(Via ABC) U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein are interviewing candidates to take over the FBI as interim director, after James Comey’s firing Tuesday.

Four candidates are being interviewed today, fielded from senior FBI and Justice Department officials and the heads of FBI field offices across the country, according to a Justice Department official.

The four candidates: FBI Executive Assistant Director Paul Abbate, who leads the agency’s cyber and criminal branch; National Counterintelligence Executive William Evanina; Special Agent Adam Lee, who runs the Richmond field office; and Special Agent Michael Anderson, who runs the Chicago field office.

(more…)

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer appears on Lou Dobbs and gives the first set of explanatory points around the President’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey:

.

Why is President Trump so confident in this decision? Oh, that’s easy:

(more…)

It was eight months ago when we first began discussing the “White Hats” -vs- “Black Hats” within the intelligence apparatus.  It was obvious there was a battle going on within the  ‘intelligence’ and ‘justice’ systems per se’ between two distinct groups, mostly centered around political leaks within the IC:

• A Black Hat: is a self-serving entity, person or organization, that is corrupt, deceitful, manipulative, exploitative, and working for their own power and interests.  A bad entity.
• A White Hat: is an altruistic entity, person or organization, that is foundationally grounded on truth, honesty, and clear definitions of right and moral wrong.  A good entity.

The four primary agencies who drove the media narrative were: CIA, DNI, FBI and NSA.

We identified Admiral Mike Rogers (NSA) as the only ‘white hat’ within the intelligence group at the center of the media intel controversies.   Most, heck, all, of the media controversy was created by leaks of intelligence “reports”.  NSA Director Mike Rogers was the only intel head without any participation in leaking.  Rogers also controlled most of the raw intel from which the reports being leaked were constructed.

Initially, last year, FBI Director James Comey was challenging to gauge.  However, it didn’t take long to discover his political corruption, and see his political agenda was all about himself – not the application of law.

(more…)

Holy Cats. This post is somewhat rushed because everyone needs to watch Sally Yates testify before congress, and there’s a very distinct possibility President Trump has just laid a trap to catch her.  The Muh Russia Judiciary Hearing.

Initially I was open-minded, albeit skeptical, about the potential for President Trump to have laid out a rather well constructed trap to catch intelligence leakers together with Michael Flynn.  Skeptical because the construct of the trap is intensely Machiavellian.

However, today two very obvious indicators point to that being more reality than supposition.

Yates is scheduled to testify for the first time in public, alongside James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, who pushed Flynn in 2014 from his job as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The two are due to appear before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee at 2:30 p.m.  (link)

Not accidentally, today the media is playing out a leaked story about President Obama warning President Trump [On November 10th] about Michael Flynn. Against the backdrop of the February media narrative: why would the Obama white house source wait until just prior to Yates testimony? Why today?  Obviously the political angle is transparent.

(more…)

During a ceremony today at the State Department, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered remarks of remembrance and honored fallen foreign service workers.

(more…)

Thought Experiment:  Imagine the 2009/2010 Tea Party uprising with an allied President Trump in the White House.  That’s where we are going...

For the past week we’ve been outlining the ROOT ISSUE within the DC swamp: ♦Why congress isn’t providing Trump policy legislation; ♦what impact that is having; and ♦what appears to be surfacing as a solution.

The truthfulness behind any larger discussion is backed-up by research: ♦The history of DC lobbyists admitting they control congress; ♦who created this broken system, and why the larger media avoids discussion of it. [Although Rush Limbaugh did partially report]

When research is on point, and when you find yourself directly over the target, naturally occurring current events become almost eerily predictable.

Within Part II (“the current impact”) we shared:

(more…)

President Trump’s economic and foreign policy agenda is jaw-dropping in scale, scope and consequence.  There are multiple simultaneous aspects to each policy objective; they have been outlined for a long time even before the election victory in November ’16.

If you get too far into the weeds the larger picture can be lost.  CTH objective is to continue pointing focus toward the larger horizon, and then at specific inflection points to dive into the topic and explain how each moment is connected to the larger strategy.

Today is a big news day where action on multiple policy fronts becomes visible.  Here’s an interview with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin which notes some of the critical financial angles to economic policy.

An important reference here is the earlier understanding of how then ‘candidate Trump’ personally put a platform plank of a Modern 21st Century Glass-Stegall banking reform into his economic policy agenda, and why it is important.

.

Here’s the dive:

(more…)

…“Literally 30-thousand jobs could be lost if Trump is sworn in. Washington as we know it, and how business is conducted, will change instantly.”… ~DC Lobbyist

Over the past few days we have been providing background explainers on why congressional legislation is frozen.   The lack of legislative action in the era of Trump is one of the least understood political realities.  Corporate media cannot discuss the issue because they are part of the system itself. The election of President Trump threw a wrench into the gears of the entire DC legislative and lobbying machine.

Part I HERE -and- Part II HERE -and- Part III HERE.

The entire political and legislative apparatus is frozen, and it is genuinely impossible to predict what happens next.  Where we stand is the outcome building a very targeted system over the course of three decades.  The entities and institutions which assembled the system became functionally obsolescent overnight on November 8th 2016.

To fully grasp the tectonic shift, and understand the current challenge, it helps to revisit the words by a key DC machine operator, lobbyist Jack Burkman, who was contemplating the unthinkable prior to the unthinkable becoming a reality:

DC Public Relations2016 […]  seismic panic has ensued on K Street as lobbying firms brace for a reality of a possible Donald Trump presidency and what that might mean for them and their futures.

Prominent D.C. lobbyist Jack Burkman said today that he started assembling a delegation of lobbyists and lobbying firms to meet with the New York billionaire and begin building a bridge to the Trump organization.

“Trump is a Washington outsider. We need the outreach now or Trump will bring in a whole new team made up exclusively of New Yorkers, effectively ending our grip on the White House and The Capitol which will bring about the end of life as we know it here,” says Burkman, who represents a diverse set of national and multi-national clients.

(more…)

A report from Bloomberg highlights the anxiety within the professional state department apparatus as Secretary Tillerson begins substantive cuts in the number of pontificating elitist bureaucrats.  It’s amazing how the ankle-biters never seem to recognize these consequential shifts in policy and approach toward dismantling the bureaucracy.

The State Department is the cornerstone of Deep State operations. It is a massively bloated institution filled with some of the most entrenched political globalists and ideologues.

(Via Bloomberg) The State Department plans to cut 2,300 U.S. diplomats and civil servants — about 9 percent of the Americans in its workforce worldwide — as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson presses ahead with his task of slashing the agency’s budget, according to people familiar with the matter.

The majority of the job cuts, about 1,700, will come through attrition, while the remaining 600 will be done via buyouts, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the decision hasn’t been publicly announced. William Inglee, a former Lockheed Martin Corp. official and policy adviser in Congress, is overseeing the budget cuts and briefed senior managers on the plan Wednesday, the people said.

(more…)

♦In Part-I we explained how legislation is actually constructed in 2017. NOT how most people think it is constructed – SEE HERE

♦In Part-II we explained what that modern reality means with a Trump administration, and what will be needed to overcome the corrupted swamp – SEE HERE

The final paragraphs include accepting the reality and pondering:

[…] President Trump is not going to sit and wait for congress to evolve in their ability to turn away from existing lobbyists hanging around to defend their interests.  Sooner or later President Trump is going to do something dramatic to break the impasse within the broken legislative system.

Considering that Trump is not a politician, that “something” could get rather ugly.

We are not going to get bogged down in the weeds and loose the capacity to see the larger, more consequential, picture.  Staying elevated – However, as if guided by a prescient cue, part of the possible answer to the quagmire becomes evident today:

(more…)