Yesterday CTH noted 2020 as the year when a variety of prior democrat operations will converge with a single goal in mind. We will see several years effort merging.  Today, more evidence toward that objective is visible.

The House Judiciary Committeee (HJC) argued in the DC court of appeals to obtain the Mueller grand jury information [6(e) material], and compel testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn.  Also today, more leaks from the inside the administration.
The House has a group of dozens of various DOJ and former Obama officials working on their behalf. That House network also has several currently employed DOJ, FBI, State Department and Intelligence Community officials feeding them information on current real-time events. The HJC are currently arguing the Mueller material and the McGahn testimony are needed for the impeachment trial of President Trump.
First, if the HJC team wins the argument to the three member DC Appellate Court, the DOJ will likely file for a full ‘en banc’ review by the entire panel. If the HJC wins the ‘en banc’ argument the DOJ will likely appeal for an administrative stay by the Supreme Court.
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This court case is the background to remove President Trump.  Everything else, including the impeachment effort, is chaff and countermeasures. Conservatives are oblivious.
Today the DC Circuit Court heard oral arguments from House legal subcontractors representing lawmakers, in their attempt to unseal grand jury testimony and documents from the Mueller investigation. [Remember, the subcontracted lawyers were part of Nancy Pelosi’s changed House rules in 2018… These moments were all pre-planned.]

To give further indications of the landscape, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr sent his weakest constitutional lawyers, Mark Freeman, Justice Department Civil Division Appellate Staff Director, and Deputy Asst Attorney General Hashim Mooppan to face-off against Douglas Letter, U.S. House of Representatives General Counsel, and approximately two dozen House contracted lawyers.
The hearing lasted for an hour and thirty-seven minutes.  [Full Audio Here] The three panel judges are tackling the unprecedented attempt by House lawyers to gain access to the Mueller material.
During one segment of the hearing House Lawyer Douglas Letter discussed the serious possibility of sending armed House officers to the DOJ to engage in a gun battle with the Dept. of Justice if needed. Not joking – serious stuff:
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2020 is the year when a variety of prior democrat operations will converge with a single goal in mind.  Predictably we will see several years of prior effort beginning to merge, and it begins today.

NOTE: For interested readers it will be impossible for me to summarize the background for each step prior to putting the next puzzle piece into place.  Therefore I strongly suggest bookmarking posts for later reference because it would take tens of thousands of words to understand for anyone who steps into the light mid-way through. [Just an FYI]

Tomorrow, January 3rd, 2020, the House Judiciary Committeee (HJC) will be presenting oral arguments in the DC court of appeals for their effort to obtain the Mueller grand jury information [6(e) material], and also compel testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn.
The House has a group of dozens of various DOJ and former Obama officials working on their behalf.  That House network also has several currently employed DOJ, FBI, State Department and Intelligence Community officials feeding them information on current real-time events.   The HJC are currently arguing the Mueller material and the McGahn testimony are needed for the impeachment trial of President Trump.
If the HJC team wins the argument to the three member DC Appellate Court, the DOJ will likely file for a full ‘en blanc’ review by the entire panel.  If the HJC wins the ‘en blanc’ argument the DOJ will likely appeal for an administrative stay by the Supreme Court.
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Nuttery.  Abject Lawfare nuttery.  Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe lied four times to internal FBI investigators, three times under oath, in 2017.  This led to his firing in March 2018.

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In a remarkable act of hubris, in late 2018 Andrew McCabe sued the DOJ for wrongful termination through Lawfare lawyer Michael Bromwich.  The legal argument was/is essentially that McCabe was allowed to lie to FBI investigators because he was the head of the FBI (an employee of the agency).
In response to the McCabe lawsuit the DOJ filed a motion for summary dismissal due to McCabe’s lying, and an Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) affirmation, saying the termination was valid.
In today’s response motion opposing the summary judgement [cloud pdf here], using a new batch of lawyers, McCabe’s legal team argues President Trump called McCabe a “dirty cop” last month, and that proves McCabe’s firing in March 2018  was wrongful.
Yes, that is their argument.
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Oral arguments in the DC Court of Appeals for the House Judiciary Committee to obtain Mueller’s grand jury information, are scheduled for January 3rd, 2020.  The HJC is leveraging the Senate impeachment trial in their arguments to gain access to the Mueller material. This approach is by design.
With that in mind it seems likely any House impeachment articles will not be delivered to the Senate until after the DC court arguments, and likely not before the ruling:

[HJC -vs- DOJ full brief link here]

In addition to the Mueller evidence, the HJC is seeking judicial enforcement authority to force the testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn.  Both HJC appeals court arguments are using the Senate trial to bolster their case.
The rushed House articles were/are a means to an end. That is – a way for House lawyers to argue in court all of the constitutionally contended material is required as evidence for pending judicial proceedings, a trial in the Senate.
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The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) holds confirmation authority over leaders appointed to the intelligence community.  Chairman Burr and Vice-Chairman Warner participated in the IC effort to target and remove President Trump from office.
You might remember recently how Burr and Warner would not support Rep. John Ratcliffe for Director of National intelligence under the auspices of Ratcliffe not having enough “experience” within intelligence operations.  However, those same “experience” concerns were absent when they approved dirty ICIG nominee Michael Atkinson.

Reminding ourselves how ICIG Atkinson manipulated the ‘whistle-blower’ regulations to permit hearsay from CIA operative Eric Ciaramella; and knowing the primary concern of Senator Warner was to cover his own involvement in the soft coup effort in 2017; it is interesting to go back to the 2018 confirmation hearing of Atkinson and review the focus:

Senator Mark Warner […] You’re also aware that this Committee is leading the review into the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. During this hearing I want to hear assurances from both of you that you will fully cooperate with this review and provide this Committee with all the information requested in a timely fashion.
Mr. Atkinson, as the Inspector General of the Intel Community your job is especially critical because of the nature of the material that they handle every day, whistleblowers within the IC generally can’t go public to expose misbehavior and misuse of official resources. We the Congress and the American people will depend upon you as an independent agent of accountability for the Office of the DNI and, for that matter, for the whole intel community.

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Logical thought is antithetical to the interests of the coup-plotters.  Nuance and obfuscation are their shields; that’s why they, writ large, will not release the classified documents. A common sense American Thinker article cuts through the chaff and countermeasures for many interests:
[…] The implications of intercepting the communications of a U.S. citizen who is associated with the political campaign of a candidate seeking the presidency rings nearly every “bell” in the FBIs and Attorney General’s Guidelines for sensitive investigations. As discussed in the IG report, by regulation, these cases cannot be initiated without the written approval of the Director and the Attorney General. 

In addition to the approval obviously granted by the Director and AG, the IGs report identified the following additional high level officials who reviewed and approved the Page FISA affidavit:  “NSD’s Acting Assistant Attorney General, NSD’s Deputy Assistant Attorney General with oversight over 01, 01’s Operations Section Chief and Deputy Section Chief, the DAG, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, and the Associate Deputy Attorney General responsible for ODAG’s national security portfolio.”
The suggestion that somehow, seventeen significant errors, omissions of fact, falsehoods, or deliberate misrepresentations made their way into a FISA affidavit/s (accidentally, at the hand of an anonymous case agent) and then were not immediately noted and corrected throughout the course of this exceptional review process is simply not believable. ~ Continue Reading

Natasha Bertrand is the stenographer for Fusion-GPS smear activities with a reputation for egregious lying and narrative engineering.  As a result it doesn’t come as a surprise to see Bertrand writing a collaborative article in Politico taking swipes on behalf of a thoroughly corrupted intelligence community.

Consider this paragraph using another vile creature from the political swamp:

[…]  When it comes to Durham, Haspel is likely “confident there has been no serious wrongdoing, and will therefore find a means to cooperate” with the investigation, said John Sipher, a 28-year CIA veteran.

Too funny.  The spooks and scribes live a life so deeply enmeshed in the world of fraud and lying they cannot even see themselves exposing their own character.  Put another way: ‘if Haspel was confident of serious wrongdoing, she wouldn’t cooperate with the investigation’. 
See, they just can’t help exposing themselves. If it wasn’t serious, it would be funny.  These inherently vile liars cannot stop themselves from exposing their nature…. it just flows out.
The good news in the article; and there is a lot of accidentally placed good news within it for those who follow closely; comes from these paragraphs:
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Today the DC U.S. Attorney requested a one week delay prior to submitting a second briefing for the sentencing of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
According to the filing, the DOJ is seeking a one week delay, from Dec 30th to January 6th, in order to gather more material for a new sentencing memorandum.  Due to Flynn’s non-cooperation, it is anticipated the DOJ will enhance the prior memo from December 2018 and ask for a more severe sentence.

In their sentencing memo of December 2018 the DOJ (Mueller ongoing) did not request prison time, arguing for a sentence “at the low end of the guidance range.”
However, with AG Bill Barr and U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu; and given the events over the past year, including 6(e) grand jury information; there is a possibility the DOJ will now request a much more harsh sentence to include time in prison.

Holy cow, what an abject lesson in media-created nuttery this is.  Eric Wemple writes a column in the Washington Post skewering Rachel Maddow for selling her gullible audience on the credibility of the Steele Dossier for almost three years.  However, judging by the reaction to Wemple’s tweet, the left-wingnuts still believe the Dossier is viable and accurate despite the only source, Steele’s primary sub-source, saying the Dossier material was completely bunk; “mostly innuendo”, “bar-talk”, and “internet rumor/gossip”.
Then there’s this:

There’s a cognitive pathology that clings to denial as a survival mechanism at this level.  It’s called cognitive dissonance, or what David Mamet referred to as an inherent need for the collective left to pretend not to know things in order to retain their views.
Let there be no doubt the U.S. media created this.  It might seem odd in hindsight, but CTH wrote about where we would be today, two years ago.
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