The text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strozk and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, have been released to both Fox News and CBS.  SEE HERE and SEE HERE.

The messages reflect a strong bias against President Trump. However, the bigger story is not the anti-Trump bias within the text communication, the BIGGER story is why the Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General (OIG), began even looking at Agent Peter Strozk’s communication in the first place.

Remember, the original mandate by the Inspector General’s office was initiated to review and discover any politicization of the FBI and/or DOJ officials.

After news broke of Strzok’s removal from investigative duty within the FBI counterintelligence unit, what the OIG responding statement said was for 11 months the Dept of Justice OIG office has been investigating the politicization within the DOJ and FBI and deciding if the actions, or lack of action, was driven by the political ideology of the participants therein:

(pdf Link)

In essence the IG began looking for any investigative issues that might show how political bias might have resulted in manipulated or changed investigative outcomes.  Potentially those outlined issues are brutally unethical, and most likely unlawful.  [Read the initiating IG office outline above because I’m going to reference it later] Emphasis:

“The January 2017 statement issued by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) announcing its review of allegations regarding various actions of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in advance of the 2016 election stated that the OIG review would, among other things, consider whether certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations and that we also would include issues that might arise during the course of the review.

The OIG has been reviewing allegations involving communications between certain individuals, and will report its findings regarding those allegations promptly upon completion of the review of them.”

It was within this IG investigation that SOMETHING pointed the investigative agents in the direction of FBI Agent Peter Strzok.  What that something was and is remains an unknown variable; however, the outcome of the subsequent inquiry led to Agent Strzok being removed mid-summer from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

There was some precipitating event that led the IG to investigate the communication of FBI Agent Strzok.  That precipitating event or behavior is where the real story lies, and not in the downstream collection –and current release– of biased text messages between Strzok and his mistress FBI Attorney Lisa Page who worked for Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Against the backdrop of current activity, and knowing there is a newly established special joint task force within the DOJ and FBI to identify leaks, we can reasonably speculate Agent Strzok was caught while the IG was investigating politicization, and the DOJ/FBI  leak task force was hunting intelligence “leakers“.

As Judicial Committee Representative Jim Jordan rightly outlined, Agent Strzok would not likely be removed because he had biased text messages with his mistress.  So long as that bias did not interfere with his work duty, there is no issue; and Strzok was not in a position of supervision over Lisa Page so they could encounter like rabbits to their black-hats desire.  However, if FBI Agent Strzok was a “leaker” to the media, or worse, well, that’s an entirely different kettle-o-fish.

Getting caught as a leaker is likely the reason Strzok was removed and reassigned to the HR post; not the bias.  The bias, writ large, is essentially a snipe hunt; it makes good media clicks, it feeds a good headline, but ultimately it’s a nothingburger.  The reports on this angle are flak and countermeasures.

However, Agent Strzok leaking information to the media; his changing the outcome of an FBI investigation into a political ally, Hillary Clinton; and his investigative involvement in the Trump Russia Conspiracy, via the Steele Dossier and FISA warrant, well, that’s the real issue evident here.

AUGUST 2017 – […] A former FBI agent who worked with Strzok on and off over several years in the bureau’s counterintelligence division said that Strzok’s move to HR means he has now been separated from counterintelligence work altogether.

[…]  Strzok’s departure also came one week after The Washington Post reported that Mueller had obtained a search warrant to raid the home of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. The Post report cited “people familiar with the search,” prompting questions about whether anyone on Mueller’s team had leaked the existence of the search warrant to the Post. (link)

Which leads us to the next headline story that dovetails into this ideological weaponization by FBI/DOJ/DC officials leaking to the media.

Donald Trump Jr. has now written a letter of complaint to the House Rep. K. Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican who is heading the House Intelligence inquiry into Russian election interference.  Don Jr’s outline specifically focuses on the erroneous leak to CNN about the content of a received email; and requests an investigation into how the leak took place:

The Washington Times reports:

[…] Republicans suspect that the staff of Rep. Adam Schiff, California Democrat, leaked the erroneous “scoop” to CNN. They say his staff regularly leaks, with CNN being a favorite, with a spin that is not accurate.

Mr. Schiff, who is a big fan of the discredited Trump dossier, appeared on TV afterward. Mr. Futerfas said he misrepresented his client’s testimony.

[…] Mr. Futerfas’s implication is that the leakers let the story catch fire on social media and other venues before correcting it.

“Ranking Member Schiff and his staff do not leak classified or confidential information, and any disclosure of non-public information by the congressional committees undertaking investigations is singularly unhelpful,” Mr. Schiff said in a statement. “It is imperative that all investigations into Russia’s covert political interference campaign operate with appropriate discretion and refrain from publicizing information for short-sighted political gain.”  (read more)

Having some idea of how these DC investigative practices work, it is highly doubtful that Don Jr’s attorney self-initiated that complaint on his client’s behest.  There is a strong possibility the investigative unit, the new leak task-force, and/or the IG office, needs that initiating complaint in order to continue targeting the potential subjects of the leaks.

Given the recent activity surrounding the House Intelligence Committee, there is a better than good likelihood Minority Chairman Adam Schiff is one of the targets; and if the pattern exhibited within the Strzok investigation is followed, Schiff’s communications might also be monitored within the net as it is cast.

FBI Agent Peter Strzok’s former boss was Bill Priestap, FBI Asst. Director in charge of Counterintelligence.  [The same Bill Priestap James Comey stated was the person who decided not to tell congressional oversight of the investigation]  Bill Priestap’s boss was FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. McCabe was also Lisa Page’s boss. Directly above McCabe in the chain-of-command was FBI Director James Comey.

Notice how things are seeming to gain speed within the daily/weekly discovery cycles?

Sometimes a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ is not just a theory…

Department of Justice Assoc. Deputy Attorney General Bruce G Ohr was demoted because he had working relationships with dossier author Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS; and -more importantly or perhaps ‘conveniently’- according to James Rosen, Bruce Ohr did not reveal his October 2016 contacts with MI6 agent Steele or Glenn Simpson (Fusion-GPS) to DOJ leadership. (LINK)

(L-R) Nellie H. Ohr (Fusion GPS) and Bruce G Ohr (DOJ)

However, the ongoing Dossier story gets far more intriguing as it is now discovered that Bruce G Ohr’s wife, Nellie H. Ohr, actually worked for Fusion GPS and likely helped guide/script the Russian Dossier. (Link)

Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H. Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition research firm last year. The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr’s duties – including whether she worked on the dossier – remains unclear but a review of her published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there… Mrs. Nellie Ohr was not only a Fusion GPS contracted employee, but she was also part of the CIA’s Open Source Works, in Washington DC (link)

Both Mr. and Mrs Ohr worked on a collaborative group project surrounding International Organized Crime. (pdf here) Page #30 Screen Shot Below

But wait, it gets even better.

A month after Hillary Clinton hired Fusion GPS (April 2016) to sub-contract retired British MI6 agent Christopher Steele to write the opposition research report “the Trump Russia Dossier”, Fusion GPS employee Nellie Ohr applied for a HAM radio license (May 23rd 2016); a communication tool that would allow Nellie Ohr and Christopher Steele the ability to communicate outside the normal risk of communication intercepts.

Keeping in mind, both Bruce and Nellie Ohr’s subject matter skill-set within the DOJ would provide them with a comprehensive understanding of how to network and communicate with international actors outside the traditional risk of communication intercepts. In short, Mrs. Nelli Ohr would know that using HAM radio frequencies would be a way to avoid the risk of U.S. intelligence intercepts on her communications.

The Clinton Campaign hired Fusion GPS in April 2016.  Fusion GPS then sub-contracted retired British Intel MI6 agent Christopher Steele to write the Russian Dossier. A month later, May 23rd 2016, Fusion GPS employee Nellie Ohr gets HAM radio license.

One way to ensure secure communications with parties external to the U.S. would be the use of HAM radio operations.  You simply establish the frequency to use, and the time of the conversation, and presto. That’s it. “Red-Dog-One to Red-Dog-Two, come in?” etc.

Fortunately, this FCC license application now becomes evidence of an intent to subvert traditional communications intercepts… which, when combined with the other growing trails of evidence showing Fusion GPS schemes around the manufacturing of the Dossier, gets more interesting.

Mrs. Nellie Ohr, a Fusion GPS contracted employee, gets HAM radio license May 2016.

Following along the timeline:

In June/July 2016 an initial DOJ FISA request is denied. This is simultaneous to FBI agent Strzok direct contact with Christopher Steele and the preliminary draft of the Russian dossier.

Then in August 2016, Christopher Steele goes to Sir Andrew Wood to ask him to act as a go-between to reach Senator John McCain. [Trying to give his dossier credibility]

Meanwhile throughout July, August and Sept 2016 Fusion GPS is paying journalists (NYT, ABC, NBC, Washington Post and Mother Jones, etc.) to listen to Christopher Steele and simultaneously shopping the dossier to them.

Soon thereafter, October 2016 – The Obama administration, through FBI Agent Peter Strzok and DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr, submits a new, more narrow application to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. The second FISA application is accepted and a surveillance warrant is granted.

Note the date of this tweet:

Simultaneously in October 2016 – Through the media in the past week we discover – Associate DOJ Deputy AG Bruce G Ohr, Nellie’s husband, is in direct contact with Christopher Steele, and the full dossier, along with secret meetings with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.

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Again, Timeline Recap:

♦April ’16 Clinton hires Fusion GPS
♦April ’16 Fusion GPS hires Christopher Steele
♦May ’16 Nellie Ohr gets HAM radio license.
♦June/July ’16 FBI Agent Strzok meets w/ Steele
♦June ’16 DOJ FISA request denied.
♦July ’16 FBI counterintelligence operation begins
♦Oct. ’16 Peter Strzok and Bruce Ohr meet w/ Christopher Steele
♦Oct. ’16 FISA request granted.

Last week U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras, the judge that appears to have granted Oct ’16 FISA request, is mysteriously recused *AFTER* accepting Mike Flynn plea in the first hearing.

No explanation is given for the recusal or why Judge Contreras waited until after the initial plea hearing.

It would be EXPLOSIVE if it turned out the October 2016 FISA warrant was gained by deception, misleading/manipulated information, or fraud as a result of the Russian Dossier; and exponentially more explosive if the dossier was -in part- organized by the wife of an investigative member of the DOJ who was applying for the FISA warrant; the same warrant that led to the wiretapping and surveillance of the Trump campaign and General Flynn, and was authorized by FISA Court Judge Contreras.

Representative Jim Jordan establishes “The Predicate“:

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Representative Jim Jordan is “convinced the Steele Dossier was the underlying evidence for the October 2016 FISA warrant”. Part II:

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CTH absolutely concurs with Jim Jordan’s outline and subsequent belief. All evidence points in only one direction. No evidence goes in any other direction.

The Steele dossier is a product aided by Nellie Ohr that underpinned the FISA application. The FISA application was a product constructed by FBI agent Strzok and DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr under the authority granted to them by senior FBI and DOJ leadership.

Remember, as Director Chris Wray stated this past week, the FBI Director would be personally responsible for signing off on the October 2016 FISA application. In October 2016 that FBI Director was James Comey.

Twitter Thread for those who share via Twitter is also HERE.

By now everyone is likely aware of the Fake News story run by CNN on Friday surrounding an email received by Donald Trump Jr.  The email was part of the investigative evidence shared with the House Intelligence committee; and later leaked from within that committee to CNN – thereby initiating the false reporting on the content.

The central issue in the CNN story was the date of an email.

It was leaked from within the committee, and later reported by CNN, that the date was “September 4th, 2016”; a date convenient for a collusion narrative between Trump Jr and WikiLeaks.

However, the real date, on the actual email, was “September 14th, 2016”; a day after Wikileaks published the content of their DNC leaks and a date that makes the entire CNN report a ‘nothingburger’.

However, CNN reports that two independent sources originally leaked to them the contents of what they had seen on the email in question.  But CNN never saw the email, until later in the day.

Think about this carefully.

♦Two “independent sources” both looked at an email, and both came away from reading that email with the wrong date?   How is that possible?

It has been CTH contention for several weeks that a counterintelligence sting operation has been going on within the IC community.  False trails of information, seeded by ‘White Hat’ investigators, intended to be captured by ‘Black Hat’ leakers – and delivered to their usurping allies in media.  The stories are fake, the leaks are real.

All investigative documents, relating to the witness, are provided to the congressional committees prior to the interviews with the witnesses; or, if the information is classified, each committee member has an opportunity to review the documents via a controlled SCIF environment when no physical copies are allowed as part of the evidence.

The Don JR./Wikileaks email could very easily be part of a ‘sting’.  The date was intentionally seeded as incorrect.  The resulting story is fake. The leak, however, is real.

Each nugget of disinformation exposes a specific leaker.  Each trail used in the sharing of that disinformation exposes the enabling media.  The White Hat plants the fake news seed, and then watches to see where, when, how, to-whom, and from-whom, it shows up.

In this example, we believe it is most likely House Intelligence Committee Minority Chairman Adam Schiff was the recipient of the disinformation, and has now exposed himself as a leaker to an elite, previously undisclosed, investigative unit specifically assembling evidence of corruption and leaking at the highest levels of government.

The scale and strength of the CNN push-back, and specifically the tone in their refusal to even consider discussing source of the false information, further supports our supposition.

Keep in mind, Representative Adam Schiff is -as an outcome of his minority ranking on the House Intel Committee- a member of the elite congressional oversight “Gang of Eight”.

This is a VERY BIG deal.  The Gang of Eight holds oversight on every covert intelligence operation going on around the world.  The Go8 oversee the NSA, CIA, FBI, DNI, and every single intelligence unit and operation.  The Go8 are the only group with oversight on the CIA action from Presidential Finding Memos authorizing covert operations.

The back-story to CTH theory on this endeavor includes an almost complete, years-long, Dept of Justice Office Inspector General investigation that no-one was paying attention to until recently.  And don’t forget the ongoing FBI investigation into the Awan Brothers, and quantifying the potential intelligence compromise therein, plays into this.

That said, it would not be the IG carrying out the counterintelligence operation to identify leakers.  In actuality, no official IC agency would be empowered to place fake news in front of congress.  Setting traps for congress is generally bad form, and for matters of trust – bad politics.  That reality, amid those who follow DC politics, is the central point to dismiss such the “Black Hat Hunting” theory.

However, few people were paying attention four months ago when Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates told us they were going to do exactly that:

04:30 …”The FBI has created a new counterintelligence unit to manage these [leak] cases”…

08:17 …”these National Security breaches do not just originate from within the Intelligence Community. They come from a wide range of sources within the government, including the Congress.”…

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Two days later, Sunday August 6th, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reiterated he was going to follow through on the investigative demand of AG Sessions and DNI Coates and again referenced a “new counterintelligence division within the FBI”.

00:50 …“we’re responding appropriately. We’re going to devote more resources, re-evaluate our procedures and make sure we investigate every one of those leaks in an appropriate way.”…

1:07 “We have seen a surge in referrals (of leaks). We’ve seen an increase in the number of leaks. And we’re going to respond appropriately and try to establish an effective deterrent. Criminal prosecution isn’t the only way to prevent leaks but it’s an important part of the solution.”…

1:43 “That significant increase has necessitated an increase in resources. And so we have re-prioritized our cases within the National Security Division, we’re providing appropriate supervision at a high level, we’ve created a new unit within the FBI to focus on those leaks, and we’re going to devote whatever resources are necessary to get them under control.”…

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If you consider the years-long IG investigation is coming to a conclusion.  And there have been several high-profile ‘mistakes’ (from the media perspective) based on leaks recently.

The leaks were real, the underlying information was false:

Additionally, overlay THIS:

Some, are beginning to catch on… Keep Watching.

After spending a reasonable amount of time looking at the recent CNN Fake News story surrounding Donald Trump Jr; and accepting the leak that spurred that fake news story stemmed from inside the House Intelligence Committee; and after applying a reasonable amount of common sense to how it occurred; CTH believes Adam Schiff was the most likely source of the leak to CNN’s Congressional Correspondent, Manu Raju, that led to the fraudulent story.  Today’s discussion with Jake Tapper confirms that assertion:

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CNN’s ‘Vast Russian Conspiracy‘ sellers and their cast of leakers below.

TWITTER THREAD HERE

The Donald Trump Jr. email was leaked from within the committee, and later reported by CNN, that the date was “September 4th, 2016”; a date convenient for a collusion narrative between Trump Jr and WikiLeaks.

However, the real date, on the actual email, was “September 14th, 2016”; a day after Wikileaks published the content of their DNC leaks and a date that makes the entire CNN report a ‘nothingburger’.

However, CNN reports that two independent sources originally leaked to them the contents of what they had seen on the email in question.  But CNN never saw the email, until later in the day.

Think about this carefully.

♦Two “independent sources” both looked at an email, and both came away from reading that email with the wrong date?   How is that possible?

♦Such a specific tidbit of false information (a single date, on a single piece of paper), amid a very small group of people (congressional intel committee).

♦The pool of people, “sources”, able to *verify* and/or *authenticate* the very specific detail (a date on a page), amid a heavily controlled small-group environment, would itself be very small.

♦CNN reports an engineered narrative based on a wrong date. ABC and MSNBC (NBC) claim they *independently confirmed*, with their sources, that same wrong date.

Again, think carefully about it.

Click To Enlarge

It would be EXPLOSIVE if it turned out the October 2016 FISA warrant was gained by use of the Christopher Steele dossier. That’s a critical and key element to the sunlight upon the entire enterprise.

If the counterintelligence FISA warrant was obtained through deception, misleading/manipulated information, or fraud; and that warrant is what led to the wiretapping and surveillance of candidate Donald Trump and General Flynn; and that warrant was authorized by FISA Court Judge Contreras –who was the judge in Flynn’s case, and is now recused– the entire tenuous FBI and DOJ operation begins to collapse.

The back-story to the FISA warrant is the cornerstone. The back-story contains both the FBI and the DOJ scheme. Expose it, remove it, and the entire ‘muh Russia’ conspiracy fraud collapses under the weight of sunlight.

Previously Shared In-Depth Details HERE

(click to enlarge)

Mrs. Beverly Young Nelson has finally admitted that she personally wrote a portion of the infamous high school yearbook she and her attorney Gloria Allred used as proof of her accusations against U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore. Nelson’s tenuous credibility is now entirely gone.

However, in a similar blow to credibility, ABC News, the network of Brian Ross, downplayed the bombshell by presenting the admission of forgery as adding ‘notes’ to the inscription.  The ABC narrative engineer actually coaches Mrs. Nelson, putting words in her mouth, and attempting to downplay the enormous significance of her deceit.

Roy Moore presser below:

Mrs. Beverly Nelson now admits she added the signature and other material in an effort to deceive the audience.

Roy Moore supporters hold a press conference:

Again with the timing…  Delicious.

After House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes almost derailed the Muh Russian Collusion Conspiracy in March/April 2017, the UniParty pushed him into an ethics blender claiming he disclosed classified information.

As an outcome of his Chairmanship role Representative Nunes is also a member of the elite intelligence oversight team known as the Gang of Eight.  Today, the House Ethics Committee cleared Nunes of any wrongdoing, and stated the information he discussed was not classified.

Chariman Nunes is now free to go full wolverine on the usurping intel agents.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee on Thursday cleared the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee of charges that he had disclosed classified information, potentially clearing the way for him to resume leadership of the panel’s Russia investigation.

Republican Representative Devin Nunes, who had consistently denied wrongdoing, thanked the committee for its finding, but said the probe had taken too long and the accusations against him were politically motivated.

[…]  Nunes criticized the ethics panel for taking “an unbelievable eight months” to dismiss the matter, and called on the panel to publicly release all transcripts related to his case. (read more)

President Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence met earlier today with congressional leadership: House Speaker Paul Ryan, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

[Video and Transcript of remarks below]  When Nancy Pelosi began talking the look on VP Pence’s face is, well, priceless. Additionally, anticipating Pelosi and Schumer are going to hold up the budget by threatening military spending, the ever-strategic Trump invited General Mattis into the discussion so the Democrat leadership could tell him to his face why they would be willing to put American military lives at risk.  Epic.

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[ Transcript] 3:08 P.M. EST – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. We’re all here as a very friendly, well-unified group. It’s a well-knit-together group of people. And we hope that we’re going to make some great progress for our country. I think that will happen, and we appreciate it very much.

And, Chuck, Nancy, would you say anything — like to say anything? Chuck?

LEADER SCHUMER: Well, we hope we can come to an agreement. Funding the government is extremely important, helping our soldiers is very important, and helping average citizens is very important.

So we’re here in the spirit of: let’s get it done.

LEADER PELOSI: Thank you, Mr. President, for this opportunity. We are here to make progress. We have some important issues that we share with you. You have described the opioid crisis in our country, and we want to address that; help our veterans; S-CHIP, children’s health insurance; and, again, all things that have bipartisan support in the Congress.

THE PRESIDENT: That’s very true. Thank you, Nancy, very much. Mitch.

LEADER MCCONNELL: Mr. President, we’re here to reach a bipartisan agreement to finish out the year. And I’m glad that you invited us. I’m happy to be here.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Paul.

SPEAKER RYAN: I’m glad we’re here to resume conversations.

THE PRESIDENT: Mike, you have anything?

LEADER SCHUMER: Each person has said less. (Laughter.)

SPEAKER RYAN: One sentence.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I’m grateful for the leaders of both political parties. This is a time of great opportunity in this country. We’re seeing growth at home, but we have many challenges abroad and many challenges facing the American people.

And I’m more confident than ever, Mr. President, with your leadership and with the good faith of all the people in this room, that before this Christmas we’ll produce real results for the American people that will make America stronger and more prosperous.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much. I thought that with what’s going on in the world, I would bring our great military genius/person along and maybe General Mattis could say a couple of words.

SECRETARY MATTIS: It’s an honor to be here with the leaders from the Hill. Sort of the number-one priority for our country is to make certain we protect this Constitution and our way of life. And we’ve got great bipartisan support. I’m confident we’ll walk out of this with it.

THE PRESIDENT: I am too. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

END 3:11 P.M. EST

Don’t be so caught up watching the granules moving at your feet that you fail to step back and recognize the entire landscape is shifting.  It Has Begun… 

Important remarks today. After a year of careful navigation Captain Trump has now hoisted the Spinnaker and is using massive economic winds to advance ALL ‘America-First’ policy objectives.

[…] “to get it going the way I really want, where we have GDP getting up to 4, 5, and even 6 percent — because I think that’s possible. If you look back in your notes, you’ll say when I said 4 percent, people said that would be years. Well, it’s turned out that I’m right because without the hurricanes this last quarter, we would have hit 4 percent. At 3.3 percent, which was adjusted previously — this is far beyond what anybody thought it would be at. So we’re at 3.3 percent GDP. I see no reason why we don’t go to 4, 5, and even 6 percent. And I don’t want to go beyond that because then it will be criticized if we don’t hit it.

But every time we go up one point, just so you understand, one point means $2.5 trillion, means 10 million jobs. So one point in GDP is an incredible statement. $2.5 trillion for each point, 10 million jobs for each point. And I think we’re going to be going up a lot of points.”

[Transcript] THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Thank you very much for being here. America is prospering again at home and being respected once again all over the world. However, we face many serious threats. Lots of things are happening in our country — lots of very positive things — but we have some things that we have to talk about.

We’re going to be discussing today the situation in North Korea. It will be handled, and it will be handled properly. Many of our brave troops will be spending Christmas overseas. We’re thinking about them. We’re funding them like they haven’t been funded in a long time — best equipment you can get. Our military is getting stronger, and I expect that very soon, I’ll be able to say stronger than ever before. It was very depleted when I got here. It’s not going to be depleted any longer.

So I just want to thank everybody. I want to congratulate Kirstjen Nielsen, who was just confirmed yesterday. Been a long wait and we’re waiting for a lot of others. All of you are waiting for people, or most of you are waiting for people to come in and help. I know from the standpoint of trade, we’re waiting for a lot of our trade representatives to be approved. They just don’t want to do it. The Democrats just don’t want to give us those people. They delay them as long as possible. They take every single minute they can take. It’s not right. But I would like to congratulate our new Secretary of Homeland Security. Kirstjen, good luck.

SECRETARY NIELSEN: Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m especially thrilled to report that the Senate passed massive tax cuts and reform. You know about that very well. You’ve covered it — for the most part — accurately, which is surprising for you folks, but that’s okay. (Laughter.) We’re on the verge of a historic victory that cuts taxes for the middle class, for businesses; brings back, probably, an excess of $4 trillion. As you know, we’ve been saying $2.5 trillion for years. Well, that number has greatly expanded. And we’ll be bringing back an excess of $4 trillion. It will be put to work in our country. There will be a lot of jobs being brought back with that money. Right now that money is being spent overseas. It’s not going to be spent overseas anymore.

The House and Senate are now negotiating the final bill, and I cannot wait to sign these giant tax cuts and reforms. I mentioned tax cuts, but it’s also reforms. But I’m looking forward to signing it. It will be the largest tax cuts, by far, in the history of our country.

We’ll be bringing the business tax from 35 all the way down to 20. At 35, it’s the highest in the industrialized world. At 20, we’re on the very low side, so we’ll be very competitive. You look at China, it’s 15 percent. Other countries are 18 percent. Some are 23, 24 percent. The average is actually, of the primary competitors, is actually 23 percent. So we’ll be pretty much below the average, and we’ll be able to compete.

And despite all of that, and despite — before we even get this massive injection — we have a stock market that has hit record highs 81 times since our election victory — 81 times. It’s at a new high right now.

Unemployment is at a 17-year low. Very shortly it’s going to be at a 19-year low. We think the numbers are going to continue to go down. And we’re also getting into the pool of the 100 million people that are not working. That pool is now coming back. As you know, that’s not considered in the low employment numbers, which means we have a lot of people that want to get to work, and that will be working.

Consumer confidence is at a 17-year high. We’ve created nearly 2 million jobs. Think of that — 2 million jobs since Election Day. That’s based on consumer confidence. That’s based on enthusiasm. Every enthusiasm poll, especially for business enthusiasm and job enthusiasm, is at an all-time high.

That’s why companies are coming back into our country. They’re opening up new plants. Most of you have written about — Toyota came back in. We have many car companies coming back in. They’re going to Michigan, they’re going to Ohio, they’re going to the states where they want to be. They can go anywhere they want — South Carolina, North Carolina. But they’re going all over our country. They’re coming back in. We had many years where we had no new plants; we only had closures. Now we have openings, and that means a lot of jobs.

But to get it going the way I really want, where we have GDP getting up to 4, 5, and even 6 percent — because I think that’s possible. If you look back in your notes, you’ll say when I said 4 percent, people said that would be years. Well, it’s turned out that I’m right because without the hurricanes this last quarter, we would have hit 4 percent. At 3.3 percent, which was adjusted previously — this is far beyond what anybody thought it would be at. So we’re at 3.3 percent GDP. I see no reason why we don’t go to 4, 5, and even 6 percent. And I don’t want to go beyond that because then it will be criticized if we don’t hit it.

But every time we go up one point, just so you understand, one point means $2.5 trillion, means 10 million jobs. So one point in GDP is an incredible statement. $2.5 trillion for each point, 10 million jobs for each point. And I think we’re going to be going up a lot of points.

So in order to really keep it going the way I want and the way we all want around this table, we have to get — pass our taxes. I call it “the mixer”. It’s in conference right now, but I call it “the mixer”. I think when it comes out, it’s going to be a beautiful mix.

There are things that I like better in the Senate bill; there are things that I like better in the House bill. I think when they come out, we’ll have some new additions and we’ll have the best of each. I think we’re going to have a fantastic tax bill.

There are very, very few people that aren’t benefiting by it. But there’s that tiny little sliver and we’re going to try to take care of even that very small group of people that just through circumstances maybe don’t get the full benefit of what we’re doing. But the middle class gets a tremendous benefit. And business, which is jobs, gets a tremendous benefit.

We’ll be giving the Cabinet, today, an update on national security and strategy. We’ll also receive briefings on the latest developments in the tax cut negotiations. And Administrator McMahon, who’s done a fantastic job at Small Business Administration — where’s Linda? Linda did a really fantastic job — is helping small businesses in record numbers. And they’ve needed help, really, because of the hurricanes. The hurricanes were devastating.

As I said, GDP — if we didn’t have the hurricanes we would have hit just about 4 [percent] this last — but we had — as you probably know, and probably everybody remembers, we had five really bad ones. And we have a lot of businesses that have been severely hurt and Linda McMahon has done an incredible job in helping those businesses out through the Small Business. So thank you very much, Linda.

So we’re in a great period in this country because jobs are coming back, unemployment is low, business has never been stronger. But we have a military that we have to build. I want to thank General Mattis for doing such a great job with respect to ISIS. He’s knocked the hell out of them. Of course I’ve made it possible with what I’ve let you do, I think. (Laughter.) Wouldn’t you say? But he has done a fantastic job.

He and the military have done a fantastic job with ISIS. They’re essentially knocked out of Syria, knocked out of Iraq. That’s the good news. The bad news — they go all over the place. And I’ll tell you where we don’t want them: We don’t want them here. We don’t want them in our country. Tell them to stay wherever the hell they are. We don’t want them coming back into our country. They do go back into some countries. We don’t want them going into our country. So we’re watching that closely.

So I’d like to wish everyone a really great season. I’d like to wish everyone a merry Christmas, happy New Year.

And I will tell you that we have a big announcement coming up at one o’clock. Perhaps a couple of you will be there; maybe not. But it’s a big announcement. It’s an announcement concerning Israel and the Palestinians and the Middle East. And I think it’s long overdue. Many Presidents have said they want to do something, and they didn’t do it. Whether it’s through courage or they changed their mind, I can’t tell you. But a lot of people have said we have to do something, and they didn’t do it. So we’ll be talking about that something at one o’clock, and I look forward to seeing you then.

Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Q Mr. President, what will the decision do? How will it help the peace process, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: We’ll talk about it in a little while.

Q Are we going to have a shutdown, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: It could happen. The Democrats are really looking at something that is very dangerous for our country. They are looking at shutting down. They want to have illegal immigrants; in many cases, people that we don’t want in our country. They want to have illegal immigrants pouring into our country, bringing with them crime, tremendous amounts of crime. We don’t want to have that. We want to have a great, beautiful crime-free country. And we want people coming into our country, but we want them to come on our basis. And that’s why we’re being so careful with our process and our screening.

And, as you know, we had a tremendous victory the other day in the Supreme Court with the ban. It got quite a bit of attention. Probably not as much of attention as it deserved. But we had tremendous — that was a tremendous victory for this country. Not a victory for me; it was a victory for our country.

So the Democrats maybe will want to shut down the country because they want people flowing into our country. And I want people coming into our country, but I want to vet those people, and I want to vet them very carefully. Because we dont want to have radical Islamic terrorism in this country, and we dont want to have crime in this country.

If you look at what just happened in San Francisco, that was a disgrace. And, as you know, the federal government just got involved and did a great thing, because they’re going to take that at least to the next step. They did a great thing by getting involved.

So thank you very much. I’ll see you all at one o’clock.

END 11:50 A.M. EST