U.S. government, allowed intelligence officials to scan what is known as “upstream data” using specific characters or phrase words, according to Reuters. Upstream data is information from a device such as phone or a computer to a server.

Reuters stated that Yahoo Inc. complied with a classified demand by the U.S. government, “scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said three former employees and a fourth person apprised of the events.”

FBI spokeswoman Carol Cratty said the bureau would not comment on Baker and did not confirm or deny the alleged criminal investigation. Attempts by Circa to reach Baker, who is reportedly a close confidant of former FBI Director James Comey, through the bureau were not successful.

DOJ officials would not comment on Circa’s inquiry but said, Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be making a announcement next week about the department’s “stepped up efforts on leak investigations.”

A senior government official, with close knowledge of the intelligence community, alleges Baker opposed the Yahoo Inc. software program and has in his position at the FBI held up Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants.

The warrants allow the intelligence community to monitor person’s communications overseas and must be approved through the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

“Under Baker, many FISA warrants languished for both counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations,” the source said. (read more)

Can you see what’s going on here?

Can you spot the “controlled opposition” shift?

According to this follow-up, the leaker, James Baker, is a good-guy who didn’t like (wasn’t comfortable) with all of the surveillance tools and over use of FISA warrants etc.

The article even infers that Baker was reluctant to submit FISA warrants: “Under Baker, many FISA warrants languished”  blah, blah blah… Yeah, sure. Right.

Can you spot the pivot?

Notice how two days ago the story was delivered to imply that James Baker was part of the problem, he was a “leaker”.   This implication fuels the anxiety held by the popular crowd that entities attempting to undermine the President are “leaking”; ergo Baker one of the bad actors etc.

However, through a slight-of-hand and subtle distribution of information, Baker is shifted from “bad-guy-leaker”, to “Snowden-like-honorable”.

See how that is done?

Simultaneous to this, Ms. Sara Carter says Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going to give a speech on “leak investigations” etc.

See where this is going?

Can you see how the interests of the Deep State, in this case the “Surveillance State”, are  positioned to protect itself?

Outline #1, with full assist in distribution by Sean Hannity, portrays an FBI leaker story.  Outline #2, then presents the leaker as the actions of an honorable man of character.

See the familiarity?  Does it sound just like Comey’s excuse?

The key takeaway here is the aspect where the story is intentionally presented one way and then followed-up to deliver a very specific narrative that in the aggregate protects the Deep State from investigation and public-demanded corrective action.

Go back and look at both articles again, read with your intellectually honest frame of reference, and you’ll note that nothing presented in article #2 (honorable leaker angle), was not known when article #1 (bad leaker story) was written.

When did you first learn of Sara Carter?  Then consider Sara Carter is being “fed”.

This is the self-preservation method of ‘flak and countermeasures’  we continually speak of.

• Jeff Sessions wins with a leak investigation.
• James Baker wins with this shaping of the motive for his leaks.
• FBI wins with honorable purposes intact.
• Deep State wins with continuance of status-quo.
• The American electorate loses

Wash-Rinse-Repeat:

Notice how the “muh Russia” media headlines just slowly disappear like the smoke from flak and countermeasures… Months of proclaiming Trump must be colluding with Russia just disappears and no-one asks who should be held to account for the lies etc.?  No-one ever gets in the face of the media and demands justification etc.?

Leakers?

“Stepped up efforts”?

Oh, they’ll just move on.

Ah yes…. moving on.

But notice nothing changes.

Never does.

Funny that.

Almost as if that was by design.

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Former White House Chief-of-Staff Reince Priebus was interviewed by Sean Hannity earlier tonight to discuss his feelings about being voluntarily resigned.

…”Paul still likes us.” … “Yeah. Remember when we used to like Fridays?” …

…” Well, if there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever” … “And we’ll always have Paris”…

Speaker of The House Paul Ryan was interviewed by Maria Bartiromo on the current framework for the proposed Tax Reform legislation currently under construction in congressional committees.

Many of Ryan’s responses range the gambit from willful blindness (ex. how to fill the budgetary hole created by expanding medicaid; can’t see how to achieve 3% GDP growth, etc.) to outright opaque misinformation, claims congress decided to eliminate B.A.T. (they didn’t, Trump, Mnuchin, Ross did), on revenue.

It is always important to remember that Ryan’s points of advocacy all stem from the Wall Street’s lobbying complex on K-Street.  The epicenter of those interests is the crony capitalistic U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Tom Donohue).   Watch:

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CTH remains cautiously optimistic that Trump, Mnuchin, Cohn and Ross can defeat Ryan Inc on the larger tax reform issues.  However, CTH is not naive to the scope of the UniParty confrontation that will stem as an outcome.  You can hear it within Ryan’s words.

America voted for Trump’s agenda, not Ryan’s Corporate “Better Way” bulls**t !!

House Speaker Paul Ryan weighs in on health care reform and Republican efforts to govern. WATCH video #2

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House Speaker Paul Ryan says Republicans are working off of President Trump’s framework for tax reform. Watch Video #3

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Consider this report with a measured amount of cynicism.  Based on all historic references this could easily be just another example of well presented flak and countermeasures meant to protect the swamp, protect the Deep State, and feed a **distracting narrative.

WASHINGTON – FBI General Counsel James A. Baker is purportedly under a Department of Justice criminal investigation for allegedly leaking classified national security information to the media, according to multiple government officials close to the probe who spoke with Circa on the condition of anonymity.

[…] Three sources, with knowledge of the apparent investigation, told Circa that Baker is the top suspect in an ongoing leak investigation, but Circa has not been able to confirm the details of what national security information or material was allegedly leaked.

A federal law enforcement official with knowledge of ongoing internal investigations in the bureau told Circa, “the bureau is scouring for leakers and there’s been a lot of investigations.”

The revelation comes as the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to contain leaks both within the White House and within its own national security apparatus.

Baker is a close confidant of former FBI Director James Comey, and recent media reports suggested he was reportedly advising the then-FBI director on legal matters following private meetings the former director had in February with President Trump in the Oval Office.

Baker was appointed to the FBI’s general counsel by Comey in 2014. (read more)

**The controlled source of the report, Circa, amplifies the possibility this could be simply a distraction intended to deflect criticism from the non-activity of the current DOJ head Jeff Sessions.  Remember, those who live in the swamp, and those whose financial livelihoods are determined by the activity in/around/discussing the swamp, have a vested interest to defend the swamp status quo.  There are trillions of dollars at stake.

The swamp fights back.  Predictable Flak and Countermeasures deployed, right on time, by the UniParty. You can almost set your watch to it.  Once you see the strings on the marionettes you can never go back to a time when you didn’t see them.

House Intelligence Committee member Trey Gowdy discusses Jared Kushner, the controversy with attorney general Jeff Sessions and the ongoing Trump-Russia probe. etc.

When President Trump made his initial remarks reflecting disappointment in Attorney General Jeff Sessions it was initially unnerving.  The subsequent fallout from the public criticism has united the NeverTrump crowd, Cruzbots and professionally GOPe, to defend the honor of the much beloved former Senator.   The opportunity to bash Trump is simply an ancillary benefit.

Conversely, the MAGA community has largely portrayed the rift as if the Presidential critique was part of a larger strategy between the President and Attorney General. If we wait long enough some mysterious master plan will eventually to be discovered.

However, the subsequent POTUS tweets and comments do not indicate any joint strategy at all.  What they do actually show is a genuine disappointment and frustration with the focus of Jeff Sessions; and the cabinet member’s apparent unwillingness to confront the corruption within the DOJ and by extension the larger DC swamp.

It is not accidental the frustration and disappointment surface as the various opposition groups to the Trump presidency begin to target the entire Trump family.   Despite some opinion to the contrary, Donald Trump does have a nuclear trigger point; target his family and you’ll find it quick.  Just ask anyone who has known him for any substantive amount of time.

President Trump affirms his ‘confidence’ in Jeff Sessions’ ability to do the swamp draining and simultaneously expresses ‘disappointment’ that AG Sessions chooses not to.

Confidence and disappointment are not mutually exclusive sentiments.

Under the former administration the Department of Justice was weaponized politically and legally by the executive branch against ordinary American citizens.  A political example was the joint effort between the DOJ and IRS to target political opposition, the Tea Party and organizations like True the Vote.

The legal examples of DOJ weaponization extend from “Fast and Furious” gun running ops to the targeting of the manufacturer of Gibson Guitar, and to legal cases involving local police departments like Ferguson Missouri, Baltimore Maryland and individuals like George Zimmerman.  These are only a few examples; there are many more.

Attorneys’ General Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder did not participate in these examples alone.  Under their guidance there exists a myriad of corrupt officials, black hats within the DOJ, who participated in all aspects of the weaponization and the outcomes therein.

This underlying corrupt architecture is what Jeff Sessions is choosing to ignore.  This is the source of Trump’s frustration and disappointment.  These deep state black hats within the DOJ are transparently not being confronted; meanwhile AG Sessions is running around the country with Rod Rosenstein holding pressers and proclaiming victories.

Yes, it’s great to finally have a law enforcement agenda with border policy, drug enforcement, and the capture of criminal enterprises with pedophile rings and human trafficking.  Yes, all of that is great – sans the ridiculous civil asset forfeiture continuance.

However, there’s a larger issue at DOJ central where the refusal to confront the corrupt aspects within the organization only serves to fuel and enable the continuance of a corrupt swamp in Washington DC.

Examples: Where’s the justice upon those who weaponized the IRS?  Where’s the investigation into the leaking of classified information?  There is a great deal that should be dealt with and accompanying messages delivered. Alas…  The behavior of the swamp today is the same behavior of the swamp on January 19th.   The corrupt administrative state is thus far unaffected.  Why?

To make matters more urgent, the corrupt institutional system that AG Sessions is apparently refusing to confront are now targeting the personal family of the presidency.  What usefulness is there in winning the small stuff if Sessions is refusing to confront the larger and more dangerous systemic corruption.

Trump is shouting “broken arrow” into the handset and the response is ::::static:::::!

President Trump is an existential threat to the entire apparatus of the DC swamp. And so far AG Sessions appears content to ignore, or at best is prioritizing confrontation with the swamp at a much lower level of importance.

The commentary by President Trump should be considered against the totality of this backdrop.  Winter is here; the time for confrontation is now. Mild mannerisms are not a valuable skill-set when engaged in epic confrontation.  President Trump was not elected to nibble around the edges nor does his possess such a tempered disposition toward half-measures leaving the effort to someone else.  Sessions needs to get tough.

As a consequence, President Trump won’t let up on the pressure being applied to Jeff Sessions until the Attorney General agrees to clean his own house (and neighborhood) before journeying off to distant needs and righteous law enforcement endeavors.  The most important battle is in Washington DC.

So long as Sessions ignores the need to confront the swamp draining the pressure from Trump will remain.  Notice POTUS is not telling Sessions what to do, he is merely stating his opinion on what action is not being done.  Again, it’s not about AG Jeff Sessions, the issue is with action not being taken, the outcomes or results.

Sometimes it becomes necessary to accept that not all people have the inherent ability to confront adversarial issues.  Trump is asking AG Sessions to confront a system that Senator Sessions is very familiar with; yet there is no progress.

Why Public?  Well, according to the recently espoused rules provided by congress, media and the swamp hierarchy, the President is not allowed to speak privately to his attorney general lest he be guilty of some nefarious collusion type thing.  Yes, that is an absurd presentation by all the aforementioned groups; alas it is the reality of their narrative.

Rather than feed the media cycle with dictator Trump and the secret nefarious collusion narrative, President Trump just applies the swamp rules of communication and states publicly what he would state privately.   The message is the same, perhaps with a modicum of generalized nuance as a result of each public messaging format.

Eventually, if the historic track repeats, Jeff Sessions will tender his resignation and an important heart-to-heart meeting of purpose will follow.

Whether that resignation is accepted or not will be entirely dependent on the disposition and willingness of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to confront the corrupt enterprise that has encircled Washington DC and metastasized its bile.

The Attorney General might not actually possess the skills, the instincts, to lead that disinfecting endeavor; or he might simply not desire to participate in an epic battle of such a politically adversarial nature.  After all, he was/is familiar with all of these people.

Winter is here.

The choice will ultimately be his.

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David Mamet famously said (paraphrased): ‘when questioned on policy and consequence, in order to avoid the conflict within their ideological message, modern liberals will always pretend not to know things.’

In today’s audio/visual example we find top national democrat leadership pretending not to know their rebranding message, “A Better Deal“, is nothing short of an almost identical policy platform created by the current President, Donald Trump. A policy platform they are committed to blocking.

You just can’t make this stuff up folks.

“We Haz Plans“

Seriously, it took months of carefully poll tested review of each specific point to create the agenda that Democrats hope will help them win election in 2018. However, if you look at the substance of their “Better Deal” proposals a person cannot help but find themselves feeling deja vu, all over again.

The platform includes: •a $15 minimum wage (economically inadvisable and already having devastating consequences in local areas of enactment), •a $1 trillion infrastructure plan (hey, isn’t that Trump’s idea?), •new trade laws more beneficial to American workers (wait, what, yup, Trump again?), •and a plan to engage in job training and national apprenticeship initiatives (yup, more Trump). Heck, if they throw in a modern Glass-Stegall they can just call it “Trump’s Better Deal 2.0”, or something.

What makes the entire exercise intensely ludicrous is the amount of energy, effort and execution they put into the roll-out:

[…]  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, along with other top House and Senate Democrats, are making the presentation after months of internal debate and analysis of polling and focus groups. (read more)

So the Democrats spent months of internal debate, analysis and focus group testing, only to exit with a populist national Democrat plan that mirrors the policy objectives of the current President of the United States.  Those same Trump policy objectives the same Democrat leadership are on record saying they will fight tooth-and-nail to ensure never reach fruition.

It would be funny if the irony wasn’t so serious.

Wait, no…. it is both ironic and actually funny.

2018 will be fun.

Carry on.

Everything is proceeding according to a natural and predictable path.  Mr. Scaramucci is now in charge of White House messaging, the focus can now look toward the Capitol and go on offense; the “Big Ugly” is very clearly on the horizon.

Anxious Trump voters have been understandably frustrated by the lack of speed with which President Trump is able to force the MAGA agenda onto an unwilling DC political apparatus.  However, if you step back and look at the scope of the challenge, the situation is entirely understandable.

Donald Trump was a 100% pure political outsider, a citizen politician.  There was never any underlying organizational apparatus to support victory.  There was Dan, Hope, Michael and Corey; later Paul then Kellyanne and Steve. Everything else needed to be constructed from scratch and even the party apparatus didn’t support candidate Trump.

On November 9th 2016 President-elect Trump did not wake up with a staff of 50 political career employees sitting at Trump desks with Rolodexes filled with a network of affiliate political allies, personnel and associates to call upon to create the Trump administration.  Consequently President Trump needed to import the entire administrative personnel architecture to support the move to the White House.

President-elect Trump approached that challenge by hiring the Chairman of the RNC, Reince Priebus to fill out the hundreds of empty chairs.  Priebus brought a staff mostly from the RNC and his own network of contacts. Many of those people were not self-described deplorables, or MAGA-minded; hence, the leaking etc.

The Heritage Foundation, and a few other late-coming allied political groups were brought on to provide some more legislative-minded bodies to help turn the Trump populist and pragmatic campaign platform into actionable policy and legislation.  There simply wasn’t a decades old MAGA think tank as a resource.   Again, sub-contracting needed.

Understanding the dynamic of building out the administrative architecture leads to an understanding of the visible frustration.  However, this is exactly what citizen political operations look like absent of career political operatives familiar with all historic national political efforts.

The same outsider challenge applies to the thousands of political appointments etc.  Many of those remain unfilled, and many of the unfilled will probably remain unfilled because they are not value added when looked upon from the outside of an administrative state.  Even fully staffed, the Trump administration, when carried through all cabinet departments, will be thousands of people less than all recent presidencies.

However, over time the White House can hire and import people who are favorably MAGA-minded.

Six months into the administration the sub-contracted group is not as critical as initially the case on day #1.

The removal of the sub-contracted agents is a natural outcome of a process of filling out the administration with people who are more in line with the totality of the policy and ideology behind it.

This is why we previously shared: in the course of time, if you followed the process to its natural conclusion, there is bound to be a confrontation between the intransigent DC administrative and permanent political class -versus- President Trump and Team MAGA.  I called this predictable confrontation – “The Big Ugly”.

No longer needing the RNC outlook, MAGA-minded Anthony Scaramucci is now essentially Divisional VP in charge of White House Communications.  The next position to be filled will be “Chief-of-Staff”.  In that position we might see a Jim DeMint or similar; someone who is on board with the outsider approach, but insider aptitude.

Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani and other visible Trump-minded supporters may now resurface as the foundation to support the purpose of their endeavors is more solidly in place.

As this transitional process of retooling, sharpening the saw, takes place; Trump also doesn’t waste any time. President Trump prepares to do battle with the administrative state who have shown no compunction to advance MAGA policy and have ignored or rebuked his outstretched hand.   Again, this confrontation is natural and entirely expected.

Thus we begin to see visible signs of the approach within tweets targeting politicians who stand in opposition to the agenda that President Trump ran on.

Many people might wonder what took so long.  However, when we take time to understand the nature of a complete political outsider winning the office of the Presidency and all that encompasses, we begin to understand the best part of what we voted for is only possible when the architecture to support it is fully in place.

We are nearing that point.

Winter is coming for the intransigent professional political class.