VIDEO “Case Killing …picture that launched a thousand pearl clutching articles.” – Mueller’s Corrupt Prosecutor Believes President Trump Must Prove His Innocence” -FL Trial Indefinitely Postponed – House Investigation Into Smith – On Notice

‘Potentially case-blowing mistake’: Jack Smith deception exposed

‘Snapped a picture for political posterity’ against Trump

By Bob Unruh May 7, 2024

President Donald J. Trump arrives on stage at the Protecting America's Seniors event Friday, Oct. 16, 2020, at the Caloosa Sound Convention Center & Amphitheater in Fort Myers, Florida. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead)

A true courtroom stunner came just days ago when Jack Smith, prosecuting President Trump for having government documents from his presidency in his home, admitted his team lied to the public and the court in the case.

Regarding the evidence.

Trump turned blunt, calling for Smith to be arrested over his admission, in a court filing, that he lied to the court about the documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

“ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!” Trump said in a Truth Social post this weekend.


https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/112380543524874769/embed

The issue is that in a court filing, prosecutors admitted thee lied to the court, confessing that the FBI messed with the boxes containing those materials, and now not even Smith can be sure of the order or placement of the documents, which could be a critical factor in the case.

Now a Declassified report from famed investigative journalist Julie Kelly notes that the situation is “potentially case-killing.”

FBI photo of documents seized in the raid of former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

FBI photo of documents seized in the raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

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She explained, “New court filings in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s espionage and obstruction case against Trump and two co-defendants conclusively demonstrate that the government used the cover sheets to deceive the public as well as the court. The photo was a stunt, and one that adds more fuel to this dumpster-fire case.”

She noted Jay Bratt, who is assigned to Smith’s team, earlier claimed: “[Thirteen] boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings…were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status.”

The FBI staged a photograph of documents, and released it to the public to create public interest in the case.

But Kelly continued, “The DOJ’s clever wordsmithing, however, did not accurately describe the origin of the cover sheets. In what must be considered not only an act of doctoring evidence but willfully misleading the American people into believing the former president is a criminal and threat to national security, agents involved in the raid attached the cover sheets to at least seven files to stage the photo.”

She explained, “Classified cover sheets were not ‘recovered’ in the container, contrary to Bratt’s declaration to the court. In fact, after being busted recently by defense attorneys for mishandling evidence in the case, Bratt had to fess up about how the cover sheets actually ended up on the documents.”

She said his latest explanation is: “[If] the investigative team found a document with classification markings, it removed the document, segregated it, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet. The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose.”

Kelly noted that the FBI’s use of those “cover sheets” just before they were used as placeholders.

“Agents apparently used them as props. FBI agents took it upon themselves to paperclip the sheets to documents—something evident given the uniform nature of how each cover sheet is clipped to each file in the photo—laid them on the floor, and snapped a picture for political posterity,” she noted.

The immediate result was that Judge Aileen M. Cannon has further delayed the next steps in the case, meaning it might not even come to trial until after the November election, which polls show Trump is likely to win.

Kelly called the FBI’s staged photograph the “the picture that launched a thousand pearl-clutching articles.”

She suggested that the behavior of the investigators raises “many troubling questions … about the FBI’s handling of the alleged incriminating documents.”

“For example, who made the on-site determination as to the classification level appropriate for each document? Did agents have security clearance and expertise related to classification? Did the agents know whether the document had been declassified by Trump while still in office?”

And she noted that defense lawyers have pointed out Smith’s office handed out inaccurate information about the evidence.

And Bratt conceded that was correct, confessing the FBI has not been able to determine which document “with classification markings” goes with which placeholder.

“This is a potentially case-blowing mistake, particularly if the document in question is one of the 34 records that represents the basis of espionage charges against Trump,” Kelly charged.

Bratt also had confirmed to the judge that the boxes of documents are “in their original, intact form as seized,” citing only that classified docs were replaced with placeholders.

Andrew Weissmann, Mueller’s Corrupt Prosecutor Believes President Trump Must Prove His Innocence in Bogus Bragg Case

By Jim Hoft May. 7, 2024

Guest post by Joe Hoft at JoeHoft.com – republished with permission

Andrew Weissmann led the Mueller sham investigation against President Trump. Now he’s a top Deep State player behind DA Bragg’s bogus Manhattan case against President Trump.

Andrew Weissmann is the face of DOJ corruption. He has been overturned by the Supreme Court and he’s been behind most all the efforts to attack President Trump through lawfare.

DA Bragg’s case against President Trump is a mess. There is no crime and yet the DA charged President Trump for 34 felonies that were all made up. The crimes aren’t even clear. It’s a total disaster which is why it is likely a plot by leftist mastermind Andrew Weissmann.

Survival Beef Company CEO: “No Lab-Grown Meat, No mRNA Jabs, and No ‘Beef Crumbles’ Ever”

In a tweet this pst weekend, Weissmann shares that he believes that a defendant in the US must prove their innocence. This is third world communist stuff.

He was quickly outed as a moron for his ignorance of the law.

Shipwreckedcrew tweeted: You are a moron. Trump doesn’t have to prove anything tor the jury to acquit. You repeatedly mis-state fundamental premises of the criminal justice system.

Attorney Jeff Clark points out that “enough to acquit” is not a legal principal in the US.

Can we make sure “enough to acquit” is a phrase forever associated with Andrew Weissmann? It’s right from the lips of a government statist whose baseline is not liberty and thus the presumption of innocence but instead subjection to raw government power and a presumption that prosecutors are always right. He’s a walking-talking evil inversion.

See below for a list of articles about Weissmann posted at The Gateway Pundit:

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMAN PART I: The Many Corrupt Acts of Former DOJ Attorney and Mueller “Pitbull” Andrew Weissmann

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART II: 80,000 Innocent Professionals Lost Their Jobs Due to a Weissmann Indictment that Was Ultimately Overturned by Supreme Court

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART III: For 30 Years a Condemned Man Sits in Prison Because of Weissman’s Actions in the Most Corrupt Prosecution in DOJ History

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART IV: “I Consider Andrew Weissmann to be the Most Ethically Bankrupt Prosecutor I Have Ever Encountered” – Attorney David Schoen (VIDEO)

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART V: Weissmann Concealed the FBI’s Source Used in Indictments in the Early 1990’s Was Mafia Hitman Responsible for 50 Murders

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART VI: Exclusive Interview with Attorney Sidney Powell – “I’m Very Concerned About the State of the Country Right Now” – (VIDEO)

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART VII: Weissmann Used a Corrupt FBI Agent as a Witness Who Later Was Charged with Several Murders Related to Case

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART VIII: Weissmann and the Mueller Gang “Accidentally” Wiped 31 Phones Clean After DOJ IG Requested Phones

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART IX: Weissmann Covered Up Russian, Clinton and Obama Actions Related to the Sale of Uranium One to Russia

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART X: “There Is a Special Place in Hell for Andrew Weissmann” – Exclusive Interview with Roger Stone

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART XI: To Tie the Trump-Russia Collusion Lie to Russia, Weissmann Indicted 13 Russians, Most Were Entirely Made Up

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART XII: Weissmann Placed Paul Manafort in Solitary Confinement for 11 Months in Effort to Get Him to Lie About President Trump

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART XIII: Weissmann and the Mueller Gang Made Up Charges Against 11 Mystery Russians in Effort to Claim Russia Hacked the DNC – It Was All a Lie

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART XIV: “A Desecration of a Prosecutor… Has Disgraced Every Single Ethical Tenet that Prosecutors Hold Dear” – Rudy Giuliani on Weissmann

EXCLUSIVE – ANDREW WEISSMANN PART XV: Judge Sullivan’s “Appointed Judge” in Flynn Case Was an Old Weissmann Colleague at DOJ

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan Launches Investigation into Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Admission of FBI Evidence Tampering in Trump Mar-a-Lago Case

By Jim Hᴏft May. 7, 2024 

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has launched an investigation into Special Counsel Jack Smith following recent admission that some of the evidence in President Trump’s ‘classified’ documents case was altered or manipulated after being seized by the FBI during its raid on Mar-a-Lago.

The Gateway Pundit reported that Jack Smith’s admission came in response to Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta’s, legal team’s concerns about discrepancies in the evidence’s organization.

Walt Nauta, a former White House valet and Navy veteran who later served as a personal staffer at Mar-a-Lago and was indicted alongside Trump last year, claimed through his attorney that the order of items in the seized boxes did not match their scans provided during discovery.

In a late Friday filing, Smith conceded that the FBI had indeed moved documents around within the boxes that contained ‘classified’ information. This directly contradicts earlier Department of Justice (DOJ) assurances to the court that the contents’ arrangement had been preserved intact.

According to a footnote in the motion reviewed by The Gateway Pundit, the FBI messed with the boxes containing the ‘classified’ documents they seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Footnote 3The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court. See, e.g., 4/12/24 Hearing Tr. at 65 (Government responding to the Court’s question of whether the boxes were “in their original, intact form as seized” by stating “[t]hey are, with one exception; and that is that the classified documents have been removed and placeholders have been put in the documents.”

In August 2022, the DOJ lied to the Court by asserting that the red, blue, and yellow sheets displayed in the widely circulated photo of the ‘classified’ documents indicated their classification status. It turns out they were “slip sheets” the FBI used to replace the so-called classified documents.

The DOJ lied, claiming, “Evidence, thirteen boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings-that is, more than twice the amount produced on June 3, 2022, in response to the grand jury subpoena were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the “45 office”). The classification levels ranged from CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET information, and certain documents included additional sensitive compartments that signify very limited distribution.”

The FBI admitted they messed with Trump’s documents! The FBI used cover sheets as placeholders for the classified documents.

“After the boxes were brought to WFO, the FBI created an index to correlate the documents with classification markings to codes (e.g., document “bb”) and labeled the classified cover sheets in the boxes with the codes for the seized documents. The FBI also generally replaced the handwritten sheets with classified cover sheets annotated with the index code, but regardless, any handwritten sheets that currently remain in the boxes do not represent additional classified documents—they were just not removed when the classified cover sheets with the index code were added. In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.”

Jack Smith also claimed the FBI found so many classified documents that they ran out of ‘slip sheets.’

“The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose, until the FBI ran out because there were so many classified documents, at which point the team began using blank sheets with handwritten notes indicating the classification level of the document(s) seized,” Jack Smith laughably claimed.

In response to these revelations, President Trump took to Truth Social, calling for the arrest of Jack Smith, labeling the prosecution a “sham.”

“ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!” Trump said in a Truth Social post this weekend.

Chairman Jim Jordan expressed grave concern about the justice system’s impartiality and adherence to professional standards within the DOJ.

In a letter addressed to Jeffrey Ragsdale, Counsel of the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), Jordan stated, “This acknowledgment presents grave concerns about the Department’s commitment to impartial justice, whether the Special Counsel’s Office misled a federal court, and whether the Special Counsel’s Office strenuously upheld the highest professional standards of the Department of Justice.”

Jordan demanded that the OPR investigate Jack Smith, Jay Bratt (a senior member of Smith’s office), and other attorneys involved, citing serious ethical lapses in the prosecution.

The House Judiciary Committee has demanded to produce the following documents and information:

Trending: Biden’s Handler Seems to Remember Something Important Halfway to Marine One, Cameras Catch the Subtle Change

  • All documents and communications referring or relating to any allegation of ethical impropriety or any OPR investigation concerning the conduct of Jack Smith, Jay Bratt, or any other attorney assigned to work with the Office of Special Counsel Jack Smith;
  • All documents and communications referring or relating to the manipulation of documents seized from President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago; and
  • All documents and communications referring or relating to Jay Bratt interactions with Walt Nauta’s defense counsel, including allegations that Bratt attempted to coerce Mr.
Nauta’s cooperation with the government by leveraging the prosect of a judgeship for his counsel.

The deadline set for the DOJ to respond to the Committee’s demands for information and a briefing is 5:00 p.m. on May 20, 2024.

BREAKING: Judge Cannon Indefinitely Postpones Jack Smith’s Classified Documents Trial After Special Counsel Admits to Evidence Tampering

By Cristina Laila May. 7, 2024

Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday afternoon indefinitely postponed Jack Smith’s classified documents trial against Trump.

As previously reported, Judge Cannon on Monday night postponed a key deadline in the classified documents case after Special Counsel Jack Smith admitted to tampering with evidence.

Cannon on Monday evening temporarily stayed a May 9 deadline for President Trump and his co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira related to CIPA.

On Tuesday afternoon, Judge Cannon set a second set of pre-trial deadlines to manage pending discovery and disclosure matters.

The Judge vacated the May 20, 2024 trial date. It may be several months until Judge Cannon sets a new trial date.

“The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury. The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024, trial date (and associated calendar call), to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice,” Cannon wrote in an order reviewed by The Gateway Pundit.

In a motion filed late Friday, Jack Smith admitted the FBI messed with the boxes containing “classified” documents they seized from Trump and can’t be sure the order or the placement of the documents.

Jack Smith in his Friday night response admitted the FBI moved the classified documents around.

According to a footnote in the motion reviewed by The Gateway Pundit, the FBI messed with the boxes containing the ‘classified’ documents they seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

The DOJ previously assured the Court that the placement of classified documents as originally found had been maintained – THEY LIED!

Footnote 3The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court. See, e.g., 4/12/24 Hearing Tr. at 65 (Government responding to the Court’s question of whether the boxes were “in their original, intact form as seized” by stating “[t]hey are, with one exception; and that is that the classified documents have been removed and placeholders have been put in the documents”

The DOJ in August 2022 lied to the Court when they claimed the red, blue and yellow sheets shown in the viral photo of the classified documents indicated their classification status.

The FBI admitted they messed with Trump’s documents! The FBI used cover sheets as placeholders for the classified documents.

“After the boxes were brought to WFO, the FBI created an index to correlate the documents with classification markings to codes (e.g., document “bb”) and labeled the classified cover sheets in the boxes with the codes for the seized documents. The FBI also generally replaced the handwritten sheets with classified cover sheets annotated with the index code, but regardless, any handwritten sheets that currently remain in the boxes do not represent additional classified documents—they were just not removed when the classified cover sheets with the index code were added. In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.”

Judge in Trump Classified Documents Case Suspends Trial Indefinitely

May 7, 2024 | Sundance |

Judge Aileen Cannon has issued an order [SEE HERE] canceling the original trial date and suspending the trial proceedings pending resolution of multiple pre-trial issues.  Lawfare is big mad.

[Source]

(Via Politico) – […] The date had been widely expected to move amid a tangle of pretrial conflicts between special counsel Jack Smith and Trump’s attorneys. Smith had urged Judge Aileen Cannon to reschedule the trial to begin on July 8, but an order from the judge on Tuesday afternoon suggested that she is unlikely to even decide on a new trial date before late July.

[…] “[F]inalization of a trial date at this juncture — before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and [classified evidence] issues … would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions,” Cannon wrote in the five-page order.

That reshuffling further clouds the picture for Smith, who is also awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity that could determine whether his other case against Trump — charges in Washington D.C. for attempting to subvert the 2020 election — can move forward this year. (read more

Trump Drops Ad Putting University Presidents ‘On Notice,’ Pledges to Deal with Pro-Palestinian Protests


Related

VIDEO Elise Stefanik Takes Action Against Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Election Interference – Fani Willis Bad News From GA Legislature – Jan 6th Suit Delayed – Lawfare Backstopped by Judge Aileen Cannon

Elise Stefanik Takes Action Against Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Election Interference – ‘Fight The Democrats Unjust Lawfare And Expose This Corruption’

On Tuesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filed an official ethics complaint with the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility against special counsel Jack Smith, claiming that Smith is interfering in the 2024 presidential election with the indictments he brought against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump last year.

In her complaint to Office of Professional Responsibility counsel Jeffrey Ragsdale, Rep. Stefanik, who is rumored to be a potential vice presidential pick for Trump, pointed out a serious violation. She stated that Smith’s attempt to expedite his case to trial before the election is a clear breach of the Department of Justice’s long-standing policy. This policy strictly prohibits timing investigations to aid a certain political candidate. “Biden special counsel Jack Smith is attempting to expedite the trial in order to influence the general election in November,” she wrote. 

Rep. Stefanik further detailed the alleged misconduct of Smith and his team. She asserted that they have repeatedly violated the court-ordered stay by serving 4,000 pages of discovery to Trump’s legal team and making a pretrial motion in district court. This, she argued, is a clear indication of Smith’s conduct bringing disrepute to the Department of Justice and the entire federal government. “The DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility should impose the discipline that such conduct warrants,” the lawmaker added.

The New York representative demanded that Ragsdale open an investigation into Smith immediately for his actions that attempted to “politicize his criminal prosecution” and interfere in the general election against Trump. During a press conference after Stefanik issued the complaint, she reconfirmed her resolve to fight back against the various prosecutors going after the former president.

“Democrats’ corrupt and desperate witch hunts against President Trump must come to an end. This is lawfare and blatant election interference, and the American people know it. That is why today I filed an official complaint with the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility on Joe Biden’s special counsel, Jack Smith, for his clear and illegal efforts of election interference,” she said. “We will fight the Democrats unjust lawfare and expose this corruption whether it is in New York, Atlanta, or right here in Washington, DC.”

President Trump is currently facing four criminal indictments against him. The first, which is currently underway in New York City, was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) in which the DA’s office charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records by writing down in business ledgers that hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels were legal payments to Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. The other case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) alleges that Trump and 18 other co-defendants attempted to illegally overturn the 2020 election. Special counsel Jack Smith brought the last two indictments, with one being focused on the 2020 election and the other focused on classified documents Trump allegedly took with him post-presidency to Mar-a-Lago.

https://dcenquirer.com/elise-stefanik-takes-action-against-special-counsel-jack-smiths-election-interference-fight-the-democrats-unjust-lawfare-and-expose-this-corruption

NEW: Fani Willis Gets Bad News From Georgia Legislature

 Jon Dougherty April 30, 2024

Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, is currently dealing with yet another legal issue—this time, a lawsuit brought by a state legislator in Georgia.

In her suit, Rep. Mesha Mainor, a Republican elected to the Georgia House in 2020, “alleges that Willis, Commissioner Marvin Arrington, the Fulton County Ethics Board, and the county itself were derelict in its duties to properly litigate a criminal case in which Mainor was repeatedly stalked by a former friend and political associate,” Newsweek reported.

A spokesperson for the state lawmaker said she would provide additional details regarding the lawsuit during a press conference scheduled for Tuesday.

Mainor, who secured a substantial victory in the 2020 election from the constituents of House District 56 in the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta, grabbed headlines last July by switching parties and formally affiliating herself with the Republican Party. At the time, she said she was no longer morally comfortable complying with Democrats’ “left-wing radicalism, lawlessness, and putting the interests of illegal aliens over the interests of Americans.”

Mainor’s lawsuit, which was filed on April 2 in Fulton County Superior Court, alleges that she enlisted Corwin Monson as a campaign volunteer in January 2019. The lawsuit describes them as associates for several years with numerous mutual friends.

He “assured” Mainor he could help her get elected, though one month later, she was “forced to terminate” him after she witnessed “his unruly, belligerent behavior,” the suit said, according to Newsweek.

It reportedly resulted in multiple instances of stalking in various forms, including Monson showing up uninvited to campaign or church events, lingering outside her residence, making calls from different numbers and leaving voicemails, and even proposing to her in front of her minor children at her home, the suit says.

It also claimed that Monson was “in love” with Mainor, though the two of them had never had a romantic relationship.

A judge granted Mainor’s request for a Temporary Protective Order (TPO) against Monson in August 2019. He was subsequently arrested in both September 2019 and September 2020 for violating the TPO.

Following the second incident, Fulton County indicted Monson for aggravated stalking. The second aggravated assault charge in January 2021 could lead to up to 20 years of imprisonment for Monson.

However, the lawsuit alleges that Arrington, who defended Monson in a legal capacity, “used his influence to circumvent the office policies of the District Attorney’s office,” which allegedly included copying the DA on emails, negotiating plea bargains directly, and demanding meetings.

Newsweek added:

Arrington is also alleged to have told Willis “that b**** is crazy”, in reference to Mainor—claimed within the suit to have peddled his influence to in turn influence Willis.

After Willis was sworn in January 2021, she became responsible for the Monson case.

She reportedly dismissed one of his aggravated stalking cases. On the other charge, she offered a plea of three years with one year served in prison and the rest probation. Mainor said she was never informed of the plea deal, [which she] claimed to be a violation of the Georgia Crime Victims Bill of Rights.

“Furthermore, due to DA Willis’ bias towards Mr. Arrington, Plaintiff Mainor has experienced disparate treatment under the law as a victim,” the suit says. “Plaintiff Mainor has been forced to advocate for herself and her safety, although that is the District Attorney’s role.”

Trouble for Willis has been mounting over the past few months which has affected her election-related RICO case against former President Donald Trump. Last month, Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, ordered her to either fire an attorney she hired, Nathan Wade, after discovering the two were involved in a romantic relationship or take herself and her entire office off of the case.

Wade resigned later the same day.

Judge Hands Donald Trump The Jan. 6 News That He Wanted

 Jon Dougherty April 30, 2024

A federal judge on Monday adjourned a civil lawsuit brought against former President Donald Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot under a 19th-century law, handing him a delay in the case that he and his legal team sought.

The suit’s lead plaintiff, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), was joined by several other Democrats “who said they were impeded in their duties by the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol,” Newsweek reported.

The case was pursued under an 1871 act designed to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from intimidating members of Congress in the execution of their duties. On Monday, Mehta ruled that “immunity-related discovery” will persist until September 11, 2024.

Following the conclusion of discovery in September, both parties will present their arguments regarding whether Trump is entitled to presidential immunity from the civil lawsuit—a separate matter from the Supreme Court’s examination of presidential immunity from criminal lawsuits. The proceedings for the former could extend over several months.

Newsweek noted that should Trump be given immunity, then the case is over. If presidential immunity is not granted, further discovery on the case’s facts is anticipated, and a trial is unlikely to commence until after the inauguration in January 2025. Trump, who has consistently sought trial delays, could subsequently seek recourse in federal court to postpone the case until after his term in office has concluded.

Newsweek noted further:

On December 4, 2023, Lee had released a statement in which she said “justice is owed to the Congressional staff, Capitol support staff, law enforcement, and members of Congress who feared for their lives on January 6, 2021. I look forward to seeing Mr. Trump in court.”

MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday that a higher court, the Washington D.C. Circuit, had handed the case back to Mehta after reaffirming that “former presidents are entitled to civil immunity for acts even on the ‘outer perimeter’ of their official duties.

“But they [the D.C. Circuit] held Trump had not yet shown his entitlement to such immunity and would instead have a chance to prove in the lower court that ‘his alleged actions in the run-up to and on January 6 were taken in his official capacity as President,’” she wrote.

“That opinion was handed down on December 1, 2023. And now, in the last days of April, Judge Amit Mehta, the district court judge to whom the case has been assigned, has allowed the parties to conduct ‘immunity-related discovery’ through September 11, 2024,” Rubin added, further claiming that Mehta’s ruling doesn’t bode well for Trump in his D.C. criminal case where he’s been charged by special counsel Jack Smith of election interference following Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.

The election fraud proceedings, overseen by Tanya Chutkan, another D.C. district judge, have been put on hold as the Supreme Court deliberates presidential immunity.

“Now think about the criminal case before Judge Chutkan: In a world where the Supreme Court similarly decides there must be further lower court proceedings to determine whether Trump can mount an immunity defense, can that case be tried before 2025? Increasingly, I think not—and that might be the only win Trump wants or needs,” Rubin wrote.

During oral arguments regarding the question last week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said that former presidents ought to enjoy some immunity from subsequent attacks if they leave office.

“It didn’t matter what the president’s motives were; that’s something courts shouldn’t get engaged in … I am concerned about future uses of criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives,” the Supreme Court justice, who was Trump’s first of three appointees to the nation’s highest court, said on April 25.

Strong Segment – Steve Bannon and Julie Kelly Discuss Mar-a-Lago Documents Case – Lawfare Backstopped by Judge Aileen Cannon

April 30, 2024 | Sundance | 

This is a good overall encapsulation by Julie Kelly and to a lesser extent Steve Bannon about what Judge Aileen Cannon is doing with the Jack Smith “documents” case in Florida.

Kelly notes accurately {See Background} that Judge Aileen Cannon is somewhat limited on what she can do about the federal government case due to the DOJ using the false pretense of “national security” to control how the judicial branch can interact with the lawfare construct of the executive branch.  The Lawfare crew intentionally created the “national security” angle to control all sides of the case and limit the release of information to the public.

Judge Cannon has recently been releasing and un-redacting documents and motions filed in the case to allow disinfecting sunlight and transparency to enter. This approach undercuts the prosecution manipulation, the DOJ does not like it.   Julie Kelly outlines some of the details that Cannon’s releases have highlighted.  {Direct Rumble Link}

At the 12:00 minute mark, Steve Bannon highlights his anger as he rails against congress and the staff of multiple committees who participate in the willful blindness and pretending game.

After noticing how congress is mute about the revelations that Cannon is providing, Bannon notes the republicans are essentially anti-Trump and controlled opposition, which is essentially accurate…. However, he’s just now noticing this?

It is a little annoying to see Mr. Bannon discuss outrage as a manipulative tactic {Chaffe and Countermeasures}, considering the years of outrage traps laid by the republicans in the Deep State against President Trump.  The latest effort by congress pretending not to notice, and then staying quiet, is not exactly a surprise.

Think about two sets of documents as evidence against two teams working in synergy. Team one (Clinton) was outside government. Team two (DOJ/FBI) was inside government. The documents the DOJ/FBI were urgently searching to retrieve pertained to both groups but were also divided. That helps to explain the wording of the memo below and the motive behind the DOJ/FBI using the General Services Administration (GSA) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as tools to conduct post-Trump-term physical surveillance and searches.

Here’s the Occam’s Razor…. and I will only say this once.  A lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and the Spygate manipulators was filed in 2022. [LINK HERE]

The lawsuit was filed against specific persons, and most of those persons were interviewed by the FBI as part of the originating investigation.  Within the subjects of the lawsuit, we find names and groups including:

Hillary Clinton, Hillary for America Campaign Committee, DNC, DNC Services Corp, Perkins Coie, Michael Sussmann, Marc Elias, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Charles Dolan, Jake Sullivan, John Podesta, Robby Mook, Phillipe Reines as well as Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko, Neustar Inc., Rodney Joffe, James Comey Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith and Andrew McCabe.

Once the lawsuit against CLINTON/FBI was filed, the background physical paper evidence no longer needed to be in the possession of the person(s) who wrote the lawsuit (physical possession).  [LINK HERE] Simple thumb-drives would suffice.

It’s 108-Pages


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VIDEO O’Keefe Uncovers Who Is Really Running The White House: ‘Whatever This Guy Says, It’s What The President Says’ – Trump On Day #1

 by Jordyn M. April 22, 2024

An undercover video by O’Keefe Media shows a special advisor for The United States Small Business Administration providing insights into the intricate dynamics of President Joe Biden’s inner circle.

The advisor, Tyler Robinson, engaged in conversation with an undercover reporter, and he pulled back the curtain on the significant clout wielded by Jeff Zeints, the current White House chief of staff and former Facebook board member.

Robinson asserted that Zeints commands immense influence, going as far as labeling him the “second most powerful person in Washington.” He also shared some of the strategies employed to sway his decision-making.

“By getting Jeff to sign off, you’re getting the president to sign off… whatever this guy says, it’s what the President says,” Robinson asserted.

Robinson was also pressed on whether Zeints holds more power than Vice President Kamala Harris, to which he affirmed, “Yeah,” and that he is more powerful “in some ways” but “not legally.”

The White House insider also openly acknowledged the enduringly close relationships former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Hillary Clinton have with the current Biden administration.

Robinson later delved into the strategies employed by the establishment to marginalize GOP politicians, effectively excluding them from crucial negotiations and policy-making processes

He disclosed the activities of his boss, Isabel Casillas Guzman, alleging that she is dispatched by the Biden administration under the pretext of visiting small businesses while covertly aiding Democratic election campaigns.

“Pretty much every week, she goes somewhere in the country… We can tell their accomplishments; she can’t like go on a stage and be like, ‘Hey, vote for Joe Biden.’ Like that’s illegal,” said Robinson.

“Any time we go [to a state], we try to visit with a Member of Congress, if they’re a Democrat… because then we can help them get reelected as well,” the insider added “So we’re going to Montana because Senator Tester, he’s the Democratic Senator from Montana, like he’s in a tough reelection race, and that’s like a seat we need in the Senate to maintain a majority.”

“We all, like as an office, were going, and the White House was like, ‘yes, go. Invite Senator Tester. Don’t invite the other Senator because he’s a Republican, and don’t invite the two members of Congress because they’re Republicans,’” he continued.

Resist The Mainstream reported last month on another undercover video from O’Keefe Media that showed a Department of Defense employee advocating for the repeal of the Second Amendment and endorsing government-exclusive firearm ownership.

Jason Beck, identified as a member of Total Force Requirements & Sourcing Policy within Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s office, boldly stated to a disguised O’Keefe, “I think we should repeal the Second Amendment and take the guns all away.”

Beck also challenged immigration policies suggesting an open border approach and condemning recent legislation as “almost unbelievable” and “really racist.”

He criticized border security measures as ineffective, dismissing them as futile efforts to address a non-existent problem.

Beck asserted, expressing skepticism about the security threat posed by undocumented immigrants, “There’s no Taliban coming in through Mexico like that’s, they just make that stuff out of whole cloth. Like when has a terrorist ever come in?”


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https://resistthemainstream.com/okeefe-uncovers-who-is-really-running-the-white-house

President Trump Delivers Remarks to Media Pool Following Day #1 of “Hush Money” Trial

April 22, 2024 | Sundance | 

The “hush money” case in New York City is perhaps the stupidest of the Lawfare cases launched against President Trump.  The premise is that President Trump tried to “influence the 2016 election” by paying people not to besmirch his reputation with negative stories about him.  This is the basis of the “hush money” claim by state prosecutors.

The Federal Election Commission reviewed the details and found no merit to the claims of illegality, but the state of New York twisted the legal interpretation of “honest services” to make a claim that President Trump paid his attorney Michael Cohen and labeled the payments “legal services.”  The state case is dependent on a logical fallacy that paying your attorney and designating the payment as ‘legal services’ is a fraudulent business practice.  It really is nonsense Lawfare.

President Trump delivered remarks to the media after the first day of trial where his defense team said to the jury, “use your common sense. We’re New Yorkers, It’s why we’re all here.”  WATCH:

.

Politico has a breakdown of the day one activity – HERE.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/04/22/president-trump-delivers-remarks-to-media-pool-following-day-1-of-hush-money-trial/#more-260292


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VIDEO WOW: Michael Avenatti Says He is Willing to Testify on Behalf of Donald Trump in Hush Money Case – Trump Haters Short Sell Non Existent Shares of Trump Stock – NY’s position on judicial ‘conflicts of interest’ – Biden Crimes Connection To First Impeachment

By Cassandra MacDonald Apr. 20, 2024

Stormy Daniels’ former attorney, Michael Avenatti, has said that he is willing to testify on behalf of former President Donald Trump in the New York hush money trial.

Speaking to the New York Post from jail, Avenatti said he is in contact with Trump’s legal team and is willing to speak out against his former client.

“The defense has contacted me,” Avenatti told The Post.

Avenatti is currently being held at Terminal Island, a minimum-security federal prison in Los Angeles, serving a 19-year sentence for a slate of federal crimes that include extortion, tax evasion, fraud, and embezzlement.

“I’d be more than happy to testify, I don’t know that I will be called to testify, but I have been in touch with Trump’s defense for the better part of year,” Avenatti said.

The Post reports that Avenatti would not provide any additional details about the discussion, but an unnamed source “close to Trump” confirmed that the discussions are taking place.

Avenatti used to be one of Trump’s loudest critics, but he has seemingly dramatically changed his position.

“There’s no question [the trial] is politically motivated because they’re concerned that he may be reelected,” Avenatti told the newspaper. “If the defendant was anyone other than Donald Trump, this case would not have been brought at this time, and for the government to attempt to bring this case and convict him in an effort to prevent tens of millions of people from voting for him, I think it’s just flat out wrong, and atrocious.”

“I’m really bothered by the fact that Trump, in my view, has been targeted. Four cases is just over the top and I think there’s a significant chance that this is going to all backfire and is going to propel him to the White House,” Avenatti added.

The former lawyer continued, “Depending on what happens, this could constitute pouring jet fuel on his campaign.”

Trump is on trial in NYC over an alleged $130,000 payment to Daniels to keep her quiet during the 2016 election. She has alleged that she had a tryst with the former president many years ago.

“Stormy Daniels is going to say whatever she believes is going to assist Stormy Daniels and putting more money in her pocket,” Avenatti said. “If Stormy Daniels lips are moving, she’s lying for money.”

Avenatti explained that he feels like he and Trump have both been targeted by politically motivated prosecutions.

“I think that we were both targeted by the justice system,” Avenatti said. “There’s a lot of people on the left that were very concerned about my potential rise within the Democratic Party and my potential rise in Democratic politics. And the fact that I was not someone that was easily controlled.”

The imprisoned former lawyer also claimed that he is not fishing for a pardon in case Trump wins a second term.

“I’m not saying any of this because I’m seeking a pardon,” Avenatti told The Post. “I wish I would have never met Stormy Daniels. I should have left her where I found her.”


Ken Griffin and Sea Island Hedgefunds Short Sell Non-Existent Shares of Trump Stock to Drive Down Price

April 20, 2024 | Sundance |

You know when Ken Griffin is doing sketchy anti-Trump stuff by the response from Ken Griffin.

Remember, this is the vulture capitalist and Citadel hedge fund operator of horrible Robin Hood infamy who was going to lose billions because the Reddit community fought back against Griffin’s short position on GameStop.

In essence, what Griffin is doing now is shorting the Trump stock he doesn’t control or borrow against.  He’s naked shorting the Trump media stock, which is illegal and seriously unethical.  Devin Nunes, CEO of Truth Social, has tracked the available stock and notes; there is no way for Citadel and others to sell short positions, because there is no stock available for borrowing.   Nunes knows the scheme Ken Griffin is attempting.

“Data made available to us indicate that just four market participants have been responsible for over 60% of the extraordinary volume of DJT shares traded: Citadel Securities, VIRTU Americas, G1 Execution Services, and Jane Street Capital,” Nunes wrote.

Griffin and his Sea Island vulture capitalists are just repeating their previous moves.  Naked shorting was partially blamed for the GameStop “meme stock” phenomenon of 2021. During the two previous years, GameStop had posted big losses leading to a large drop in its share prices. This problem was noticed by hedge funds, which took out major short positions in the stock. In 2020, at least half of GameStop’s stock was borrowed for short positions. By 2021, 140% of GameStop shares were shorted, meaning 40% of the shares shorted weren’t really out there to trade on; that is, they were likely involved in naked short sales.

Online retail investors soon noticed this giant hedge, setting up the Reddit forum “r/WallStreetBets”, to implement a short squeeze and bid up the stock to counter the shorting of the hedge funds. As the share price increased, it wasn’t just the hedge funds that lost; short sellers who hadn’t borrowed the shares couldn’t deliver.  Ken Griffin went bananas and used his power with the Robin Hood trading platform to stop the buyers.

You can tell Ken Griffin is yet again behind this short stock effort by his triggered reaction:

“Devin Nunes is the proverbial loser who tries to blame ‘naked short selling’ for his falling stock price. Nunes is exactly the type of person Donald Trump would have fired on ‘The Apprentice.’ If he worked for Citadel Securities, we would fire him, as ability and integrity are at the center of everything we do.” (link)

Now read that statement and tell me that expression doesn’t scream identical to the Ron DeSantis supporters.   Is it any surprise Ken Griffin was Ron DeSantis’ biggest individual donor.

New York’s position on judicial ‘conflicts of interest’

‘Activist judges whose families personally benefit from a case’ should step back

By Around the Web April 21, 2024

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump walk across the South Lawn of the White House Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2020, before boarding Marine One to begin their trip to Florida. (Official White House photo by Andrea Hanks)

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump (Official White House photo by Andrea Hanks)

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

By Matt Whitaker
Real Clear Wire

One of America’s foundational principles is “equal justice under the law,” or the principle that no matter who you are or what you stand for, you are entitled to a fair chance to make your case in a court of law. That’s why the Lady Justice statue outside the Supreme Court wears a blindfold and holds a scale – the blindfold to symbolize her impartiality and immunity from outside influences, and the scale to signify her objective weighing of the evidence in front of her.

Unfortunately, this bedrock principle of American self-government has been put in jeopardy by the upcoming trial President Donald Trump is scheduled to face in New York later this month. While most Americans expect our judges to be neutral arbiters of the law, Judge Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing this trial against President Trump, is anything but.

As it turns out, two major Democratic clients of Judge Merchan’s daughter have raised over $93 million in campaign donations through her firm, several times using the very case Judge Merchan is overseeing in their fundraising pitches. Ms. Merchan, who previously worked for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, currently works as the president of Authentic Campaigns, a left-wing political consulting firm based out of Chicago. Two of Authentic Campaigns’ top clients include Senate candidate and congressman Adam Schiff, the radical California Democrat who became famous for his outright lies in pushing the Russian collusion hoax, and the Senate Majority PAC, a major fundraiser for Democratic Senate campaigns.

According to campaign finance records, Schiff’s campaign has raised over $20 million since he began fundraising off President Trump’s indictment last April, and the Senate Majority PAC has raised a whopping $73 million. A deeper dive into the campaign finance reports shows that Authentic Campaigns received more than $10 million from the Schiff campaign over the past year and over $15 million from the Senate Majority PAC since 2019.

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The fact that Democratic campaigns and their affiliated consultants are profiting handsomely from the political persecution of President Trump should come as no surprise to anyone who follows money in politics, but the fact that an immediate family member of the judge overseeing this case is also profiting presents an atrocious conflict of interest. When one considers the additional fact that Judge Merchan went out of his way to personally contribute to President Biden’s campaign in 2020, any reasonable observer of this matter will conclude that allowing Judge Merchan to continue to participate in this case is untenable and will be a glaring outrage to all Americans who believe in equal justice under the law, while greatly undermining the credibility of the case.

In an order refusing to recuse himself last summer, Judge Merchan said that he “examined his conscience” and was confident in his ability to rule fairly and impartially. But who could believe him?

If Judge Merchan’s own daughter is profiting from the case he is presiding over – substantially – how can he be trusted to be fair and impartial in his rulings? If tens of millions of dollars is not enough to spur a recusal based on a conflict of interest – or, at least, the appearance of a conflict of interest – what is?

Of course, this isn’t the only case pending against President Trump that is mired by conflicts of interest and ethical violations. Recent proceedings in Georgia demonstrate that prosecutor Fani Willis hired her lover, Nathan Wade, to manage the Trump prosecution even though he had little prosecutorial experience. Over the last few years, Fani Willis has paid him over half a million dollars of taxpayer money through the Fulton County District Attorney’s office – money that Wade then used to take her on luxurious vacations around the globe.

In the federal cases brought by Department of Justice (DOJ) Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, President Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed and empowered Smith to use the full force and resources of the federal government to investigate and charge his top political opponent, with an emphasis on forcing trial dates to directly conflict with the general election.

These political witch hunts are the sort of thing that we expect to see in corrupt foreign authoritarian regimes – not here at home in our constitutional republic. As Americans continue to watch the consequences of these sham indictments unfold, our public officials are doing incalculable damage to the integrity of our justice system and the concept of the rule of law.

As John Adams once said, our constitutional system constructs a “government of laws and not of men.” When political operatives and radical partisans weaponize the justice system to crush their political opponents to maintain power, our entire system of democratic republicanism is thrown into jeopardy.

The sham charges President Trump faces should be dropped immediately – but at the very least, politically biased, activist judges whose families personally benefit from the case have no place overseeing a trial of this magnitude. Judge Merchan should step back from this case so we can put the blindfold back on Lady Justice.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.


Trump’s NY Trial is a Sham!

SPERRY: Impeachment ‘Whistleblower’ Was in the Loop of Biden-Ukraine Affairs That Trump Wanted Probed

By Cristina Laila Apr. 21, 2024

The ‘whistleblower’ who sparked Donald Trump’s first impeachment was deeply involved in the political maneuverings behind Biden-family business schemes in Ukraine that Trump wanted probed, newly obtained emails from former Vice President Joe Biden’s office reveal.

In 2019, then-National Intelligence Council analyst Eric Ciaramella touched off a political firestorm when he anonymously accused Trump of linking military aid for Ukraine to a demand for an investigation into alleged Biden corruption in that country.

But four years earlier, while working as a national security analyst attached to then-Vice President Joe Biden’s office, Ciaramella was a close adviser when Biden threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine unless it fired its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Ukraine-based Burisma Holdings. At the time, the corruption-riddled energy giant was paying Biden’s son Hunter millions of dollars.

Those payments – along with other evidence tying Joe Biden to his family’s business dealings – received little attention in 2019 as Ciaramella accused Trump of a corrupt quid pro quo. Neither did subsequent evidence indicating that Hunter Biden’s associates had identified Shokin as a “key target.” These matters are now part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

“It now seems there was material evidence that would have been used at the impeachment trial [to exonerate Trump],” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who has testified as an expert witness in the ongoing Biden impeachment inquiry. “Trump was alleging there was a conflict of interest with the Bidens, and the evidence could have challenged Biden’s account and established his son’s interest in the Shokin firing.”

Ciaramella’s role – including high-level discussions with top Biden aides and Ukrainian prosecutors – is only now coming to light thanks to the recent release of White House emails and photos from the National Archives.

The emails show Ciaramella expressed shock – “Yikes” is what he wrote – at Biden’s move to withhold the $1 billion in aid from Kyiv, which represented a sudden shift in U.S. policy. They also show he was drawn into White House communications over how to control adverse publicity from Hunter taking a lucrative seat on Burisma’s board.

Yet there is no evidence Ciaramella raised alarms about the questionable Biden business activities he witnessed firsthand, which is in sharp contrast to 2019. In that instance, he was galvanized into action after being told by White House colleague Alexander Vindman of an “improper” phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the call, Trump solicited Zelensky’s help in investigating Burisma and Hunter Biden’s role in the company.

Some former congressional investigators say Ciaramella effectively helped cover up a scandal far worse than what Trump was impeached over. What’s more, he failed to disclose that he had a potential conflict of interest stemming from his connection to the matter Trump asked Zelensky to probe when he lodged his complaint against Trump. RealClearInvestigations was the first to identify the then-33-year-old Ciaramella as the anonymous impeachment “whistleblower,” something major media continue to keep under tight wraps.

Ciaramella worked under CIA Director John Brennan when President Obama made Biden his point man on Ukraine in 2014, the same year Burisma hired Hunter. The next year, the CIA detailed Ciaramella, a longtime advocate for aid to Ukraine, to the White House, where he worked closely with Biden and his staff as a top adviser on key Ukrainian policies. After Biden left office, he stayed on at the GOP White House until mid-2017 even though he’s a Democrat, working as a Ukrainian and Russian analyst on Trump’s National Security Council. Co-workers there accused him of trying to sabotage Trump, including allegedly leaking sensitive information to the press.

RealClearInvestigations has reviewed more than 2,000 pages of newly disclosed archived emails from the former vice president’s office related to Ukraine, of which more than 160 contained references to Ciaramella. They reveal that his role advising Biden’s office potentially intersects with the current impeachment inquiry in several areas. Chiefly, Ciaramella focused on aid to Ukraine and anti-corruption reforms in the country. In that capacity, he:

  • Hosted, cleared into the White House, and met face-to-face there with senior Ukrainian prosecutors.
  • Gave a “readout” of the meeting to his superiors, who in turn pushed for Shokin’s firing.
  • Traveled with Biden to Kyiv during the 2015 trip during which Biden demanded Shokin’s firing.
  • Wrote media “talking points” for Ukrainian officials.
  • Huddled with the top Biden officials involved in discussions concerning the $1 billion aid package and Shokin, including: Amos Hochstein; Victoria Nuland; Geoffrey Pyatt; Bridget Brink; and Michael Carpenter.
  • Corresponded with Biden officials coordinating responses to negative media reports about Hunter’s cushy and controversial Burisma job.

Former Obama-Biden administration officials have confirmed in recent closed-door congressional testimony that Ciaramella was a key part of Biden’s process for making policy in Ukraine. In 2016, for instance, a White House photo shows him taking notes at a White House meeting Biden held with then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to discuss Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms and other issues.

Ciaramella also worked directly with top Obama and Biden administration diplomats on Ukraine, including senior State Department official Victoria Nuland. “Eric was regularly the clearing authority to get me into the White House for interagency meetings on Ukraine,” Nuland revealed in a 2020 Senate deposition. Asked if she ever discussed Ukraine policy and Shokin with Ciaramella, Nuland testified: “Of course, I did. He was part of the interagency process. He was also on my negotiating team for the six, seven rounds of negotiations I did with the Russians on [the disputed Ukraine region] Donbas.”

Ciaramella was directly involved in talks concerning the massive U.S. aid package to Ukraine that Biden conditioned on the removal of Shokin, who at the time had seized the assets of the corrupt Burisma oligarch employing Hunter Biden. He also arranged and participated in White House talks with Ukrainian prosecutors visiting from Shokin’s office.

White House visitor logs confirm Ciaramella escorted Shokin’s deputy prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, into the White House for a January 2016 meeting. A White House agenda for the meeting lists Ciaramella as “point of contact” for the Ukrainian delegation. He also checked in Andriy Telizhenko, the Ukrainian Embassy official who says they discussed Burisma and Hunter Biden during the meeting and struggled to understand why his U.S. counterparts were suddenly hostile to Shokin after praising him in earlier talks.

Emails from the time show Ciaramella appeared surprised to hear about the linkage between the $1 billion loan to Ukraine and the dismissal of Shokin. Though Biden maintains he insisted Kyiv oust Shokin because he was too soft on weeding out fraud in entities that included Burisma, Ciaramella suggested he didn’t share the view that Shokin was corrupt. “We were super impressed with the group,” Ciaramella added, “and we had a two-hour discussion of their priorities and the obstacles they face.”

On Jan. 21, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt emailed Ciaramella and other White House aides an article from the Ukrainian press – “U.S. loan guarantee conditional on Shokin’s dismissal.”

“Yikes. I don’t recall this coming up in our meeting with them,” Ciaramella replied, referring to the White House meeting he hosted with top Ukrainian prosecutors.

Trending: OMG: James O’Keefe to Drop Bombshell Undercover Video Exposing Intel Officials

But in a closed-door 2020 deposition before the Senate, Pyatt sounded skeptical that Ciaramella was in the dark about the decision. “I think you have to ask Eric what he meant by ‘Yikes,’” Pyatt told Senate investigators. He said that he believed conditioning the loan guarantee on Shokin’s removal “obviously came up in those meetings” hosted by Ciaramella, suggesting that Biden’s aide knew of the quid pro quo before Pyatt circulated the article about it from the Ukrainian press.

The day before he hosted the Ukraine prosecutors, Ciaramella received an agenda from a State Department official that asked him to “note the importance of appointing a new PG [Prosecutor General], reiterating that Shokin is an obstacle to reform,” according to emails. The agenda also called on Ciaramella to “ask the del [Ukrainian delegation] what high-level cases are on the docket for prosecution,” which raises suspicions in some quarters that Biden’s advisers were fishing for information about Shokin’s plans for prosecuting Burisma oligarchs, something Hunter Biden had been asked to find out.

In a Jan. 21 email, Pyatt told Ciaramella to “buckle in” because, as he later explained to Senate investigators, the deal was a “difficult issue” and “there was going to be political controversy around this [news].”

The former ambassador demurred when asked if conditioning the $1 billion on Shokin’s firing was Biden’s idea or came from his office. “It was the – our interagency policy,” he testified, adding, “I don’t remember when the vice president would have weighed in on this.”

However, Pyatt allowed that it was a sudden change in policy. “At the beginning,” he said, “it was not our expectation that Shokin’s removal would be necessary.” Indeed, an Oct. 1, 2015, memo summarizing the recommendation of the Interagency Policy Committee on Ukraine stated, “Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its [anti-corruption] reform agenda to justify a third [loan] guarantee.” Ciaramella was a member of the IPC task force, which monitored Shokin’s office. The next month, moreover, the task force drafted a loan guarantee agreement that did not call for Shokin’s removal. Then, in December, Joe Biden flew to Kyiv to demand his ouster.

If what Ciaramella expressed in his email (which he knew would be part of archived White House records) was a genuine reaction, it appears that Vice President Biden went against the recommendation of one of his top NSC advisers on Ukraine. If Ciaramella were genuinely alarmed, he might have blown the whistle on his boss like he did on Trump, but he stayed mum. If, on the other hand, Ciaramella were a party to the quid-pro-quo discussions, as Pyatt suggests, then he had “a direct conflict,” noted Derek Harvey, the former congressional investigator involved in the first impeachment. Either way, Ciaramella clearly found himself in the middle of a major controversy.

Just weeks prior, White House photos indicate that Ciaramella traveled with Biden on the same December 2015 Air Force Two flight the vice president took to Kyiv to threaten Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to ax Shokin. Republicans have accused Biden of pushing Shokin’s ouster to block scrutiny of his son’s actions.

“Biden called an audible and changed U.S. policy toward Ukraine to benefit his son on the plane ride to Ukraine,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said, and “later bragged about withholding a U.S. loan guarantee if Ukraine did not fire the prosecutor [Shokin].”
Biden and his supporters have repeatedly claimed Shokin had to go because he wasn’t cracking down on corruption and that everyone else in the administration, as well as Europe, agreed Shokin should be fired. This remains the prevailing narrative in major U.S. media. But around that time, Shokin had conducted a raid of Burisma oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky’s home, seizing his house, cars, and other assets.

IRS Special Agent Joseph Ziegler, who examined Hunter’s emails as part of his investigation of Hunter for tax evasion, said Shokin was identified as a “key target” in emails exchanged between Hunter and Burisma officials in November 2015 – the month before Biden traveled to Ukraine to demand Shokin’s removal. Just days before Biden arrived in Kyiv in early December 2015 to demand Shokin’s ouster, Hunter allegedly called his father from Dubai following a meeting there with Burisma official Vadym Pozharskyi, who asked him to pressure his father to shut down Shokin’s investigation. Vice President Biden was familiar with Pozharskyi, having met with him in April 2015 during a dinner at the Cafe Milano in D.C. arranged by Hunter.

“The unstated goal was to have the Ukrainian prosecutor removed in an effort to close the criminal case against [Burisma founder] Zlochevsky,” Ziegler said in recent testimony before the House impeachment inquiry. After Shokin was pushed out of office, the Burisma investigation dried up.

Ciaramella tried to marshal a defense for Biden in the whistleblower complaint he sent to Rep. Adam Schiff in August 2019. He listed among Trump’s concerns at the time of the fateful July phone call “that former Vice President Biden had pressured Poroshenko in 2016 to fire Shokin in order to quash a purported criminal probe into Burisma Holdings.” But Ciaramella attempted to pour cold water on the notion by referencing a Bloomberg News article that quoted a “former senior Ukrainian prosecutor” who falsely claimed “that Mr. Shokin in fact was not investigating Burisma at the time of his removal in 2016.”

White House emails reveal that Ciaramella was looped into messages sent by Biden’s communications team, who were concerned that Hunter Biden taking a position on corrupt Burisma’s board created unseemly optics and undercut their boss’ mission to clean up corruption in Ukraine.

In a Dec. 8, 2015, email, for example, Biden’s communications director Kate Bedingfield copied Ciaramella on a link to a New York Times article headlined, “The Knotty Ties Between Joe Biden, His Son and Ukraine.” Bedingfield is quoted in the story, authored by James Risen, denying Hunter had traveled with his father to Ukraine in an attempt to downplay his influence. She also said Ukrainian officials never raised his position on the Burisma board with Biden as an issue of concern. Risen got spun, however, on the issue of compensation for Hunter, reporting that it was “not out of the ordinary.”

At the time, Burisma was paying Hunter, who had no energy sector experience, $1 million a year just for lending his name to its board. It turns out that Hunter never traveled to Ukraine for a single meeting in the five years he sat on Burisma’s board. Republicans suspect Biden got the prosecutor ousted to keep the money flowing from Burisma to the Biden family.

Career State Department officials led by George Kent, who was stationed in Ukraine at the time, tried to get Biden’s aides to raise the issue of potential family conflicts with the vice president. Despite their concerns, Biden never asked his son to step down from the Burisma board, which would have made all questions go away. And despite Kent and other officials identifying Burisma founder Zlochevsky by name as a corrupt actor in Ukraine, Biden himself never publicly called Zlochevsky out as corrupt while Hunter served on his board and pocketed millions in payments from him. For all his talk of fighting corruption in Ukraine, Biden failed to distance himself from one of the most corrupt oligarchs in the country.

Harvey, who served as the staff investigator for the Republican side of the House Intelligence Committee during the 2019 Trump impeachment hearings, said: “The [Biden] impeachment inquiry should compel Ciaramella to testify since we now know he was involved in communications about Biden using the $1 billion in aid to extort Ukraine into firing Shokin.”

Harvey said Ciaramella would make a valuable material witness against Biden in the probe, which centers on whether Biden used his White House clout or political influence on behalf of his son’s foreign paymasters. White House photos indicate Ciaramella took notes during his meetings with Biden, his staff, and Ukrainian officials – materials that lawmakers could subpoena along with his testimony.

Another former staff investigator noted that Ciaramella is no longer protected by federal whistleblower laws. He has left the government and now works as a senior fellow focusing on Ukraine and Russia for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, where he is consulting with White House officials and pushing for billions more in U.S. aid for Ukraine – including “a Marshall Plan for the Ukrainian military.” Through a spokesperson, Ciaramella declined to comment.

“None of the whistleblower protections apply to this particular situation,” said Jason Foster, former chief investigative counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee and a whistleblower expert. He also noted that the Whistleblower Protection Act doesn’t shield whistleblowers from any other conduct they might have been involved in, including their own conduct. Nor does it give them a legal right to anonymity.

A spokeswoman for the House Oversight Committee, which is leading the Biden impeachment inquiry, declined to say whether Ciaramella is on the witness list. “I don’t have anything for you on this at this time,” said House Oversight Communications Director Jessica Collins. However, Comer has publicly described the “whistleblower” impeachment of Trump as a “cover-up” operation for the alleged Biden blackmail scheme in Ukraine involving U.S. aid and the Burisma corruption probe.

What Ciaramella witnessed and what he documented in notes he took during high-level Biden-Ukraine meetings could now be relevant to the active impeachment inquiry of President Biden. The House may have little choice but to hold the kind of hearings the Democrats blocked during the earlier impeachment by keeping Ciaramella’s identity – and his own potential conflict – secret.

As the catalyst for Trump’s impeachment, Ciaramella could now be a reluctant witness for Biden’s.

This RealClearInvestigations article was republished by The Gateway Pundit with permission.

Paul Sperry is the former D.C. bureau chief for Investor’s Business Daily, Hoover Institution media fellow, author of several books, including bestseller INFILTRATION


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VIDEO A Remarkable Upgrade: Harriet Hageman Swings Big Timber and Big Truth – Government Wants to Play God. What Does That Mean for Our Freedoms?

April 14, 2024 | Sundance 

From Liz Cheney to Harriet Hageman, a remarkable upgrade from voters in Wyoming.  Stunningly so.  I have alerts established for all things Hageman, because she presents as a stealth wolverine very quietly.  I like that.

Yes, you will hear me say it first…. this is my first opportunity to do so….  If there are reservations about Ben Carson for VP (personally I do not think there are any), then I would implore President Trump to consider Harriet Hageman as his VP running mate.  Yes, I would be good with taking a chance on Hageman as POTUS in ’28.  WATCH:

On May 31, 2022, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) made an explosive announcement as an outcome of a whistleblower providing information to him and Jim Jordan about the FBI having a collaborative relationship with the Clinton/DNC law firm Perkins Coie.  {Go Deep} Specifically, the explosive element surrounds the FBI having a workspace within the DNC law firm that would have given Democrats an open portal into FBI databases for use in opposition research.

In this video former NSA Director Mike Rogers explains how he was notified of unlawful FBI extractions from the NSA database, what was happening with illegal search queries and what he did after the notification. WATCH:

Knowing that Perkins Coie and the FBI were working together on this targeting operation, makes everything else make sense.

However, the involvement of official government agencies like NSA Admiral Mike Rogers, creates a paper trail.  Search query logs, notifications to Mike Rogers, notifications to the FISA Court, notifications to FBI officials of the suspension of contractor access, and subsequent FISA court opinions like the 99-pages from Rosemary Collyer, all of it creates an internal trail of government documents that tell the story.

It’s those documents that become a risk to the people who operate within the system.  In this example of government documents, the trail outlines the targeting of Donald Trump and that was what he continued to ask the ODNI, DOJ and FBI to release.

Frustrated by the lack of action, in March 2022 Donald Trump filed a massive civil lawsuit against the Clinton campaign and everyone involved in this targeting operation. [SEE LAWSUIT HERE]  “Acting in concert, the Defendants maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative that their Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, was colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty,” the president states.

“Under the guise of ‘opposition research,’ ‘data analytics,’ and other political stratagems, the Defendants nefariously sought to sway the public’s trust. They worked together with a single, self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump,” says one segment of the lawsuit.

All of the claims within the filing are substantiated by documents outlining the history of the events.  I’m not sure any defendant is going to be successful getting themselves out of the target zone on the lawsuit.  The suit alleges “racketeering” and a “conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood,” among other claims.

The basis for the evidence against the entire crew?  That was likely part of the assembly of evidence, the declassified documents at the heart of the battle, that were targeted by the DOJ and FBI raid.

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The Government Wants to Play God. What Does That Mean for Our Freedoms?

By John & Nisha Whitehead April 03, 2024

The government wants to play god.

It wants the power to decide who lives or dies and whose rights are worthy of protection.

Abortion may still be front and center in the power struggle between the Left and the Right over who has the right to decide—the government or the individual—when it comes to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy, sexual freedom, the rights of the unborn, and property interests in one’s body, but there’s so much more at play.

In the 50-plus years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade, the government has come to believe that it not only has the power to determine who is deserving of constitutional rights in the eyes of the law but it also has the authority to deny those rights to an American citizen.

This is how the abortion debate has played into the police state’s hands: by laying the groundwork for discussions about who else may or may not be deserving of rights.

Despite the Supreme Court having overturned its earlier rulings recognizing abortion as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment, the government continues to play fast and loose with the lives of the citizenry all along the spectrum of life.

Take a good, hard look at the many ways in which Americans are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

American families who have their dogs shot, their homes trashed and their children terrorized or, worse, killed by errant SWAT team raids in the middle of the night are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Disabled individuals who are being strip searched, handcuffed, arrested and “diagnosed” by police as dangerous or mentally unstable merely because they stutter and walk unevenly are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

School-aged children as young as 4-years-old who are leg shackled, handcuffed and strip searched for violating school zero tolerance policies by chewing a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun and playing an imaginary game of cops and robbers, or engaging in childish behavior such as crying or jumping are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Unarmed citizens who are tasered or shot by police for daring to hesitate, stutter, move a muscle, flee or disagree in any way with a police order are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Likewise, Americans—young and old alike—who are shot by police because they pointed a garden hose at a police officer, reached for their registration in their glove box, relied upon a cane to steady themselves, or were seen playing with air rifles or BB guns are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Female motorists who are unlucky enough to be pulled over for a questionable traffic infraction only to be subjected by police to cavity searches by the side of the road are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Male pedestrians and motorists alike who are being subjected to roadside strip searches and rectal probes by police based largely on the color of their skin are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

American citizens subjected to government surveillance whereby their phone calls are being listened in on, their mail and text messages read, their movements tracked and their transactions monitored are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Homeowners who are being fined and arrested for raising chickens in their backyard, allowing the grass in their front yards to grow too long, and holding Bible studies in their homes are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Decorated military veterans who are being arrested for criticizing the government on social media such as Facebook are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Homeless individuals who are being harassed, arrested and run out of towns by laws that criminalize homelessness are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Individuals whose DNA has been forcibly collected and entered into federal and state law enforcement databases whether or not they have been convicted of any crime are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Drivers whose license plates are being scanned, uploaded to a police database and used to map their movements, whether or not they are suspected of any crime, are being denied their rights under the Constitution. The same goes for drivers who are being ticketed for running afoul of red light cameras without any real opportunity to defend themselves against such a charge are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Protesters and activists who are being labeled domestic terrorists and extremists and accused of hate crimes for speaking freely are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Likewise, American citizens who being targeted for assassination by drone strikes abroad without having been charged, tried and convicted of treason are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

Hard-working Americans whose bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash are seized by police (operating according to asset forfeiture schemes that provide profit incentives for highway robbery) are being denied their rights under the Constitution.

So, what is the common denominator here?

These are all American citizens—endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, rights that no person or government can take away from them, among these the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and they are all being oppressed in one way or another by a government that has grown drunk on power, money and its own authority.

If the government—be it the President, Congress, the courts or any federal, state or local agent or agency—can decide that any person has no rights, then that person becomes less than a citizen, less than human, less than deserving of respect, dignity, civility and bodily integrity. He or she becomes an “it,” a faceless number that can be tallied and tracked, a quantifiable mass of cells that can be discarded without conscience, an expendable cost that can be written off without a second thought, or an animal that can be bought, sold, branded, chained, caged, bred, neutered and euthanized at will.

It’s a slippery slope that justifies all manner of violations in the name of national security, the interest of the state and the so-called greater good.

Yet those who founded this country believed that what we conceive of as our rights were given to us by God—we are created equal, according to the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence—and that government cannot create, nor can it extinguish our God-given rights. To do so would be to anoint the government with god-like powers and elevate it above the citizenry.

Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this particular devil for quite some time now.

If we continue to wait for the government to restore our freedoms, respect our rights, rein in its abuses and restrain its agents from riding roughshod over our lives, our liberty and our happiness, then we will be waiting forever.

The highly politicized tug-of-war over abortion will not resolve the problem of a culture that values life based on a sliding scale.  Nor will it help us navigate the moral, ethical and scientific minefields that await us as technology and humanity move ever closer to a point of singularity.

Humanity is being propelled at warp speed into a whole new frontier when it comes to privacy, bodily autonomy, and what it means to be a human being. As such, we haven’t even begun to wrap our heads around how present-day legal debates over bodily autonomy, privacy, vaccine mandates, the death penalty, and abortion play into future discussions about singularity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the privacy rights of the individual in the face of increasingly invasive, intrusive and unavoidable government technologies.

Yet here is what I know.

Life is an inalienable right.

By allowing the government to decide who or what is deserving of rights, it shifts the entire discussion from one in which we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” (that of life, liberty property and the pursuit of happiness) to one in which only those favored by the government get to enjoy such rights.

If all people are created equal, then all lives should be equally worthy of protection.

Likewise, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, all freedoms hang together.

We must never stop working to protect life, preserve our freedoms and maintain some semblance of our humanity.

Freedom cannot be a piece-meal venture.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_government_wants_to_play_god_what_does_that_mean_for_our_freedoms


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VIDEO The Intel Agencies of Government Are Fully Weaponized

April 13, 2024 | Sundance

Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; instead, what they did was take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons only targeted one side of the political continuum.  This point is where many people understandably get confused.

In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.

What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system.  This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.

Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01.  DHS came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed.  When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.

The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus.  However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology.  The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution.  Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.

We were not sleeping when this happened, we were wide awake.  However, we were stunningly distracted by the economic collapse that was taking place in 2006 and 2007 when the engineers behind Obama started to assemble the design.  By the time Obama took office in 2009, we sensed something profound was shifting, but we can only see exactly what shifted in the aftermath.  The four pillars were put into place, and a new Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created.

As time passed, and the system operators became familiar with their new tools, technology allowed the tentacles of the system to reach out and touch us. That is when we first started to notice that something very disconcerting was happening.  Those four pillars are the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated, questions about this current state of perpetual angst will start to make sense.

Grab a cup of your favorite beverage, and take a walk with me as we outline how this was put together.  You might find many of the questions about our current state of political affairs beginning to make a lot more sense.

Remember, it is not my intent to outline the entire history of how we got to this place where the intelligence community now acts as the superseding fourth branch of government. Such an effort would be exhausting and likely take our discussion away from understanding the current dynamic.

History provided enough warnings from Dwight D. Eisenhower (military), to John F. Kennedy (CIA), to Richard Nixon (FBI), to all modern versions of warnings and frustrations from HPSCI Devin Nunes and ODNI Ric Grenell. None of those prior reference points are invalid, and all documented outlines of historic reference are likely true and accurate. However, a generational review is not useful, as the reference impacting us ‘right now‘ gets lost.

Instead, we pick up the expansive and weaponized intelligence system as it manifests after 9/11/01, and my goal is to highlight how the modern version of the total intelligence apparatus has now metastasized into a Fourth Branch of Government. It is this superseding branch that now touches and influences every facet of our life.

If we take the modern construct, originating at the speed of technological change, we can also see how the oversight or “check/balance” in our system of government became functionally obsolescent.

After many years of granular research about the intelligence apparatus inside our government, in the summer of 2020 I visited Washington DC to ask specific questions. My goal was to go where the influence agents within government actually operate, and to discover the people deep inside the institutions no one elected and few people pay attention to.

It was during this process when I discovered how information is purposefully put into containment silos; essentially a formal process to block the flow of information between agencies and between the original branches. While frustrating to discover, the silo effect was important because understanding the communication between networks leads to our ability to reconcile conflict between what we perceive and what’s actually taking place.

After days of research and meetings in DC during 2020; amid a town that was serendipitously shut down due to COVID-19; I found a letter slid under the door of my room in a nearly empty hotel with an introduction of sorts. The subsequent discussions were perhaps the most important. After many hours of specific questions and answers on specific examples, I realized why our nation is in this mess. That is when I discovered the fourth and superseding branch of government, the Intelligence Branch.

I am going to explain how the Intelligence Branch works: (1) to control every other branch of government; (2) how it functions as an entirely independent branch of government with no oversight; (3) how and why it was created to be independent from oversight; (4) what is the current mission of the IC Branch, and most importantly (5) who operates it.

The Intelligence Branch is an independent functioning branch of government, it is no longer a subsidiary set of agencies within the Executive Branch as most would think. To understand the Intelligence Branch, we need to drop the elementary school civics class lessons about three coequal branches of government and replace that outlook with the modern system that created itself.

The Intelligence Branch functions much like the State Dept, through a unique set of public-private partnerships that support it. Big Tech industry collaboration with intelligence operatives is part of that functioning; almost like an NGO. However, the process is much more important than most think. In this problematic perspective of a corrupt system of government, the process is the flaw – not the outcome.

There are people making decisions inside this little known, unregulated and out-of-control branch of government that impact every facet of our lives.

None of the people operating deep inside the Intelligence Branch were elected, and our elected representative House members genuinely do not know how the system works. I assert this position affirmatively because I have talked to House and Senate staffers, including the chiefs of staff for multiple House & Senate committee seats. They are not malicious people; however, they are genuinely clueless of things that happen outside their silo. That is part of the purpose of me explaining it, with examples, in full detail with sunlight.

We begin….

In April of 2016, the FBI launched a counterintelligence operation against presidential candidate Donald Trump. The questioning about that operation is what New York Representative Elise Stefanik cites in March of 2017, approximately 11 months later (First Two Minutes).

Things to note:

♦ Notice how FBI Director James Comey just matter-of-factly explains no one outside the DOJ was informed about the FBI operation. Why? Because that’s just the way things are done. His justification for unilateral operations was “because of the sensitivity of the matter“, totally ignoring any constitutional or regulatory framework for oversight; because, well, quite simply, there isn’t any. The intelligence apparatus inside the DOJ/FBI can, and does, operate based on their own independent determinations of authority.

♦ Notice also how FBI Director Comey shares his perspective that informing the National Security Council (NSC) is the equivalent of notifying the White House. The FBI leadership expressly believe they bear no responsibility to brief the Chief Executive. As long as they tell some unknown, unelected, bureaucratic entity inside the NSC, their unwritten responsibility to inform the top of their institutional silo is complete. If the IC wants to carve out the Oval Office, they simply plant information inside the NSC and, from their perspective, their civic responsibility to follow checks-and-balances is complete. This is an intentional construct.

♦ Notice how Comey obfuscates notification to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), by avoiding the fact James Clapper was the DNI from outset of the counterintelligence operation throughout the remainder of Obama’s term. When I get deeper into the process, we will understand how the Intelligence Branch has intentionally used the creation of the DNI position (established post 9/11/01) as a method to avoid oversight, not enhance it. Keeping an oblivious doofus like James Clapper in position held strategic value [Doofus Reminder HERE].

That video of James Comey being questioned by Elise Stefanik was the first example given to me by someone who knew the background of everything that was taking place preceding that March 20, 2017, hearing. That FBI reference point is a key to understand how the Intelligence Branch operates with unilateral authority above Congress (legislative branch), above the White House (executive branch), and even above the court system (judicial branch).

Also, watch this short video of James Clapper because it is likely many readers have forgotten, and likely even more readers have never seen it.  Watch closely how then White House national security adviser John Brennan is responding in that video.  This is before Brennan became CIA Director, this is when Brennan was helping Barack Obama put the pillars into place.  WATCH:

[Sidebar: Every time I post this video it gets scrubbed from YouTube (example), so save it if you ever want to see it again.]

The video of James Clapper highlights how the ODNI position (created with good national security intention) ended up becoming the fulcrum for modern weaponization, and is now an office manipulated by agencies with a vested interest in retaining power. The Intelligence Branch holds power over the ODNI through their influence and partnership with the body that authorizes the power within it, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

Factually, the modern intelligence apparatus uses checks and balances in their favor. The checks create silos of proprietary information, classified information, vaults of information that work around oversight issues. The silos are part of the problem.

Ironically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the aftermath of 9/11/01 expressly to eliminate the silos of information which they felt led to a domestic terrorist attack that could have been prevented. The ODNI was created specifically upon the recommendation of the 9/11 commission.

The intent was to create a central hub of intelligence information, inside the Executive Branch, where the CIA, NSA, DoD, DoS, and DIA could deposit their unique intelligence products and a repository would be created so that domestic intelligence operations, like the DOJ and FBI could access them when needed to analyze threats to the U.S. This, they hoped, would ensure the obvious flags missed in the 9/11 attacks would not be missed again.

The DNI office created a problem for those who operate in the shadows of proprietary information. You’ll see how it was critical to install a person uniquely skilled in being an idiot, James Clapper, into that willfully blind role while intelligence operatives worked around the office to assemble the Intelligence Branch of Government.

• The last federal budget that flowed through the traditional budgetary process was signed into law in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008 by George W. Bush. Every budget since then has been a fragmented process of continuing resolutions and individual spending bills.

Why does this matter? Because many people think defunding the Intelligence Community is a solution; it is not…. at least, not yet. Worse yet, the corrupt divisions deep inside the U.S. intelligence system can now fund themselves from multinational private sector partnerships (banks, corporations and foreign entities).

• When Democrats took over the House of Representatives in January 2007, they took office with a plan. Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, and Democrats controlled the Senate where Harry Reid was Majority Leader. Barack Obama was a junior senator from Illinois.

Pelosi and Reid intentionally did not advance a budget in 2008 (for fiscal year 2009) because their plan included installing Barack Obama (and all that came with him) with an open checkbook made even more lucrative by a worsening financial crisis and a process called baseline budgeting. Baseline budgeting means the prior fiscal year budget is accepted as the starting point for the next year budget. All previous expenditures are baked into the cake within baseline budgeting.

Massive bailouts preceded Obama’s installation due to U.S. economic collapse, and massive bailouts continued after his installation. This is the ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ aspect. TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program), auto bailouts (GM), and the massive stimulus spending bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, ie. those shovel ready jobs) were all part of the non budget spending. The federal reserve assisted with Quantitative Easing (QE1 and QE2) as congress passed various Porkulous spending bills further spending and replacing the formal budget process.

Note: There has never been a budget passed in the normal/traditional process since September of 2007.

• While Obama’s radical ‘transformation‘ was triggered across a broad range of government institutions, simultaneously spending on the U.S. military was cut, but spending on the intelligence apparatus expanded. We were all distracted by Obamacare, and the Republican party wanted to keep us that way. However, in the background there was a process of transformation taking place that included very specific action by Eric Holder and targeted effort toward the newest executive agency the ODNI.

The people behind Obama, those same people now behind Joe Biden, knew from years of strategic planning that ‘radical transformation’ would require control over specific elements inside the U.S. government. Eric Holder played a key role in his position as U.S. Attorney General in the DOJ.

AG Holder recruited ideologically aligned political operatives who were aware of the larger institutional objectives. One of those objectives was weaponizing the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) a division inside the DOJ that had no inspector general oversight. For most people the DOJ-NSD weaponization surfaced with a hindsight awakening of the DOJ-NSD targeting candidate Donald Trump many years later. However, by then the Holder crew had executed almost eight full years of background work.

• The second larger Obama/Holder objective was control over the FBI. Why was that important? Because the FBI does the domestic investigative work on anyone who needs or holds a security clearance. The removal of security clearances could be used as a filter to further build the internal ideological army they were assembling. Additionally, with new power in the ODNI created as a downstream consequence of the Patriot Act, new protocols for U.S. security clearances were easy to justify.

Carefully selecting fellow ideological travelers was facilitated by this filtration within the security clearance process. How does that issue later manifest?   Just look around at how politicized every intelligence agency has become, specifically including the FBI.

• At the exact same time this new background security clearance process was ongoing, again everyone distracted by the fight over Obamacare, inside the Department of State (Secretary Hillary Clinton) a political alignment making room for the next phase was being assembled. Names like Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton were familiar on television while Lisa Monaco worked as a legal liaison between the Obama White House and Clinton State Department.

Through the Dept of State (DoS) the intelligence apparatus began working on their first steps to align Big Tech with a larger domestic institutional objective. Those of you who remember the “Arab Spring”, some say “Islamist Spring”, will remember it was triggered by Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo – his first foreign trip. The State Department worked with grassroots organizers (mostly Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Qatar and Libya. Obama leaned heavily on the organizational network of Turkish President Recep Erdogan for contacts and support.

Why does this aspect matter to us? Well, you might remember how much effort the Obama administration put into recruiting Facebook and Twitter as resources for the various mideast rebellions the White House and DoS supported. This was the point of modern merge between the U.S. intelligence community and Big Tech social media.

In many ways, the coordinated political outcomes in Libya and Egypt were the beta test for the coordinated domestic political outcomes we saw in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community working with social media platforms and political operatives.

Overlaying all of that background activity was also a new alignment of the Obama-era intelligence apparatus with ideological federal “contractors“. Where does this contractor activity manifest? In the FISA Court opinion of Rosemary Collyer who cited the “interagency memorandum of understanding”, or MOU.

Hopefully, you can see a small part of how tentacled the system to organize/weaponize the intelligence apparatus was. None of this was accidental, all of this was by design, and the United States Senate was responsible for intentionally allowing most of this to take place.

That’s the 30,000/ft level backdrop history of what was happening as the modern IC was created. Next we will go into how all these various intelligence networks began working in unison and how they currently control all of the other DC institutions under them; including how they can carve out the President from knowing their activity.

♦ When Barack Obama was installed in January 2009, the Democrats held a 60 seat majority in the U.S. Senate. As the people behind the Obama installation began executing their longer-term plan, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was a tool to create the Intelligence Branch; it was not an unintentional series of events.

When Obama was installed, Dianne Feinstein was the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and Democrat operative Dan Jones was her lead staffer. Feinstein was completely controlled by those around her including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The CIA was in the process of turning over personnel following the Bush era, and as a result of a massive multi-year narrative of diminished credibility (Iraq WMD), a deep purge was underway. Obama/Holder were in the process of shifting intelligence alignment and the intensely political Democrat Leader Harry Reid was a key participant.

THE TRAP – Many people say that Congress is the solution to eliminating the Fourth and superseding Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. This is an exercise in futility because the Legislative Branch, specifically the SSCI, facilitated the creation of the Intelligence Branch. The SSCI cannot put the genie they created back in the bottle without admitting they too are corrupt; and the background story of their corruption is way too intense to be exposed now.

Every member of the SSCI is compromised in some controlling manner. Those Senators who disliked the control over them; specifically disliked because the risk of sunlight was tenuous and, well, possible; have either left completely or stepped down from the committee. None of the SSCI members past or present would ever contemplate saying openly what their tenure involved.

[Note: You might remember when Vice Chairman Mark Warner’s text messages surfaced, there was a controlled Republican SSCI member who came to his defense in February of 2018. It was not accidental that exact Senator later became the chair of the SSCI himself. That Republican Senator is Marco Rubio, now vice-chair since the Senate re-flipped back to the optics of Democrat control in 2021.]

All of President Obama’s 2009 intelligence appointments required confirmation from the Senate. The nominees had to first pass through the Democrat controlled SSCI, and then to a full Senate vote where Democrats held a 60 vote majority. Essentially, Obama got everyone he wanted in place easily. Rahm Emmanuel was Obama’s Chief of Staff, and Valerie Jarrett was Senior Advisor.

Tim Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 when the joint DOJ/FBI and IRS operation to target the Tea Party took place after the midterm “shellacking” caused by the Obamacare backlash. Mitch McConnell was Minority Leader in the Senate but supported the targeting of the Tea Party as his Senate colleagues were getting primaried by an angry and effective grassroots campaign. McConnell’s friend, Senator Bob Bennett,  getting beaten in Utah was the final straw.

Dirty Harry and Mitch McConnell saw the TEA Party through the same prism. The TEA Party took Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts (Scott Brown); Sharon Angle was about to take out Harry Reid in Nevada; Arlen Spector was taken down in Pennsylvania; Senator Robert Byrd died; Senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller in Alaska; McConnell’s nominee Mike Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware; Rand Paul won in Kentucky. This is the background. The peasants were revolting…. and visibly angry Mitch McConnell desperately made a deal with the devil to protect himself.

In many ways, the TEA Party movement was/is very similar to the MAGA movement. The difference in 2010 was the absence of a head of the movement, in 2015 Donald Trump became that head figure who benefited from the TEA Party energy. Trump came into office in 2017 with the same congressional opposition as the successful TEA Party candidates in 2011.

Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 mid-terms. Republicans took control of the SSCI in January 2015. Senator Richard Burr became chairman of the SSCI, and Dianne Feinstein shifted to Vice-Chair. Dirty Harry Reid left the Senate, and Mitch McConnell took power again.

Republicans were in control of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2015 when the Intelligence Branch operation against candidate Donald Trump was underway. [Feinstein’s staffer, Dan Jones, left the SSCI so he could act as a liaison and political operative between private-sector efforts (Fusion GPS, Chris Steele) and the SSCI.] The SSCI was a participant in that Fusion-GPS/Chris Steele operation, and as a direct consequence Republicans were inherently tied to the problem with President Trump taking office in January of 2017. Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats was a member of the SSCI.

Bottom line…. When it came to the intelligence system targeting Donald Trump during the 2015/2016 primary, the GOP was just as much at risk as their Democrat counterparts.

When Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election, the SSCI was shocked more than most. They knew countermeasures would need to be deployed to protect themselves from any exposure of their intelligence conduct. Dianne Feinstein stepped down, and Senator Mark Warner was elevated to Vice Chairman.

Indiana’s own Mike Pence, now Vice President, recommended fellow Hoosier, SSCI Senator Dan Coats, to become President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). [Apply hindsight here]

• To give an idea of the Intelligence Branch power dynamic, remind yourself how House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Devin Nunes, tried to get access to the DOJ/FBI records of the FISA application used against the Trump campaign via Carter Page.

Remember, Devin Nunes only saw a portion of the FISA trail from his review of a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) previously given to President Obama. Chairman Nunes had to review the PDB at the White House SCIF due to compartmented intelligence, another example of the silo benefit.

Remember the massive stonewalling and blocking of the DOJ/FBI toward Nunes? Remember the back and forth battle over declassification surrounding the Nunes memo?

Remember, after Nunes went directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan for help (didn’t get any), the DOJ only permitted two members from each party within the HPSCI to review the documents, and only at the DOJ offices of main justice?

Contrast that amount of House Intel Committee railroading and blocking by intelligence operatives in the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI, with the simple request by Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner asking to see the Carter Page FISA application and immediately a copy being delivered to him on March 17th 2017.

Can you see which intelligence committee is aligned with the deepest part of the deep state?

Oh, how quickly we forget:

The contrast of ideological alignment between the House, Senate and Intelligence Branch is crystal clear when viewed through the prism of cooperation. You can see which legislative committee holds the power and support of the Intelligence Branch. The Senate Intel Committee facilitates the corrupt existence of the IC Branch, so the IC Branch only cooperates with the Senate Intel Committee. It really is that simple.

• The Intelligence Branch carefully selects its own members by controlling how security clearances are investigated and allowed (FBI). The Intelligence Branch also uses compartmentalization of intelligence as a way to keep each agency, and each downstream branch of government (executive, legislative and judicial), at arms length as a method to stop anyone from seeing the larger picture of their activity. I call this the “silo effect“, and it is done by design.

I have looked at stunned faces when I presented declassified silo product from one agency to the silo customers of another. You would be astonished at what they don’t know because it is not in their ‘silo’.

Through the advise and consent rules, the Intelligence Branch uses the SSCI to keep out people they consider dangerous to their ongoing operations. Any appointee to the intelligence community must first pass through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they get a full Senate vote. If the SSCI rejects the candidate, they simply refuse to take up the nomination. The president is then blocked from that appointment. This is what happened with President Trump over-and-over again.

• Additionally, the Intelligence Branch protects itself, and its facilitating allies through the formal classification process. The Intelligence Branch gets to decide unilaterally what information will be released and what information will be kept secret. There is no entity outside the Intelligence Branch, and yes that includes the President of the United States, who can supersede the classification authority of the Intelligence Branch. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} This is something 99.9% of the people on our side get totally and frustratingly wrong.

No one can declassify, or make public, anything the Intelligence Branch will not agree to. Doubt this?  Ask Ric Grenell, John Ratcliffe, or even President Trump himself.

• The classification process is determined inside the Intelligence Branch, all by themselves. They get to choose what rank of classification exists on any work-product they create; and they get to decide what the classification status is of any work product that is created by anyone else. The Intelligence Branch has full control over what is considered classified information and what is not. The Intelligence Branch defines what is a “national security interest” and what is not. A great technique for hiding fingerprints of corrupt and illegal activity.

[For familiar reference see the redactions to Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The Intelligence Branch does all redactions.]

• Similarly, the declassification process is a request by an agency, even a traditionally superior agency like the President of the United States, to the Intelligence Branch asking for them to release the information. The Intelligence Branch again holds full unilateral control. If the head of the CIA refuses to comply with the declassification instruction of the President, what can the president do except fire him/her? {Again, GO DEEPHow does the President replace the non-compliant cabinet member?  They have to go through the SSCI confirmation.  See the problem?

Yes, there are ways to break up the Intelligence Branch, but they do not start with any congressional effort. As you can see above, the process is the flaw – not the solution. Most conservative pundits have their emphasis on the wrong syllable. Their cornerstone is false.

For their own self-preservation, the Intelligence Branch has been interfering in our elections for years. The way to tear this apart begins with STATE LEVEL election reform that blocks the Legislative Branch from coordinating with the Intelligence Branch.

The extreme federalism approach is critical and also explains why Joe Biden has instructed Attorney General Merrick Garland to use the full power of the DOJ to stop state level election reform efforts. The worry of successful state level election control is also why the Intelligence Branch now needs to support the federal takeover of elections.

Our elections have been usurped by the Intelligence Branch. Start with honest elections and we will see just how much Democrat AND Republican corruption is dependent on manipulated election results. Start at the state level. Start there…. everything else is downstream.

♦ People want examples, reference points for work the Intelligence Branch conducts, specifically how it protects itself.

Here is an example: Julian Assange.

Yes, the history of the U.S. national security apparatus goes back decades; however, the weaponization of that apparatus, the creation of an apex branch of government, the Intelligence Branch, originated –as we currently feel it– under President Barack Obama.

Obama took the foundational tools created by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and used the intelligence system architecture to create a weapon for use in his fundamental transformation. An alliance of ideologues within government (intel community) and the private sector (big tech and finance) was assembled, and the largest government weapon was created. Think about this every time you take your shoes off at an airport.

After the weapon was assembled and tested (Arab Spring), the Legislative Branch was enjoined under the auspices of a common enemy, Donald J. Trump, an outsider who was a risk to every entity in the institutional construct of Washington DC. Trillions were at stake, and years of affluence and influence were at risk as the unholy alliance was put together.

To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to U.S. Intelligence Branch interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016.

It is within the network of foreign and domestic intel operations where Intelligence Branch political tool, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, was working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI counterintelligence operations.

By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. {Go Deep}

In a similar fashion, the FBI tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor, Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos.

The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets much easier.

HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes outlined how very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and yet withheld from the FISA application used against Carter Page that also mentions George Papadopoulos. The FBI also fabricated information in the FISA.

However, there is an aspect to the domestic U.S. operation that also bears the fingerprints of the international intelligence apparatus; only this time, due to the restrictive laws on targets inside the U.S., the CIA aspect is less prominent. This is where FBI Agent Peter Strzok working for both agencies was important.

Remember, it’s clear in the text messages Strzok had a working relationship with what he called their “sister agency”, the CIA. Additionally, former CIA Director John Brennan has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative; and Peter Strzok wrote the July 31st, 2016, “Electronic Communication” that originated FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane.” Strzok immediately used that EC to travel to London to debrief allied intelligence officials connected to the Australian Ambassador to the U.K, Alexander Downer.

In short, Peter Strzok acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for the Intelligence Branch and CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.

Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the end of 2015; at appropriately the same time as “FBI Contractors” were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on a specific set of U.S. persons, the 2015 GOP candidates for President.

It was also Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskaya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working double agents for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S.

Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion-GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with public reporting… back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan died in a helicopter crash.

Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid 2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using a young Russian named Maria Butina tasked to run up against republican presidential candidates. According to Patrick Byrne, Butina’s private sector handler [NOTE: remember, the public-private sector partnership], it was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Patrick Byrne the instructions on where to send Butina. {Go Deep}

All of this context outlines the extent to which the FBI/CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that eventually settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump’s orbit. The international operations of the Intelligence Branch were directed by the FBI/CIA; and the domestic operations were coordinated by Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [Strzok gets CIA service coin]

Recap: ♦Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Halper tasked against Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA), and Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Azra Turk, pretending to be a Halper asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI). ♦Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr (CIA, Fusion-GPS). ♦Butina tasked against Donald Trump Jr (FBI). All of these activities were coordinated.

Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. However, Deripaska refused to participate.

All of this foreign and domestic engagement was directly controlled by collaborating U.S. intelligence agencies from inside the Intelligence Branch. And all of this coordinated activity was intended to give a specific Russia influence/interference impression.

♦ The key point of all that background context is to see how committed the Intelligence Branch was to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ and DOJ-NSD, put a hell of a lot of work into it.

We also know that John Durham looked at the construct of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA); and talked to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is important because it ties in to the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the EDVA. From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018:

(Link to pdf)

On Tuesday April 15th more investigative material was released. Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, *December of 2017* This means FBI investigation prior to….

The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, and it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigationApril 2019.

Why the delay?

What was the DOJ waiting for?

Here’s where it gets interesting….

The FBI submission to the Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after Congressman Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: “Assange told a U.S. congressman … he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents … did not come from Russia.”

(August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year’s election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.

Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill.

“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”

Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. (read more)

Knowing how much effort the Intelligence Branch put into the false Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, it would make sense for the FBI to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange, monitor all activity, and why the FBI would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017.

Within three months of the EDVA grand jury, the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March 2018.

The DOJ sat on the indictment while the Mueller/Weissmann probe was ongoing.

As soon as the Mueller/Weissmann probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed (link).

As a person who has researched this fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.

It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange. The Weissmann/Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes for justification, and that narrative was contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.

♦ This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange on-the-record statements.

The predicate for Robert Mueller’s investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment; and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from Crowdstrike, a DNC and FBI contractor.

The CIA holds a self-interest in upholding the Russian hacking claim; the FBI holds an interest in maintaining that claim; the U.S. media hold an interest in maintaining that claim. All of the foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also have a self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.

Julian Assange is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of the DNC emails; and Assange has claimed he has evidence it was not from a hack.

This “Russian hacking” claim was ultimately important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K intelligence apparatus, it forms the corner of their justification. With that level of importance, well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Julian Assange down as soon as intelligence officials knew the Weissmann/Mueller report was going to be public.

…. and that’s exactly what they did. They threw a bag over Assange.

♦ COLLAPSED OVERSIGHT – The modern system to ‘check’ the Executive Branch was the creation of the legislative “Gang of Eight,” a legislative oversight mechanism intended to provide a bridge of oversight between the authority of the intelligence community within the Executive Branch.

The Go8 construct was designed to allow the President authority to carry out intelligence operations and provide the most sensitive notifications to a select group within Congress.

The Go8 oversight is directed to the position, not the person, and consists of: (1) The Speaker of the House; (2) The Minority Leader of the House; (3) The Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI; (4) The Ranking Member (minority) of the HPSCI; (5) The Leader of the Senate; (6) The Minority Leader of the Senate; (7) The Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI; and finally (8) the Vice-Chair of the SSCI.

Example: When the Chief Executive (the President) initiates an intelligence operation on behalf of the United States, the President triggers a “finding memo.” In essence, the instruction to the intel agency or agencies to authorize a covert operation. When that process takes place, the Go8 are the first people notified. Depending on the sensitivity of the operation, sometimes the G08 are notified immediately after the operation is conducted. The notification can be a phone call or an in-person briefing.

Because of the sensitivity of their intelligence information, the Gang of Eight hold security clearances that permit them to receive and review all intelligence operations. The intelligence community are also responsible for briefing the Go8 with the same information they use to brief the President.

~ 2021 Gang of Eight ~

The Go8 design is intended to put intelligence oversight upon both political parties in Congress; it is designed that way by informing the minority leaders of both the House and Senate as well as the ranking minority members of the SSCI and HPSCI. Under the concept, the President cannot conduct an intelligence operation; and the intelligence community cannot carry out intelligence gathering operations without the majority and minority parties knowing about it.

The modern design of this oversight system was done to keep rogue and/or corrupt intelligence operations from happening. However, as we shared in the preview to this entire discussion, the process was usurped during the Obama era. {GO DEEP}

Former FBI Director James Comey openly admitted to Congress on March 20, 2017, that the FBI, FBI Counterintelligence Division, DOJ and DOJ-National Security Division, together with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA, had been conducting independent investigations of Donald Trump for over a year without informing the Go8. Comey justified the lack of informing Go8 oversight by saying, “because of the sensitivity of the matter.”

Stupidly, Congress never pressed James Comey on that issue. The arrogance was astounding, and the acceptance by Congress was infuriating. However, that specific example highlighted just how politically corrupt the system had become. In essence, Team Obama usurped the entire design of congressional oversight…. and Congress just brushed it off.

Keep in mind, Comey did not say the White House was unaware; in fact he said exactly the opposite, he said, “The White House was informed through the National Security Council,” (the NSC). The implication, the very direct and specific implication; the unavoidable implication and James Comey admission that everyone just brushed aside, was that President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, was totally informed of the intelligence operation(s) against Donald Trump. After all, the NSC reports to the National Security Advisor.

Does the January 20, 2017, Susan Rice memo look different now?

Again, no one saw the immediate issue. What Comey just described on that March day in 2017 was the total usurpation of the entire reason the Gang of Eight exists; to eliminate the potential for political weaponization of the Intelligence Community by the executive branch. The G08 notifications to the majority and minority are specifically designed to make sure what James Comey admitted to doing was never supposed to happen.

Team Obama carried out a political operation using the intelligence community and the checks-and-balances in the system were intentionally usurped. This is an indisputable fact.

Worse still, the entire legislative branch of Congress, which specifically includes the Republicans that now controlled the House and Senate, did nothing. They just ignored what was admitted. The usurpation was willfully ignored.  The mechanism of the G08 was bypassed without a twitch of condemnation or investigation…. because the common enemy was Donald Trump.

This example highlights the collapse of the system. Obama, the executive branch, collapsed the system by usurping the process; in essence the process became the bigger issue and the lack of immediate legislative branch reaction became evidence of open acceptance. The outcomes of the usurpation played out over the next four years, Donald J. Trump was kneecapped and lost his presidency because of it. However, the bigger issue of the collapse still exists.

The downstream consequence of the Legislative Branch accepting the Executive Branch usurpation meant both intelligence committees were compromised. Additionally, the leadership of both the House and Senate were complicit. Think about this carefully. The Legislative Branch allowance of the intelligence usurpation meant the Legislative Branch was now subservient to the Intelligence Branch.

That’s where we are.

Right now.

That’s where we are.

Term-3 Obama is now back in the White House with Joe Biden.

Term-1 and Term-2 Obama usurped the ‘check and balance‘ within the system and weaponized the intelligence apparatus. During Trump’s term that weaponization was covered up by a compliant congress, and not a single member of the oversight called it out. Now, Term-3 Obama steps back in to continue the cover up and continue the weaponization.

Hopefully, you can now see the scale of the problem that surrounds us with specific citation for what has taken place. What I just explained to you above is not conspiracy theory, it is admitted fact that anyone can look upon. Yet….

Have you seen this mentioned anywhere? Have you seen this called out by anyone in Congress? Have you seen anyone in media (ally or adversary) call this out? Have you seen any member of the Judicial Branch stand up and say wait, what is taking place is not okay? Have you seen a single candidate for elected office point this out? Have you seen anyone advising a candidate point this out?

This is our current status. It is not deniable. The truth exists regardless of our comfort.

Not a single person in power will say openly what has taken place. They are scared of the Fourth Branch. The evidence of what has taken place is right there in front of our face. The words, actions and activities of those who participated in this process are not deniable.

There are only two members of the Gang of Eight who have existed in place from January 2007 (the real beginning of Obama’s term, two years before he took office when the Congress flipped). Only two members of the G08 have been consistently in place from January of 2007 to right now, today. All the others came and went, but two members of the Gang of Eight have been part of that failed and collapsed oversight throughout the past 15 years, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.

♦ TECHNOLOGY – On a global scale – the modern intelligence gathering networks are now dependent on data collection to execute their intelligence missions. In the digital age nations have been executing various methods to gather that data. Digital surveillance has replaced other methods of interception. Those surveillance efforts have resulted in a coalescing of regional data networks based on historic multi-national relationships.

We have a recent frame of reference for the “U.S. data collection network” within the NSA. Through the allied process the Five Eyes nations all rely on the NSA surveillance database (U.K, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.) The NSA database provides the digital baseline for intelligence operations in defense of our allies. The portals into the NSA database are essentially an assembly of allies in like-minded ideological connection to the United States.

Unfortunately, there have been some revelations about the NSA database being used to monitor our allies, like in the example of Germany and surveillance on Angela Merkel’s phone. As long as “the good guys” are operating honorably, allies of the United States can feel confident about having protection from the NSA surveillance of global digital data. We warn our friends if we detect something dangerous etc.

The U.S. has nodes on communication pipelines to intercept and extract data. We have also launched hundreds, perhaps thousands, of satellites to conduct surveillance and gather up data. All of this data is fed into the NSA database where it is monitored (presumably) as a national security mechanism, and in defense of our allies.

However, what about data collection or data networks that are outside the NSA database? What do our enemies do? The NSA database is just one intelligence operation of digital surveillance amid the entire world, and we do not allow access by adversaries we are monitoring. So what do they do? What do our allies do who might not trust the United States due to past inconsistencies, ie. the Middle East?

The answers to those questions highlight other data collection networks. So a brief review of the major players is needed.

♦ CHINA – China operates their own database. They, like the NSA, scoop up data for their system. Like us, China launches satellites and deploys other electronic data collection methods to download into their database. This is why the issues of electronic devices manufactured in China becomes problematic. Part of the Chinese data collection system involves the use of spyware, hacking and extraction.

Issues with Chinese communication company Huawei take on an added dimension when you consider the goal of the Chinese government to conduct surveillance and assemble a network of data to compete with the United States via the NSA. Other Chinese methods of surveillance and data-collection are less subversive, as in the examples of TicTok and WeChat. These are Chinese social media companies that are scraping data just like the NSA scrapes data from Facebook, Twitter and other Silicon Valley tech companies. [ Remember, the Intelligence Branch is a public-private partnership. ]

♦ RUSSIA – It is very likely that Russia operates their own database. We know Russia launches satellites, just like China and the USA, for the same purposes. Russia is also very proficient at hacking into other databases and extracting information to store and utilize in their own network. The difference between the U.S., China and Russia is likely that Russia spends more time on the hacking aspect because they do not generate actual technology systems as rapidly as the U.S. and China.

The most recent database creation is an outcome of an ally having to take action because they cannot rely on the ideology of the United States remaining consistent, as the administrations ping-pong based on ideology.

 SAUDI ARABIA – Yes, in 2016 we discovered that Saudi Arabia was now operating their own intelligence data-gathering operation. It would make sense, given the nature of the Middle East and the constant fluctuations in political support from the United States. It is a lesson the allied Arab community and Gulf Cooperation Council learned quickly when President Obama went to Cairo in 2009 and launched the Islamist Spring (Arab Spring) upon them.

I have no doubt the creation of the Saudi intelligence network was specifically because the Obama administration started supporting radical Islamists within the Muslim Brotherhood, and threw fuel on the fires of extremism all over the Arab world.

Think about it., What would you do if you were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Oman or Yemen and you knew the United States could just trigger an internal uprising of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek your destruction?

Without a doubt, those urgent lessons from 2009, 2010, 2011 triggered the formation of the Arab Intelligence Network as a network to defend itself with consistency. They assembled the network and activated it in 2017 as pictured above.

 Israel – Along a similar outlook to the Arab network, no doubt Israel operates an independent data collection system as a method of protecting itself from ever-changing U.S. politics amid a region that is extremely hostile to its very existence. Like the others, Israel launches proprietary satellites, and we can be sure they use covert methods to gather electronic data just like the U.S. and China.

As we have recently seen in the Pegasus story, Israel creates spyware programs that are able to track and monitor cell phone communications of targets. The spyware would not work unless Israel had access to some network where the phone meta-data was actually stored. So yeah, it makes sense for Israel to operate an independent intelligence database.

♦ Summary: As we understand the United States Intelligence Branch of government as the superseding entity that controls the internal politics of our nation, we also must consider that multiple nations have the same issue. There are major intelligence networks around the world beside the NSA “Five-Eyes” database. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel all operate proprietary databases deploying the same tools and techniques for assembly.

The geopolitical conflict that has always existed has now shifted into a digital battle-space. The Intelligence Agencies from these regions are now operating as the backbone of the government that uses them, and has become dependent on them. [<- Reread that].

Once you accept the digital-era intelligence apparatus of China, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, The United States and Israel, are now the primary national security mechanisms for stabilization of government; then you accept the importance of those intelligence operations.

Once you understand how foundational those modern intelligence operations have become for the stability and continuity of those governments…… then you begin to understand just how the United States intelligence community became more important than the government that created it.

♦ Public Private Partnership – The modern Fourth Branch of Government is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus. You do not have to take my word for it, the partnership is so brazen they have made public admissions.

The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus. It might be difficult to fathom how openly they admit this, but they do. Look at this sentence in the press release (emphasis mine):

[…] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”

Think about that sentence structure very carefully. They are “adding to” the preexisting list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a preexisting list created by the Five Eyes consortium.

Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves. This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.

When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States. They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data-mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.

The government cannot conduct electronic searches (4th amendment issue) without a warrant; however, private individuals can search and report back as long as they have access. What is being admitted is exactly that preexisting partnership. The difference is that Big Tech will flag the content from within their platforms, and now a secondary database filled with the extracted information will be provided openly for the Intelligence Branch to exploit.

The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.

Previously, the Intelligence Branch worked around the constitutional and unlawful search issue by using resources that were not in the United States. A domestic U.S. agency, working on behalf of the U.S. government, cannot listen on your calls without a warrant. However, if the U.S. agency sub-contracts to say a Canadian group, or foreign ally, the privacy invasion is no longer legally restricted by U.S. law.

What was announced in June 2021 is an alarming admission of a prior relationship along with open intent to define their domestic political opposition as extremists.

July 26 (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.

Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.

The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (read more)

The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives. In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. The legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize.

After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what the installation of Barack Obama was all about.

The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created, and turned those weapons into tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation. Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.

♦ WHAT NOW? There is a way to stop and deconstruct the Intelligence Branch, but it requires some outside-the-box thinking and reliance on the Constitution as a tool to radically change one element within government. In the interim, we must remain focused on the three tiers that we need for success.

• Tier One is “tactical civics” at a local level. Engaged and active citizen participation at the community, city, town and hamlet level of society. This is what might be described as grassroots level, school board level; city council level; county commissioner level.

• Tier Two is “extreme federalism” at a state level. Engaged and active citizen participation through your State House and State Senate representative. This is state level assembly and action demands upon the State House, State Senate and State Governor.

• Tier Three the challenge of “federal offices” on a national level {Go Deep}.  This is the part where we need President Donald Trump, and his power to confront the issues comes directly from us.

I am confident that ultimately “We The People” will win.  How we can execute the solution is more challenging; in the interim, tactical civics and extreme federalism are doable right now, in this next 2024 election cycle.

It sucks that a UniParty congress extended FISA-702.  However, even if the hail-Mary pass on Monday fails, FISA was still extended for only two-years.

Support CTH HERE


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VIDEO Inside Baseball Stuff on FISA 702 Reauthorization, Stuff You Never See Explained – Surveillance bill, like herpes, it’ll be back – Pragmatic, Always Seeking Optimal Solutions

April 10, 2024 | Sundance |

Before getting into bigger picture analysis and intellectual discussion about FISA and the 702 reauthorizations, let me just reveal some inside DC crap that drives me nuts and at the same time will help y’all understand the nonsense.

First, the Intelligence Community (IC) tells congress, particularly the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, that all hell will break loose if they don’t reauthorize full electronic surveillance of Americans.  Congress is petrified of the IC.

Speaker Johnson and all of the key participants are totally siloed from understanding that 702 has nothing to do with incidental collection of American data whilst the honorable IC were doing foreign intercepts.   Johnson and most republicans believe the IC nonsense. They really do.

The politicians and their key staff cannot fathom how the FBI, DOJ, NSD, DHS and Contractors use this database to conduct political and “other” (think corporate espionage for sale) surveillance.  They really do think the IC is full of honorable rank-and-file.  They are inside a DC bubble.

Second, the IC argument is now something akin to we have let thousands of terrorists into the country through the southern border crisis.  They say:  “my god, we need to monitor the terrorists, and if you take away 702 the foreign terror cells will activate and start killing us all.  Do you want that blood on your hands?”   You cannot take away surveillance tools.

Third, FISA 702 reauthorization is used as a bargaining chip by people who don’t want to get caught up in the surveillance.

The DC conversations are something like, “ok, we’ll reauthorize it, but you cannot use it against us – and all the sex parties and perverted stuff we do when no one is around, you must promise to keep our secrets hidden“…  Yes, this is why the IC agree to accept a reauthorization that exempts congress.   The IC keep the blackmail, just promise not to use it.

We The People do not have any friends in DC on this issue.  The democrats will reauthorize 702 to continue exploiting surveillance authority – don’t forget over 10,000 log-in portals with access to the NSA database exist, including the workstation at Perkins Coie that ties into the NSA database {GO DEEP}.

President Trump finally opposes the FISA system – writ large – and THAT is progress.

More soon….

(An Accurate Depiction )House Speaker Mike Johnson 👇

WATCH: Tucker: Surveillance bill is dead but, like herpes, it’ll be back

‘It’s important to punish the people that pushed it,’ including one powerful Republican

By Tucker Carlson April 10, 2024

Pragmatic, Always Seeking Optimal Solutions

April 10, 2024 | Sundance | 

President Donald J Trump seeks optimal solutions for all challenges.  Internally he has his own set of standards and crystal-clear understanding of what he would want in any given situation; this is not difficult for a clear brain to accomplish.

However, in the world of multi-interests and larger group needs, in this case an entire nation of individuals and groups, President Trump knows that optimal solutions are best found closest to the work, closest to the source of the individual hearts.  Pragmatic leadership is often about optimal solutions. WATCH:

He/We will win.

They are increasingly desperate.  The need for control is a reaction to fear.   The next week to 10 days is critical.

I have much to share with our fellowship.  You will journey with me.

Tom Klingenstein releases Amazing Video, “Trump’s Virtues, Part II”


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VIDEO AG John Ashcroft and Constitutional Coalition File amicus brief – FBI Boasts: “We can put anyone in jail” – Ashli Babbit file – Why Are We Respecting Anti American Behavior? – Patriots Do Not Flinch

Some may view some language offensive

The Constitutional Coalition and former Attorney General John Ashcroft filed an amicus curiae (Friend of the Court) in the United States Supreme Court in the case United States v. Trump.  The appeal to the Supreme Court concerns the question of presidential immunity. More specifically, whether a subsequent president may criminally prosecute his (or her) predecessor, and current political rival, for official acts the previous president took while in office.  This amicus brief was not filed on behalf of either party – Special Counsel Jack Smith (hired by Attorney General Merrick Garland to prosecute former President Trump) nor on behalf of former President Trump.  Rather, this amicus brief was filed to defend the constitutional principle that a President of the United States, as the Nation’s chief executive, must have immunity from criminal prosecution for those official acts the President takes during the President’s term in office.  Otherwise, the President’s fear of a subsequent political rival bringing a criminal prosecution after the President leaves office will impair the President’s ability to make those decisions necessary to protect our national interest and discharge the duties of the office of Chief Executive.

This does not mean the President is “above the law” or is unaccountable.  Quite to the contrary.  The Founders adopted a very specific method for holding the President accountable.  That method is in Article One of the Impeachment Clause of the Constitution, which provides that, after impeached by the House and conviction by the Senate, the President may be subject to criminal prosecution.  The Constitutional principle at issue in United States v. Trump transcends Donald J. Trump individual and the immediate passions surrounding the 2024 Presidential Election.  How the Supreme Court decides this case could shift the balance in the Separation of Powers between the three branches of our government.  And, how the Supreme Court decides this constitutional issue will determine how future presidents fulfill their duty to act as the Nation’s Chief Executive.

The amicus brief former Attorney General Ashcroft and the Constitutional Coalition filed provides a historical context to this appeal that will assist the Supreme Court in answering this question. It is not hyperbole to suggest that United States v. Trump is of a constitutional magnitude equivalent to Chief Justice John Marshall’s decision for the Court in Marbury v. Madison.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/plugins/pdfjs-viewer-shortcode/pdfjs/web/viewer.php?file=https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/03-19-24-trump-v.-u.s.-amicus-as-filed.pdf&attachment_id=1126903&dButton=true&pButton=true&oButton=false&sButton=true#page=2&zoom=auto,-13,728

BREAKING: Undercover Video: CIA Officer/Former FBI Boasts: We “Can Put Anyone in Jail.. Set Them Up” – FBI “Did What We Wanted” with Alex Jones “Took His Money Away”

By Cristina Laila Apr. 9, 2024

A CIA Officer/former FBI official is on an undercover video boasting about using the might of the federal government to ‘jail anyone’ by ‘setting them up.’

Gavin O’Blennis, a Contracting Officer for the CIA told an undercover journalist with Sound Investigations that the FBI “can put anyone in jail…set ’em up!”

“We call it a nudge,” O’Blennis said, adding the FBI can put “problematic” right-wing journalists like Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones in jail.

O’Blennis said of Infowars founder Alex Jones: The FBI “took his money away,” and ‘chopped his legs off.’

Gavin O’Blennis said at least 20 undercover FBI agents were at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

“I thought you said that there were FBI agents in the crowd at January 6?” the undercover journalist asked O’Blennis.

He replied, “There are. There always are when there’s a big protest in DC. Just in case it gets out of hand like that…I mean, I’m talking they maybe had 20. You needed 1,000 to get rid of that crowd.”

He also said the FBI uses “embellished” news and “fake social media” to “really get people mad.”

WATCH:

FBI Quietly Releases Unclassified File on Ashli Babbitt… During the Solar Eclipse

By Anthony Scott Apr. 9, 2024

While most Americans were dialed in on the solar eclipse, the FBI quietly released unclassified documents regarding Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran whom a Capitol Police officer killed on January 6th.

On April 8th, the FBI released a highly redacted 69-page file on details of Ashli Babbitt’s death, military background, and testimonies on Babbitt’s character.

On page three of the file, it was written, “BABBITT is deceased, and therefore, this case is not being nominated to TSDB.”

TSDB stands for “the terrorist screening data.

The TSDB “contains biographic and biometric identifying information (e.g., name, date of birth, photographs, iris scans, and/or fingerprints) of known and suspected terrorists.”

The fact the FBI even mentioned the TSDB goes to show the FBI viewed Americans inside of the Capitol as “terrorists” rather than American citizens who were simply frustrated with the way the 2020 election was conducted.

The file oddly made no mention of Capitol Police Officer Lt. Michael Byrd but instead generally stated Babbitt was “shot by police.”

The Gateway Pundit was the first publication to correctly identify Michael Byrd as Ashli Babbitt’s cold-blooded killer.

Later in the file, the FBI provides a brief overview of Babbitt’s personal information, such as her fingerprints, DMV records, and details regarding her military service.

Several pages were redacted that contained “anonymous tips” made by unnamed individuals through the FBI’s tip line.

LOOK:

One page of the file was an interview of an individual whose name was redacted.

The individual described Babbitt as a very outgoing and loving person who loved her family and country.

In the same interview, the person stated Ashli would “never go after someone physically.”

The Gateway Pundit previously reported Judicial Watch filed a $30 million wrongful death lawsuit against the U.S. government for the death of Babbitt.

READ:

Greg Gutfeld On ‘Death To America’ Chants in Michigan: Why Are We Respecting Anti-American Behavior? (VIDEO)

By Mike LaChance Apr. 9, 2024

It has been widely reported that there were chants of ‘death to America’ at a recent event in Michigan. It’s the sort of thing we’re used to hearing from Iran but not in our own country.

During The Five on FOX News this week, Greg Gutfeld talked about this issue and where he sees this going. He suggests that the problem is going to get worse as left-leaning cities will be come mini-Gazas throughout the country.

He also asks why we are putting up with it.

Transcript via Real Clear Politics:

I get the impression with the “Death To America” stuff that we are on a slow roll toward our own little Gazas. These little islands of unrest in the country. These were places that were sacrificed to leftism. Leftisms, where laws were discarded. Identity and division became the currency. Look at Minneapolis since George Floyd. It’s never been the same. It’s all these enclaves.

We were supposed to be a melting pot. But that requires melting. And instead what we are seeing is a hardening. It is a hardening. And we are always accused of xenophobia if we exalt our country’s awesomeness or make fun of another country’s customs. Fair enough. I get it. But it’s a two-way street. If you come here and reject assimilation, free speech, cooperation with people different than you.

Those are our values and if you reject them, you are xenophobic, you are anti-American. It’s not illegal, I guess. But why are we respecting it and why are we encouraging it? Leftism encourages this sort of behavior. It’s time for the adults to enter the room and basically change the conversation or these cities are gone.

Watch the video below:

Americans are very tolerant people but everyone is losing their patience with the radical left.

Patriots Do Not Flinch

April 9, 2024 | Sundance |

*Bumped*

Some may view some language offensive

We are patriots engaged in a battle of consequence!

We are the workforce.

We are also digital warriors, meme creators, artists, researchers, autists and ordinarily invisible people now considered dissidents in our own country.

We are the backbone of industry, the people who keep it all functioning, the builders, diggers and blue-collar workforce that keeps everything functioning.

We are the people they will never fully control.  We speak in languages they do not understand, and we absorb targeted ridicule as fuel.

We are the movers of goods, the truckers, the farmers, the nameless people behind the skilled trades that keep what they call American society moving.

We are the people who grow the food, pick the food, transport the food, stock the food, cook the food and facilitate the life they live.

We are a visible, yet disregarded, insurgent force within their sphere of life that is never considered, yet we control the outcomes of every moment they value.

We pick up the trash, answer the phones, run cables to their devices, mow their lawns, solve their problems, control the flow of essential services and keep our heads below the radar.

We are the majority.

We are a self-reliant, freedom loving, normally peaceful and God-fearing assembly.

We drive them to their destination; we are comfortably out of mind until needed, and yet we are irreplaceable for the things they require.

We are armed with tools, hammers, pens, rulers, mice, pickup trucks, laptops, post-it notes, stickers and alternate forms of messaging that circumvent the control mechanisms deployed to create our silence.

We are inside every facility, every institution, every meeting, every moment of their existence – and we notice everything.

We have eyes of mice and ears of elephants.  We are there when they do not expect, and we melt away before they notice our appearance.

We are smart, strategic, highly intelligent and carry a brutally obvious and pragmatic common sense that finds optimal solutions to everything.

We identify our tribe immediately and without conversation.

We see what they hide, we hear what they whisper, we decipher their codes, and we understand the complexity they create in their effort to conceal.

We control the physical world that operates around every element of society, and we value real and tangible assets.

We do not sit around pontificating eloquently about philosophic nuances; we get sh^t done.

We are the people who facilitate their ability to take us for granted, and we do so without issue, resentment or desire for recognition.

We are optimistic, affable, kind, generous, friendly, loyal, warm and quietly spiritual in purpose.

We are polite, considerate and slow to anger.

We prefer to be left alone.  However, pushed entirely far enough, decisions are reached.  Right now, we are tenuously staring with deepened gaze.

We are increasingly pi^^d off…. Big Time!

In every town, village and hamlet we are encountering the same conversation.  On every porch, in every shop, at every event, the topic is the same.

Right now, we are taking this fury to the platforms of visibility where we hope to influence outcomes.  But if that effort fails, and/or if the command-and-control authorities make the mistake of thinking they can shut down our visibility, destroy our leadership and therefore control the dissent, there will be no quarter provided in the aftermath.

The two biggest mistakes they can make right now is not understanding why we have begun to bow our heads.

First, our heads are not bowed because we are subservient, cowering or accepting the current effort to control us….

….We are praying!

Their second mistake would be to ignore that we are not praying for us

….We are praying for those who trespass against us!

They may not like what follows, “Amen!

We are resolute and of common purpose.

We are what they fear!

Fuel the Rebellion ]


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VIDEO Ideology expressed by ex-justice on Supreme Court blasted as ‘bunk’ – Trump gets message through Hewitt “bait & shaping” -Here’s the bright side of a dark time

Accused of wanting ‘philosopher kings’ to be ruling

By Bob Unruh March 29, 2024

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer at the State of the Union address on Tuesday, March 1, 2022. (Video screenshot)

Ex-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer at the State of the Union address on Tuesday, March 1, 2022.

Stephen Breyer, who sat on the U.S. Supreme Court for nearly three decades before resigning in 2022, has written a book, like so many others who come out of the Washington, D.C., swamp, and is on a tour promoting it.

As part of those interviews, he’s lashed out at the rest of the court for overturning the faulty and unconstitutional Roe v. Wade decision that created a “right” to abortion, and also promoted his personal ideology of a changeable U.S. Constitution.

And he’s getting blasted, in a house editorial at the Washington Examiner, for his warping of the nation’s foundation document.

“The learned justice says his method of judging is needed as a model for successors because ‘the world does change,’ so if the court doesn’t interpret the Constitution as evolvable, too, ‘we will have a Constitution that no one wants.’ Therefore, he says repeatedly, his method ‘involves purposes, consequences, values, and sometimes much more.’

“This sounds high-minded and reasonable, but it is bunk. Even worse, it is a power grab subject to no limiting principle, especially when he goes into an open-ended ‘much more’ phase. Breyer treats as paramount the jurist’s subjective assessment of ‘values and sometimes much more,’ as if he possesses Olympian wisdom about such matter above that of mere mortals. This would turn representative democracy into an elitist oligarchy, a rule by nine supposedly wise men and women, against America’s constitutional design that deliberately separates, disperses, and blends power in multitudinous ways intended to safeguard liberty.”

Breyer quit the court at a time when Joe Biden was able to push Ketanji Jackson, a far-left ideologue adored by leftists, onto the bench.

The Examiner noted that Breyer’s comments suggest he basically puts judges “above the law.”

Breyer’s writings claim to make a case for using “pragmatism,” or adjusting the Constitution to circumstances, rather than reading it as it was originally written.

“What Breyer’s suggestion amounts to is the anti-democratic idea that judges should be free to twist what the law says to suit their own prejudices — that is, they should be above the law rather than servants of it.”

The piece explained what America’s founders set up: “In a republic, applying ‘values’ and trying to create the right ‘consequences’ is the job not of judges but of the people’s elected representatives, or of the people themselves. The Constitution, as fundamental law enacted by the people, is supreme. Statutes written via representative procedures are next. The reason judges, ultimately Supreme Court justices, are final arbiters of what the law means is not because they possess superior moral or value-based perspicacity, but because they are supposed to be the most learned in parsing the words of laws to ensure they are applied faithfully. Jurists are supposed to be guided and humbly governed by the words of the law, not by willful masters over them.”

It continued, “Breyer’s ‘pragmatism’ … invites the mischief of judicial willfulness, unmoored from objective restraints, applied by nine people acting as philosopher kings.”

Hugh Hewitt Interviews President Trump on Current Events

April 5, 2024 | Sundance | 

Hugh Hewitt (Salem Media) is one of the key media control operatives on the right, fully controlled by the multinationals who organize controlled Republican politics, who attempts to manipulate political outcomes through the pressure of his platform.  Why any conservative would appear on the Hugh Hewitt broadcast is beyond my understanding.

In this interview, Hewitt starts shaping the conversation based on the editorial priorities handed to him by his benefactors.  However, that said, President Trump does a great job cutting through the majority of the Hewitt bait & shaping and he finds a way to explain his message despite Hewitt’s interventions.  

WATCH:

Hugh Hewitt, on behalf of the corporations and banking interests who organize their insurance policies, would love to influence the vice presidential selection.

WATCH: Tucker Carlson: Here’s the bright side of a dark time

People are starting to notice the lies

By Tucker Carlson April 6, 2024

Tucker Carlson (Video screenshot)

Tucker Carlson


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VIDEO Covert Biden court protects Europeans, but not Americans – Biden Ignoring Intelligence Agencies and DHS Reports – Judge’s Family Getting Rich Attacking Trump, Waters, Smith, Weissmann

Executive order created surveillance procedure

By WND News Services January 18, 2024

By Jason Cohen
Daily Caller News Foundation

Joe Biden’s administration established a covert court that safeguards the privacy rights of Europeans under U.S. law, but not those of Americans, Politico reported.

The Biden administration created the Data Protection Review Court (DPRC) at an unspecified time and location after receiving authorization under an October 2022 executive order, which resolved a legal clash between European and American laws that hindered the profitable exchange of consumer data for three years, according to Politico. Europeans, however, have access to the DPRC while Americans do not, even if they think they are subject to inappropriate government surveillance.

Americans have the option to seek recourse for surveillance in federal court, but it is contingent on demonstrating tangible injury or wrongdoing, which is exceedingly difficult to prove, according to Politico.

Get the hottest, most important news stories on the Internet – delivered FREE to your inbox as soon as they break! Take just 30 seconds and sign up for WND’s Email News Alerts!

“We’re in an odd place when non-residents have easier access to a place to raise their concerns about U.S. government surveillance than Americans do,” former chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) Adam Klein told Politico.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Announces Judges of the Data Protection Review Courthttps://t.co/s9C4ScBdR3 pic.twitter.com/clxiCkCGyK

— U.S. Department of Justice (@TheJusticeDept) November 14, 2023

Europeans’ private data can legally be surveilled by United States intelligence agencies, but the DPRC gives them protection, according to Politico. European Commission (EC) officials expressed approval in July.

The DPRC received its panel of eight judges in November, but there is not much else known about the court, according to Politico. Its location is unknown and the Department of Justice (DOJ) has not acknowledged any details about its caseload, nor will the court disclose its decisions.

Plaintiffs are prohibited from showing up to the court in person and, instead, have legal representation through a designated special advocate appointed by the United States attorney general, according to Politico.

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A DOJ official conceded the secretive nature of the DPRC, but emphasized to Politico the need for tackling government surveillance issues in a covert manner.

“There’s actual honest-to-goodness, something going on behind that, which is the investigation the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] does and the decision of the court,” the official told Politico.

The PCLOB will conduct oversight of the DPRC in a yearly review under the October executive order, which will lead to its transparency about caseloads, decisions and intelligence agency compliance, officials told Politico. A classified version of the yearly review will go to Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, congressional intelligence committees and intelligence community leaders, while the public will receive an unclassified version.

“We’re going to try to make as much information public as possible, because the whole point is to inspire confidence that we’re conducting activities appropriately,” the DOJ official told Politico.

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The White House and DOJ did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Biden Is Ignoring Intelligence Agencies and DHS Reports

By Antonio Graceffo Apr. 4, 2024 

By U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – http://www.ice.gov/images/news/releases/2010/100304atlanta_lg.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12186985

White Christians Not a Threat, Border Not Secure

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claims, “The border is secure,” and President Joe Biden said, “The most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.” Not only are they both lying, but they are also ignoring the reports produced by the US Intelligence Community, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Defense (DoD).

Biden appointees, including the president himself, have claimed that the border is secure and that white Christian nationalists are the greatest threats to national security. These statements weaken our ability to address real threats. If the border is secure, then funding for additional security would be unjustified. And if Biden starts wasting public funds and security resources to hunt down white Christians, he will be leaving the country open to attacks from the real threats: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Islamic extremists.

As Central Banks Stockpile Gold, a Christian Company Works To Help Americans Get Ahead of the “Retirement Bubble”

President Trump said he would deport illegal aliens. Kamala Harris went on TV and said that she would “fight for their rights.” This statement presumes that illegal aliens have a right to stay in the United States. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas actually said, “From day one, this Administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer.” And certainly, no wall is needed if you do not wish to keep people out.

While the Biden White House and many of his appointees are misrepresenting reality, the intelligence agencies, Department of Defense (DoD), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), apart from Mayorkas, are doing their duty by identifying the real threats. The Annual Threat Assessment of the United States Intelligence Community identifies the greatest national security threats as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The term “white supremacy” is mentioned only once, on page 30. By contrast, the word China appears 91 times and has its own entry in the table of contents. White Supremacy is listed as one of many racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVE). The report does not say that it is a primary threat. In fact, it reports that, across the entire globe, only 27 people, most of whom were not American, were killed by RMVE since 2022.

The Department of Defense (DoD) National Defense Strategy Report similarly recognizes China and Russia as the two largest threats, followed by North Korea and Iran. The report does not mention white supremacy at all.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recognizes terrorism, both foreign and domestic, as the primary threat. This includes radicalization by foreign entities and the rebuilding of al-Qa’ida and ISIS. After terrorism, DHS expects “illegal drugs produced in Mexico and sold in the United States will continue to kill more Americans than any other threat.” Last year, there was a record number of encounters with migrants at the southern border, including “a growing number of individuals in the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS), also known as the ‘watchlist.’”

This brings us to the false claim that the border is secure.

Trump was attacked for allegedly saying that migrants are not human. What he was actually saying was that with open borders, we are allowing gang members to enter the country, and the gang members have committed such atrocities that they are not human. He was also attacked for saying that Mexico is not sending us their best and their brightest; they are sending us drug dealers and rapists. He did not claim that all migrants were criminals. He said that some were good people. But he was 100% correct in saying that some are gang members, drug dealers, and criminals.

The US permits about 770,000 immigrants to be naturalized each year, which is more than the rest of the world combined. By definition, those who do not qualify to be admitted legally are not the best and the brightest. Trump’s claims are not only supported by logic but also by the reports of U.S. authorities, including DHS, the Intelligence Community, local media along the border, and The Office of Justice Programs, among others.

FBI Director Wray confirmed that the border crisis is a national security threat. The DEA reported that “Fentanyl is the greatest threat facing Americans today.” Fentanyl is manufactured in Mexico by cartels, using chemicals from China. It is then smuggled over the border by illegal aliens and distributed through street gangs with ties to the cartel. Often, these gangs have members who are illegal aliens and have been trafficked to the United States to work in illicit businesses such as drug dealing, prostitution, and even murder.

The Annual Threat Assessment of the United States Intelligence Community states that Mexico-based Transnational Crime Organizations (TCOs) “are the dominant producers and suppliers of illicit drugs to the U.S. market, including fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, and South American-sourced cocaine.”

The Office of Justice Programs issued a report outlining the danger posed by cross-border gangs operating through the southern border. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote, “Transnational criminal street gangs such as MS-13 represent a significant threat to public safety.” A report by the Air Command and Staff College Air University stated, “Mexican Cartels along our Southern border pose a serious threat to our national safety and public health.” Furthermore, the report explained why the cartel threat is increasing: “As their influence and sophistication grow and the connection between them and terrorist organizations increases, the cartels become a larger threat to our national security.”

In conclusion, apart from Biden, neither the intelligence community, DEA, DHS, FBI, ICE, nor the DoD identified white supremacists as the greatest threat to national security. Additionally, no one other than Mayorkas claimed that the border was secure. By ignoring the reports of our intelligence and security agencies, the administration is increasing the threat to our national security.

https://truthsocial.com/@truethevote/posts/112213554722802354

Jesse Watters Summarizes Judicial Bias/Corruption in the New York ‘Hush Money’ Case

April 3, 2024 | Sundance 

Jesse Watters ran a devastating segment last night on radical Judge Juan Merchan who silenced President Donald Trump from talking about his family’s financial ties to the current junk case he is presiding over against Donald Trump in New York City. Judge Merchan should be removed for his conflicts. This is peak corruption and cannot stand.

As Jesse Watters outlined succinctly in his monologue, “Trump is banned from talking about the judge’s family. Why? Because the judge’s family was paid by the Biden campaign. The judge’s family is currently being paid by Adam Schiff over $10 million.”

“The judge is threatening to put Trump in jail for pointing out that his liberal family is getting rich off this trial and richer if he’s convicted.” “The judge’s daughter isn’t seven. She’s 34. He’s not attacking her. He’s just saying what she does for a living. How’s that an attack? He just wants a new judge. One whose family isn’t funded by Democrats.” WATCH:

Jack Smith, Andrew Weissmann and Norm Eisen Are Big Mad at Judge Aileen Cannon Overseeing the Trump Documents Case

April 3, 2024 | Sundance | 219 Comments

Before getting into the weeds, here’s the big picture baseline.  All documents and records created within the executive branch are created for the benefit of the head of the Executive Branch, the president.

There is no entity, organization, assembly, institution, person or individual, above the President of the United States. The president holds absolute power and absolute immunity. Everyone within the executive branch works at the pleasure of the president, and all work products are created for his administration. This is the plenary power of the president.

The entire documents case in Florida rests on the principle that another entity supersedes the president within the executive branch.  Some unknown, unnamed bureaucracy can override the president and decide for themselves what would be called a “presidential record” and what would be called “classified information.”

Jack Smith, Norm Eisen (pictured left, red tie) and Andrew Weissmann each argue that some other entity rests atop the president and can make this decision.

Judge Aileen Cannon has not determined which constitutional argument is correct, and has told the parties to create jury instructions both ways. The Lawfare crew of Smith, Eisen and Weissmann are going bananas.

[…] Cannon’s first scenario would allow the jury to make a factual determination about whether a former president deemed a record to be personal or official under the PRA. That is nonsensical – presidents are not allowed to designate official records as personal ones, so there is no factual issue for a jury to resolve.

A different set of laws govern the classification process and the rules for handling highly sensitive classified documents — not the PRA. They include Executive Order 13526. One of the authors of this column (Eisen) helped write that executive order. The 11th Circuit has already established that those rules fully apply to former presidents.

Cannon seems to think that the PRA somehow supersedes the executive order and the rest of federal law pertaining to the handling of classified materials. It does not. On the contrary, the PRA defines “personal records” as “all documentary materials … of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.” That cannot possibly include highly classified battle plans, nuclear secrets and the other official documents at issue in this criminal prosecution.

That rules out Cannon’s first hypothetical. But as Smith points out in his filing, the second alternative is just as bad. She made up a legal standard, asking both sides to assume that Trump could have deemed a record personal by simply not including it with the records transmitted to the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of his term. If this were true, the mere fact that Trump took the documents with him from the White House would inherently turn them into personal records.

Of course, Trump leaped at this interpretation, fashioning proposed jury instructions that would inevitably result in his acquittal. But, as Smith noted, this approach has no basis in the law — or the facts. Even Trump himself does not seem to have considered classified documents personal after he left the White House, as evidenced in an audio recording CNN obtained last year in which Trump, during a conversation at his Bedminster, New Jersey, estate in 2021, discussed documents remaining classified even though he took them with him upon leaving office. Smith hits this point hard, arguing that Trump’s position that records are personal was “invented” when the controversy over the documents began to emerge in February 2022, over a year after Trump left the White House. (read more)


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