On the positive side George Papadopoulos appears to have a solid understanding of the motive behind the $10,000 given to him by intelligence asset Charles Tawil in Israel. Mr. Papadopoulos correctly identifies the purpose of the $10k as a FARA set-up designed by the DOJ-NSD ‘small group’ which evolved into the special counsel team.
h/t Michael Sheridan for the video segment.

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#1) Papadopoulos was lured to Israel and paid in Israel to give the outline of a FARA premise (ie. Papadopoulos is an agent of Israel). #2) Bringing $10,000 (or more) in cash into the U.S., without reporting, is a violation of U.S. treasury laws. Add into that aspect the FARA violation and the money can be compounded into #3) laundering charges.
[A “laundering” charge applies if the money is illegally obtained. The FARA violation would be the *illegal* aspect making the treasury charges heavier. Note: the use of the airport baggage-check avoids the need for a search warrant (the agents didn’t have one).]
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This was rumored earlier today [New York Times] and [Axios]. Now Confirmed.
President Trump has announced via Twitter that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats is departing. He will be leaving office on August 15th, 2019.  President Trump has announced the nomination of Representative John Ratcliffe to be the next head of the Office of Director of National Intelligence.

Representative John Ratcliffe is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and House Intelligence Committee.  Ratcliffe is one of only a few people who has seen all of the unredacted DOJ and FBI evidence within the documents congress has previously asked the President to declassify.
Representative John Ratcliffe currently holds a top-level security clearance.  John Ratcliffe is very even tempered albeit direct by natural disposition.
Ratcliffe’s nomination, and confirmation should be unremarkable.
However, due to the information that Ratcliffe already holds about the overall intelligence community operation in 2015 through 2019, we can expect the deepest part of the Deep State to immediately begin a process to impede any confirmation effort.   Ratcliffe is a risk, and he will likely be controversialized in a political effort to block his nomination.
Earlier today Ratcliffe spoke to Maria Bartiromo about ongoing concerns around the DOJ, CIA, and FBI operations in 2016:
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Maria Bartiromo is one of a very few mainstream journalists with knowledge of the deepest weeds of ‘spygate’ and the multiple intelligence operations to manipulate the 2016 election against candidate Trump, and then run operations to remove President Trump.
In an extensive interview with HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes, Maria Bartiromo asks the ultimate question: “who was the mastermind” behind all of these intelligence operations?

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Released FOIA documents into the special counsel team of Robert Mueller revealed the  remarkable trail of the 2017 entrapment scheme conducted by prosecutor Andrew Weissmann to target George Papadopoulos.
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On May 23rd, 2019, President Donald Trump gave U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr full authority to review and release all of the classified material hidden by the DOJ and FBI.

Sixty-five days ago….

It has been 65 days since President Trump empowered AG Bill Barr to release the original authorizing scope of the Mueller investigation on May 17, 2017. A Mueller investigation now being debated and testified to in congress, and yet we are not allowed to know what the authorizing scope was…. Nor the 2nd DOJ scope memo of August 2nd, 2017… Nor the 3rd DOJ scope memo of October 20th, 2017.

…Every minute spent outraged at what Muller did yesterday, is one minute less that Bill Barr is being held accountable for what he is not doing today…

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You know Paul Ryan is pushing Fox News to jump the shark when…. After a few minutes of insufferable UniParty propaganda, even CBS is less fake news.
Margaret Brennan clutches her pearls at the outrage of Trump tweets and then settles in to the typical DC UniParty narrative:  ‘We are spending too much, but lets spend more on the Central American migrants.’  Mamet was correct: to retain positions that are inherently hypocritical, leftists have to disconnect their hypothalamus, sever their hippocampus, and pretend not to know things: aka Cognitive Dissonance.

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President Trump’s Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney appears on Fox News to debate the guardian of the swamp gates Chris Wallace.
Wallace is apoplectic about President Trump noting that Baltimore, Maryland, the most affluent state in the union, is in a state of disrepair.  Wallace does his earnest best to promote the position of the four member Fox News Board of Directors which includes former House Speaker Paul Ryan.

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The Chris Wallace/Paul Ryan status on Obama spending and deficits is jaw-dropping in the scale of how obtuse the swamp is.
First, President Obama was the first president to go through two full-terms of his presidency without a single year of a budget being passed. This was by design.
Second, in the first two years of Obama as president -together with Nancy Pelosi- without a budget they tripled the level of government spending.  After tripling the level of deficit spending, in the second term Obama then reduced that level of deficit spending by 11%.
Reducing by 11% something Obama just tripled is NOT less.
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Charity begins at home; so too does good governance.  President Trump confronts Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings with the reality of his own district in Baltimore, Maryland, and the blight that’s been neglected for decades.

It is worth remembering that Nancy Pelosi changed the House Rules last year, and specifically changed the role of Elijah Cummings.  Within the Pelosi rules [page #2], the House Oversight Committee was modified to drop all other areas of government oversight, and focus exclusively on the White House.
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President Trump granted full declassification authority to AG Bill Barr in May of this year.  There has been some discussion about Bill Barr not releasing any information.  In an interview last week with Sean Hannity, President Trump outlined his thoughts on the declassification issue:

[Transcript] HANNITY: Mr. President, you have the power to literally release the FISA applications and the 302’s and the gang made information and you made a decision to hand it over to the Attorney General and let him decide. And I’m curious as to why?
TRUMP: Well, we have a very respected gentleman, very high quality person named William Barr and he is doing – I can tell you he’s working so hard and rather than just doing a total release, I gave him a total release, in other words he’s got everything anything he needs, he’s got it.

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Earlier today President Trump sent a warning tweet about Apple possibly incurring tariffs on their products if they continue a plan for manufacturing in China.  Later in the day the president answered direct questions about those possible tariffs.
Additionally, Secretary Wilbur Ross was very insightful when he also spoke of the current U.S. perspective toward the U.S-China trade negotiation.  If you have followed the basic road-map of America-First, there’s a very clear picture; however, most pundits and trade analysts will likely ignore the message.

Subtle as a brick through a window…. yet it’s amazing how many people can’t see it.
Secretary Ross warned the professional investment class that the current objective for Secretary Mnuchin and USTR Lighthizer is to find out if Beijing is willing to re-engage from the starting point where they left-off when talks collapsed.  That’s a big tell.
After several phone calls and staff contacts if the U.S. team doesn’t know the answer to that question, well, there’s almost zero likelihood of any optimistic outlook.  In essence, the only value within the current engagement is financial ‘optics’ to stabilize markets.
It has been clear -validated by the G20 outcome- that President Trump is not going to accept anything less than a full and complete structural change in the U.S. trade position with China.  Lighthizer’s severe compliance and enforcement clauses, specific to each unique trade sector, are non-negotiable.
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President Trump ‘unexpectedly‘ negotiated a major asylum deal with the government of Guatemala.  In a surprise announcement on Friday President Trump invited the press into the oval office where Guatemalan Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart and acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan were gathered in advance.

It’s important to remember that President Trump spoke about this on Wednesday during an impromptu presser.  In essence President Trump delivered an offer/threat at the end of several months of negotiations.  REMINDER:

Q What are you going to do about Guatemala? Guatemala. What are you going to do about Guatemala?
THE PRESIDENT: So, Guatemala gave us their word. We were going to sign a safe third agreement and then, all of a sudden, they backed up. They said it was their supreme court. I don’t believe that. But they use their supreme court as the reason they didn’t want to do it.
So we’ll either do tariffs or we’ll do something. We’re looking at something very severe with respect to Guatemala. I’ve already cut all payments; I did that a year ago. I cut all payments going to Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. We used to send them $500 million for nothing. For nothing. They didn’t do anything except set up caravans.
So, Guatemala we’re going to take care of and it won’t even be tough. We’re going to do — we’re looking at a couple of different things. ~ Wednesday July 24th, 2019.

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