CTH readers will know Brett McGurk; he is the departing U.S. state department envoy in-charge of the U.S./State Dept./Coalition de-ISIS campaign.  We have discussed his presentations at great length [See Here in 2017].

McGurk was scheduled to exit the State Department in less than two months (Feb ’19); as the 27-nation coalition “de-ISIS operation” is now complete, and has shifted into maintenance mode.  However, McGurk has announced he is resigning at the end of this year.  CBS takes this as an opportunity to present a political hit-job against President Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria and allow regional allies to take over.

(Via CBS) […] Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, had been planning to exit his post in February 2019. But sources tell CBS News that he informed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that he will accelerate his departure due to a strong disagreement with President Trump’s snap decision to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria, effectively abandoning U.S. allies in the region.

McGurk submitted his resignation on Friday, just one day after Defense Secretary James Mattis quit his post citing fundamental disagreements with the commander-in-chief — including one over the importance of honoring U.S. alliances.

The special envoy was publicly left in the lurch by the president’s sudden declaration on Wednesday that he was pulling U.S. forces out of Syria, against the advice of his top national security advisers and without consulting U.S. allies.

As leader of the counter ISIS mission, McGurk had been in the region to meet with coalition partners including Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani last week when Mr. Trump made his sudden decision to pull U.S. support. According to Barzani’s office, he had raised concern about the fate of Kurds in Syria including the Kurdish-led group of fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). They have been the ground troops in the fight against ISIS and receive help from U.S. advisers, weapons and air strikes.  (read more)

So McGurk leaving now is horrible; bad Trump…. but McGurk leaving as scheduled a month from now was, well, okay or something?

See the insufferable nonsense?

The bottom-line is ISIS in Syria has been defeated; that was our purpose for being there. The current issues and arguments surround who should stay in the region as part of the “maintenance” operation.

President Trump has made the decision to allow the regional allies, closest to the actual conflict, to take charge of the maintenance operation.  As noted, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will be the primary regional team supporting coalition forces and ensuring the safety of Kurdish allies. The DC machine wants the U.S. military to remain in Syria indefinitely to control maintenance operations.

The de-ISIS campaign has been successful. The policy argument surrounds: who should remain in Syria to maintain the status-quo?

CBS obviously has an agenda to sell via narrative engineer Margaret Brennan.

It should be noted that Brett McGurk was also the envoy used by President Obama in 2016 for secret negotiations (pallets of cash) with the Iranians.

I would not be surprised to see deep state actors within the United States CIA and State Department begin covert black-op missions to attack the Kurds, as an excuse to force U.S. re-engagement.  Watch for it in 3,.. 2,…

The FBI has responded to a request for declassification review of witness transcripts from the Joint House Committee headed by Chairman Bob Goodlatte.   The FBI is refusing to comply with the declassification review; and, entirely as expected, outlines the decision-maker for releasing any testimony is ultimately Robert Mueller.

(Link to letter)

…proving, yet again, the purpose of the special counsel probe is to control and mitigate the risks from any investigative inquiry.  This is how Robert Mueller protects the corrupt officials and corrupt institutions within government.

Despite their claims, don’t be tricked into thinking it’s about timing, and/or a workload, and/or the holidays.  How do we know this? Well, remember, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chaired by Devin Nunes, made a similar request for release of their transcripts on September 26th, 2018.  The ODNI, DOJ, FBI and Special Counsel have refused to comply for three months.

Mueller’s investigation always held an ulterior purpose:

♦(1) Create an investigation – Just by creating the investigation it is then used as a shield by any corrupt FBI/DOJ official who would find himself/herself under downstream congressional investigation.  Former officials being deposed/questioned by IG Horowitz or Congress could then say they are unable to answer those questions due to the ongoing special counsel investigation.  In this way Mueller provides cover for ideologically aligned deep state officials.

♦(2)  Use the investigation to keep any and all inquiry focused away from the corrupt DOJ and FBI activity that took place in 2015, 2016, 2017.  Keep the media narrative looking somewhere, anywhere, other than directly at the epicenter of the issues. In this way, Mueller provides distraction and talking points against the Trump administration.

♦(3) Use the investigation to suck-up, absorb, any damaging investigative material that might surface as a result of tangentially related inquiry.  Example: control the exposure of evidence against classified leak participants like SSCI Director of Security, James Wolfe; and/or block IG Horowitz from seeing material related to the FISA abuse scandal and “spygate”.  In this way Mueller provides cover for the institutions and the administrative state.

In all of these objectives the Mueller special counsel has been stunningly effective.

The efforts of Rosenstein, Wray, Bowditch, Boente et al, to cover-up the institutional corruption extends far beyond their blocking activity of the declassification requests; and shows up in the lack of substance behind the Wolfe plea agreement when compared to the devastating evidence within the original indictment.

There is a clear pattern.  In addition to the disparity of outcome within the Wolfe indictment/plea deal we exhibit: ♦redactions in material evidence provided to congress; ♦refusal to release material to congress; ♦fighting declassification of documents that would be damaging to the previous officials; ♦refusal to discuss events with congress by officials who hide behind the shield of the Mueller investigation; the list is long.

Additionally, the Mueller control agenda also extends into the two previous IG reports submitted by DOJ Inspector Michael Horowitz.

With Robert Mueller in charge of an ongoing investigation, the two previous IG reports (1. Investigation of McCabe and 2. Clinton email/FBI bias) could not outline anything tangentially connected to the Mueller investigation without first passing through his teams approval and review.

That level of Mueller influence kept the most severe elements of investigative sunlight away from public review.

These officials defending the administrative state are still in place.  We know they are in place because their influential conduct is visible. Three of them are inarguable:

(1) By redacting innocuous, albeit highly damaging information, within the Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages and emails.  Officials within the agencies are hiding information and even eliminating the most damaging material.

(2) By controlling what records IG Horowitz has access to; in addition to who he is interviewing. The IG is only as effective as the material he has to review.

(3) By shaping the executive summaries of the two previous IG reports to ensure the specific material within the report is diluted as much as possible in the summary and conclusions.

In essence, and against the understanding of how these officials manipulated the recusal of AG Jeff Sessions; DAG Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy FBI Director David Bowditch, FBI Chief Legal Counsel Dana Boente, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the affiliated network of political operatives within the DOJ/FBI; this crew has held free reign to shape everything in the past two years.

That is why there has been ZERO progress.

It’s been a complete con-job by the current officials within the DOJ and FBI.

FUBAR

Somehow, despite 85-year-old Justice Ginsburg being incapacitated by surgery and intensive care recovery, the supreme court voted 5-4 to allow a lower court block on President Trump’s asylum restrictions to remain in place.  Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the three resistance activists and the unknown puppeteer for Ginsburg.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court won’t let the Trump administration begin enforcing a ban on asylum for any immigrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Chief Justice John Roberts joined his four more liberal colleagues Friday in ruling against the administration in the very case in which President Donald Trump had derided the “Obama judge” who first blocked the asylum policy.

New Justice Brett Kavanaugh and three other conservative justices sided with the administration.  There were no opinions explaining either side’s votes.  (read more)

The sentencing guideline for the single count of lying to federal investigators was: 0 to 6 months. After a rather sketchy plea deal, DOJ Prosecutors had requested an upward revision to two-years incarceration based on the severity of the conduct.

Moments ago US District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson sentenced James Wolfe to a two-month prison term.

The judge rejected the request for an upward revision of sentencing; and she rejected a victim impact statement from Carter Page outlining the damage to him caused by James Wolfe’s leaking…   In essence, James Wolfe became the benefactor of a corrupt FBI/DOJ trying to protect the Senate Intelligence Committee from scrutiny.

Backstory Below

If you have followed the case against SSCI Security Director James Wolfe you will note the original indictment against him outlined, obliquely, how Wolfe took custody of the Carter Page FISA application and then leaked it to his concubine at Buzzfeed Ms. Ali Watkins.

The leak of the FISA application was a rather explosive issue not readily identified when Wolfe’s indictment was first presented (June ’18).  It was only possible to connect the dots after the FISA application was released (July ’18) and a comparison on specific dates, times, contacts and chain-of-custody, was possible.

In response to his indictment, Wolfe’s lawyers said they would force Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) members to participate and testify in any trial.  This was a rather stunning approach.  A few months passed and a plea bargain was struck.  Wolfe would plead guilty only to one count of lying to FBI investigators.  The charges of the leaking “top secret and classified” intelligence were dropped.

Wolfe was not ultimately charged with leaking the FISA application.  We sniffed a quid-pro-quo.  We suspected Wolfe was instructed by at least one senator, likely  SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner, to leak the information.  This would explain Wolfe’s extraordinary defense position – and the DOJ response therein.

Think about it.  A gang-of-eight member (Warner), who happened -as a consequence of the jaw dropping implications- to be one of only TWO SSCI members who was notified by the FBI that Wolfe was compromised. The ramifications cannot be overstated.

After the sketchy plea agreement the DOJ filed a sentencing memo, on ONLY the lying aspect, claiming –contrary to the original indictment– their investigation could not prove classified intelligence leaks.  However, the DOJ also argued for a sentence of two years incarceration, far exceeding the judicial sentencing standard for a single count of lying.  Again, rather dubious DOJ positioning.

CTH still believes Wolfe leaked the FISA application to Ali Watkins and the DOJ was in a tenuous position due to the strong likelihood of key and powerful senators being involved.

Last week (December 15th, 2018) the DOJ filed a response to the Wolfe defense teams’ own sentencing memo (full pdf below), and within the DOJ response they, perhaps inadvertently, posted an exhibit (#13) written by the FBI special agent in charge, which specifically says:

….”because of the known disclosure of classified information, the FISA application”…

“known disclosure”…

I don’t think the DOJ meant to allow or file that.

Here’s the full DOJ responsive filing to the Wolfe defense sentencing memo:

https://www.scribd.com/embeds/395775597/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-Ri1zx4Lgs43CF6bIoj4s

.

As a reminder, we know the FISA court delivered the read and return Top-Secret Classified Carter Page application due to the clerk stamp of March 17, 2017.

That stamp date, March 17, 2017, and the content therein, matched the date and details of the original Wolfe indictment:

On that same date, March 17th, 2017, within the text messages of SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner and Lobbyist/Lawyer Adam Waldman – as they were working out details of how to meet covertly with dossier author Christopher Steele, we find Warner going into the Senate Intelligence Committee SCIF.

SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner is a central figure in the scheme to entrap the incoming administration under the auspices of the fraudulent Russia probe.

(Washington, DC – December 14th, 2018) Judicial Watch today released two sets of heavily redacted State Department documents, 38 pagesand 48 pages, showing classified information was researched and disseminated to multiple U.S. Senators by the Obama administration immediately prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The documents reveal that among those receiving the classified documents were Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Sen. Robert Corker (R-TN).

Judicial Watch obtained the documents through a June 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department after it failed to respond to a February 2018 request seeking records of the Obama State Department’s last-minute efforts to share classified information about Russia election interference issues with Democratic Senator Ben Cardin (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:18-cv-01381)).

The documents reveal the Obama State Department urgently gathering classified Russia investigation information and disseminating it to members of Congress within hours of Donald Trump taking office.  (read more)