Attendees for the Oval office meeting include: President Donald J. Trump; Mick Mulvaney, Acting White House Chief of Staff; John Bolton, National Security Advisor; Larry Kudlow, Director of the National Economic Council; Peter Navarro, Assistant to the President for Trade & Manufacturing Policy; Matt Pottinger, Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asian Affairs; Clete Willems, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council.
U.S. Administration team members: Secretary Mike Pompeo, Department of State; Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Department of the Treasury; Secretary Wilbur Ross, Department of Commerce; Ambassador Bob Lighthizer, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
Chinese Delegation: Liu He, Member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Vice Premier of the People’s Republic of China; Wang Shouwen, Vice Minister of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China.

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[Transcript] 3:43 P.M. EST – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. It’s a great honor to have the Vice Premier of China with us, and also the Vice Minister of Trade of China. We have had long discussions. This has been going on for quite some time. It will be, by far, if it happens, the biggest deal ever made — not only the biggest trade deal ever made. It will be the biggest trade deal by far, but it’ll also be the biggest deal ever made. The two largest countries doing a trade deal. There won’t be anything that will match that. And we’ll see what happens.
We’ve done very well. We’ve had a very, very strong relationship, as my relationship is with President Xi.
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President Trump delivers a video message in concert with a series of public tweets surrounding the ongoing issues with border security funding.

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Fox News Catherine Herridge files a report covering the relationships between Glenn Simpson, Nellie Ohr, Christopher Steele, Bruce Ohr and the DOJ and FBI.

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President Trump gave an exclusive interview to the Daily Caller.  Part of that interview entailed President Trump outlining the back-story behind him signing the Omnibus spending bill and a promise from Paul Ryan.

[Transcript]THE DAILY CALLER: Well, the people who elected you are very interested in the immigration decision and what’s going on with this negotiation. Republicans in charge of Congress for two years didn’t get to your wall promise in Congress. How big of a roadblock to wall funding was Paul Ryan, now that he’s gone?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I was going to veto the omnibus bill and Paul told me in the strongest of language, ‘Please don’t do that, we’ll get you the wall.’ And I said, ‘I hope you mean that, because I don’t like this bill,’ although I love the bill for what it did for the military. And therefore, if it weren’t for the military, I would have vetoed it.
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Today Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham sends a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting a briefing on the FBI conduct during the raid and arrest of 66-year-old Roger Stone.
However, sorry, I can’t let this go unnoticed. This letter is pure Decepticon politics.
Just yesterday FBI Director Chris Wray gave testimony before the senate for over four hours. If Republicans in the senate were actually concerned about the issue, why didn’t a single senator spend 30 seconds to ask about Wray about it?  I digress…
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So far the joint house committee transcripts have been leaked to: John Solomon (The Hill), The Epoch Times, The New York Times, and now The Daily Caller.  Someone is trying to get additional traction to these structured transcripts.
The content is also interesting.  The only thing we knew previously about the testimony of Nellie Ohr was that she evoked ‘spousal privilege’ during her deposition.  However, now the Daily Caller is reporting that Nellie Ohr gave testimony about her research with Fusion GPS, to include doing research on Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr’s travels:

Daily Caller – The wife of a Justice Department official who worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 campaign told Congress in 2018 that one of her tasks at the opposition research firm was to research President Donald Trump’s children, including their business activities and travel.
Nellie Ohr, a former contractor for Fusion GPS, also told lawmakers during an Oct. 19 deposition that she recalls that Christopher Steele gave her husband, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, materials from the infamous anti-Trump dossier funded by Democrats.

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The background here is that any unilateral declassification by President Trump will end up putting him in opposition to a variety of corrupt interests. As a direct result he will be facing legal action from the legislative branch. With that accepted, here is the most strategic approach.

In anticipation of litigation:

President Trump informs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, that he wishes to have a full intelligence briefing on the following documents:

• All versions of the Carter Page FISA applications (DOJ) (FBI) (ODNI).
• All of the Bruce Ohr 302’s filled out by the FBI. (FBI) (ODNI)
• All of Bruce Ohr’s emails (FBI) (DOJ) (CIA) (ODNI)
• All relevant documents pertaining to the supportive material within the FISA application. (FBI) (DOJ-NSD ) (DoS) (CIA) (DNI) (NSA) (ODNI);
• All supportive documents and material provided by Bruce Ohr to the FBI. (FBI)
• All intelligence documents that were presented to the Gang of Eight in 2016 that pertain to the FISA application used against U.S. person Carter Page; including all intelligence documents that may not have been presented to the FISA Court. (CIA) (FBI) (DOJ) (ODNI) (DoS) (NSA)
• All unredacted text messages and email content between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok on all devices. (FBI) (DOJ) (DOJ-NSD) (ODNI)
• The originating CIA “EC” or two-page electronic communication from former CIA Director John Brennan to FBI Director James Comey that started Operation Crossfire Hurricane in July 2016. (CIA) (FBI) (ODNI)
• The full and unredacted April 2017 FISA court 99-page opinion written by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer outlining the compliance audit conducted by the NSA in 2016. (NSA) (ODNI) (DOJ) (FBI) (DOJ-NSD)

The President selects a date for this briefing and informs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, to inform and coordinate with all executive branch lead intelligence officials, who were/are stakeholders in the compartmented intelligence products as described above, of their request be present for the briefing.
Further, all of the compartmented intelligence is to be collectively assembled by the ODNI into one volume of a singular Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB).  There are to be eighteen printed copies of the PDB assembled and secured for the briefing.
Additionally, the office of the president informs the ODNI of the executives’ intent to invite for the briefing each member of the Intelligence Community legislative oversight known as the Gang-of-Eight.
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There has been a great deal of debate and consternation surrounding how the Administrative State has boxed in President Trump through the use of the Mueller/Weissman counterintelligence probe, authorized by Rod Rosenstein, where President Trump is a target of the investigation.
A widely held supporter perspective is that President Trump can expose the fraudulent origination of the counterintelligence investigation; of which he is now a target; if he were to declassify a series of documents as requested by congress and allies of his administration. This approach would hopefully remove the sword of Damocles.
Because the issues are very complex, we begin a two-part CTH post to outline the issues and hopefully clarify the situation; as well as outline a possible solution that would minimize the risk.  This is part I.

The core issue within the debate surrounds two contradictory reference points: (1) President Trump has ultimate declassification authority.  (2) Yes; however, in this example President Trump is also the target of the investigation; so declassification could be viewed by elements within the investigation as ‘obstruction’. Both of these points are true.
Also true is the reality that both laws and politics come into play.
In November 2018 President Trump gave an interview where he discussed the situation as it is visible to him.  Democrats and opposition, writ large, are working earnestly to remove him from office.  Obviously President Trump is aware:
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Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham announced today the postponement of the committee vote on nomination of William Barr for Attorney General by one week, after democrats requested a delay.
Generally, no big deal. Normally, the opposition democrats can call for a week delay. Typically, this stuff happens all the time and is one of those procedural issues no-one pays attention to. However…

Because the spidey-sense political radar is monitoring DC closely; it just so happens that we stood back, looked at the political calendar last night; and predicted this.  Check out the alignment of the political planets for next week:
♦On Tuesday Feb 5th, President Trump is now scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address.  There is absolutely NO DOUBT before Pelosi invited Trump, the democrats have pre-planned something around the event.
♦On Friday Feb 8th, AAG Matt Whitaker is scheduled to appear in front of the most Machiavellian political mind inside the Democrat apparatus, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (aka “The Penguin”).
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Internal polling and fear of resistance backlash must be significant for the democrats.  President Donald Trump accepted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to deliver his State of the Union speech on Feb. 5, a week later than originally scheduled.

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