The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI, was created post-9/11 at the recommendation of the 9/11 commission. The purpose is to serve as the central hub of intelligence information, gathered by multiple intelligence agencies, to insure equal distribution to all elements of the intelligence apparatus.

Due to the structure of the ODNI, the cabinet member filling that position has an important role in: (a) knowing what each intelligence agency is doing; and (b) sharing intelligence operations and outcomes, beyond the originating agency, to those national security offices who may have an operational need/interest in cross-agency information.

President Obama saw the ODNI structure as a problem. The ODNI would know what each agency is doing. The structure of the ODNI means corrupt CIA, State, DoD and/or DOJ and FBI cabinet officials couldn’t keep secret intelligence operations hidden from review by alternate officials.  The structure of the ODNI was a risk.

President Obama together with Donilon, Holder, Emmanuel and Jarret, solved this problem early on by placing an abject idiot named James Clapper into the position of ODNI.

Yes, James Clapper was purposefully put into the position due to his lack of competence. Clapper’s stupidity was a purposeful asset asset for the corrupt -politically motivated- officials that President Obama placed into the intelligence apparatus (ex. Brennan, Holder, Comey, Clinton, Panetta, Carter et al).  Cue the audio/visual evidence:

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Oh, there are dozens more examples, but you get the point!

Now….

President Trump placed Senator Dan Coats into the ODNI position, and many critics of Dan Coats have surfaced as a result of various declassification requests that appear to have stalled in his office.  Some of the criticism is valid, some, notsomuch.

It could be true that Dan Coats is part of the aggregate deep state problem. However, there are both Pro and Con examples of ODNI Dan Coats on both sides of this argument.

(1) Dan Coats declassified and publicly released the April 2017 FISA Court opinion of Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer. At the time there was no-one looking for that very serious criticism of how the Obama administration weaponized the FISA process and abused the FISA court. ODNI Dan Coats could have easily kept that 99-page report classified and hidden in the vaults of the deep state.

(2) You might remember the aftermath of President Trump traveling to Helsinki, Finland, for a meeting with Vladimir Putin. The media and former Obama intelligence officials were at the apex of their “Russia Collusion/Conspiracy” claims. The day after Brennan, Yates, Comey and Clapper went media crazy with the anti-Trump fuel, ODNI Coats arbitrarily declassified and released the FISA Application used against Carter Page. That release supported President Trump and immediately crushed the resistance narrative.

At the time of the FISA application release, SATURDAY July 21st, 2018, everyone was so caught up in the substance of the explosive information that no-one stopped to ask: hey, wait, where did this come from and why are we getting it? At the time no-one was looking for the FISA application and it would have been very easy to keep the highly classified document hidden. The declassification and release appeared without anyone really asking for it.

So, it’s possible that Dan Coats is keeping stuff hidden that would disparage the institutions; however, it is also true that Dan Coats has released stuff that does exactly the opposite.

All of that is said to remind everyone we should pause before jumping to conclusions about media reports of Coats demise that originate from Axios and then spread through the media bloodstream – Fox News example. There is always a possibility the anti-Trump media is just trying to stir stuff up.

Remember, the Lawfare resistance is connected to more than just currently employed, and consistently corrupt, DOJ and FBI officials along with their political allies.  The Lawfare resistance is heavily associated with their media cohorts and fellow travelers.

DC is a very deep swamp.

♦Puerto Rico has a long history of public corruption and abuse of federal funds.  Back in 2015 ten government officials in Puerto Rico were arrested for corruption, bribery, honest services wire fraud, extortion and various schemes related to giving payments to friends and family via federal contracts. [LINK]  This is the typical corruption PR is known for.

♦A few weeks ago (June 28) the FBI, Public Corruption Unit, posted a notification of an ongoing corruption probe and provided a tip-line for leads related to bribery and/or corruption of public officials. [LINK]  This probe is connected to the billions of dollars U.S. taxpayers have provided to Puerto Rico for recovery after hurricane Maria (2017).

So much money is poured into the island that hundreds of local and regional officials seized the opportunity to indulge their friends and family with funds from recovery accounts.  This is the widespread corruption President Trump previously drew attention to.  This overt and in-the-open corruption is why Nancy Pelosi took the entire Democrat caucus to Puerto Rico in January for a vacation with her favorite lobbyists.  Everyone in/around PR knows this corruption is the norm, not the exception.

Today, six more people were indicted under new federal charges, including two government officials: Julia Keleher, who served as Puerto Rico’s education secretary until April; and Ángela Ávila-Marrero, who was the executive director of the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration until late June. They are variously charged with wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy, according to the 32-count indictment.

WASHINGTON – […] The federal indictment says the former officials illegally directed federal funding to politically connected contractors. The arrests come about a month after Congress approved a controversial disaster aid bill that earmarked additional funding for Puerto Rico’s recovery from Hurricane Maria in 2017, which were tied up in part because President Trump called Puerto Rico’s officials “incompetent or corrupt.”

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the Natural Resource Committee that oversees Puerto Rico, called on Rosselló to resign amid the ongoing federal investigation.

“We’ve crossed that crucible now,” Grijalva said in interview. “The restoration of accountability is so key going forward.”

Prosecutors said Rosselló was not involved in the investigation, according to the Associated Press.

A spokesman for Rosselló did not immediately return requests for comment.

The arrests come as senior White House officials are searching for new ways to limit the amount of federal aid going to help Puerto Rico, and the island’s allies fear the arrests will give Trump greater justification for curtailing additional aid to the island.

“The governor of Puerto Rico and his administration have now given President Trump the ammunition he needed,” said San Juan Mayor Yulin Cruz, a political opponent of the governor. (read more)

President Trump was exactly right when he both informed and warned voters of what would happen with the money dumped into Puerto Rico.  Here’s a reminder:

Any Question

News we might have missed.  Last week Catherine Engelbrecht announced a historic legal victory in her decade long battle against the IRS for targeting her group, True The Vote, as part of the Obama administration’s weaponization program against political opposition.

U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton issued a stunning ruling (full pdf below) in favor of True the Vote, and penalized the IRS.  Judge Walton forced the IRS to pay maximum attorney’s fees due to discrimination against the conservative organization that stemmed from the Lois Lerner scandal.  The financial award is likely to exceed $2 million.

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Ms. Engelbrecht gave Breitbart News an interview where she discussed the victory, SEE HERE.

Here’s the ruling:

.Ms. Engelbrecht’s case is actually connected to the political surveillance operation used against presidential candidate Donald Trump.  Factually, the 2010 program to weaponize the IRS looks like the precursor to the 2012 program to weaponize the NSA database.

Political spying 1.0 was the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:

The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)

Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.

The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.

Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.

The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:

Additionally, Matt Gaetz appears to have seen “a memo held in the Congressional Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) that contained previously-undisclosed information involving the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ).” [LINK]  Which sounds like the MOU in the footnote, and the memo that Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz inquired about.

[2012] Dear General Holder:

Recently, the “Wall Street Journal” (WSJ) reported you granted the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) new powers to store dossiers on United States citizens, even if said citizens are not suspected of any criminal activity.

With these new powers, the NCTC would have the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students, as well as other data.

The WSJ goes on to report the new rules allow the NCTC to keep data about innocent United States citizens for up to five years and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited.

If the WSJ report is accurate, these new powers represent a sweeping departure from past practices, which barred the NCTC from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or the information sought was related to an investigation.

If the WSJ report is accurate, it raises numerous concerns and questions. As elected Representatives and members of the House Judiciary Committee, we are concerned such sweeping, fundamental changes would be made to existing policy without public input and Congressional approval. Changes, which fundamentally alter the relationship between the government and the governed, should only be made with input from the people by and through their elected Representatives. (more)

Wall Street Journal Report Here

How this all comes together in 2019

Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.

However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.

That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, are so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content. The Steele Dossier contains the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation.

During a rather innocuous podcast discussion panel April 12th, 2019, one of President Trump’s personal lawyers Jay Sekulow mentioned the FBI had three FISA applications denied by the FISA court in 2016. [Podcast Here – Note comment at 25:05] The denials were always suspected; however, until now no-one in/around the administration has ever confirmed.

If Sekulow is accurate, this adds additional context to the actions of the FBI in the aftermath of Admiral Mike Rogers and an increased urgency in gaining legal justification for surveillance and spy operation unlawfully taking place. A valid FISA warrant would help the FBI cover-up the surveillance. The likely targets were Manafort, Flynn and Papadopoulos…. but it appears the DOJ/FBI were rebuked.

These FISC denials would then initiate institutional panic dependent on the election outcome. An insurance policy would be needed. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system {Go Deep}.

Fusion GPS was not hired to research Trump, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations.

Fusion-GPS gave them the justification they needed for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier. Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier is so important; without it, the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse.

The school resource officer, Scot Peterson, who did not respond during the shooting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year, has been arrested on negligence, child neglect and perjury charges.

(NBC6 Miami) […]  Peterson, 56, was arrested in Broward County on seven counts of neglect of a child, three counts of culpable negligence, and one count of perjury, Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said.

The arrest comes after a 15-month investigation into the actions of law enforcement after the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting at the school that killed 17 students and staffers and left 17 others injured. Peterson was the school resource officer at MSD High School during the shooting.

“The FDLE investigation shows former Deputy Peterson did absolutely nothing to mitigate the MSD shooting that killed 17 children, teachers and staff and injured 17 others,” FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen said in a statement. “There can be no excuse for his complete inaction and no question that his inaction cost lives.”  (read more)

CTH previously outlined how Broward County school police officers were primarily positioned to mitigate issues with criminal student engagement.

The Broward County diversionary school discipline program known as the “Promise Program” gained scrutiny after the Parkland shooting left 17 students dead.

The unstable shooter was identified as a prior benefactor of a county school district policy to reduced crime rates by exchanging criminal punishment for school discipline.

Many readers are aware CTH spent almost two years researching this practice in both Miami-Dade and Broward County.  The downstream consequences were predictable when it first began; unfortunately, no-one wanted to accept the warnings – and the corruption is was systemic within the School and Police leadership, there’s was little hope to ever see it change.