Earlier today the White House confirmed the impeachment defense team led by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.   Joining Cipollone is President Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow and White House Deputy Attorneys Michael Purpura and Patrick Philbin.
Additionally, constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz may also work in an advisory capacity with the four member legal team.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell holds a press availability today and notes the USMCA vote will take place this week.  Additionally, if the House sends the impeachment articles to the Senate tomorrow the Senate would take some preliminary steps this week, which could include call-over Chief Justice Roberts to swear in senators as jurors and take care of other housekeeping measures by consent.
If the process follows the timeline outlined by the majority leader the Senate could begin the impeachment trial next Tuesday.
Leader Mitch McConnell, Majority Whip John Thune, Chairman John Barrasso, Vice-Chair Joni Ernst, Republican Policy Committee Chairman Roy Blunt, and NRSC Chairman Todd Young deliver remarks to the media.  WATCH:

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told her caucus earlier today she will bring a resolution to the floor tomorrow for a House vote to appoint impeachment managers and submit the two articles of impeachment to the Senate.  It appears Speaker Pelosi is timing the resolution to take oxygen from the White House signing of the U.S-China ‘phase one’ trade agreement, also expected tomorrow; a major win for the U.S. trade reset.
The Speaker made the announcement during a private caucus meeting.  However, Pelosi did not name the impeachment managers, that announcement is expected to be made at the same time as the house vote.

WASHINGTON DC – […] The resolution the House will vote on Wednesday will do three things: transmit the articles of impeachment against Trump; name the team of impeachment managers; and provide funding for the trial. Democrats and Republicans will have five minutes per side to debate the resolution on the floor, according to rules established during the House impeachment debate in December. (more)

The transparency of specific media injecting themselves into political races has been obvious for years; the latest example comes from CNN publishing an insider hit piece against Bernie Sanders on behalf of the gender woke community & Elizabeth Warren.

On the eve of another democrat presidential debate; and with diminished support for her presidential ambitions; team Warren plays the gender card as her campaign, together with woke advocate CNN, claim Bernie Sanders said a woman can never be president.
Using the backdrop of a “private meeting” between the two candidates CNN uses four anonymous sources to frame the gender narrative:

(Via CNN) [Warren and Sanders] discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters. Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win.

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DOJ-NSD lawyer David Kris has been a defender of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation and Lawfare critic of Devin Nunes’s 2018 memo on alleged FISA abuses.  Sketchy Mr. Kris was recently picked by FISC presiding judge James Boasberg, to serve as the court’s amicus curiae — a position that is supposed to provide impartial advice to the court.
Mr. Kris will oversee the implementation of “FISA reforms” following the IG report on serious abuses found in the DOJ and FBI’s political efforts to conduct surveillance on U.S. person Carter Page.  However, representative Devin Nunes shares his doubts & concerns:

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This is a little weedy, but it’s important….

In the second half of Devin Nunes interview with Maria Bartiromo today he was asked his thoughts about the FISA Court selecting David Kris as an FBI surveillance and compliance monitor.  The issue is quite important because the FBI FISA reforms and promises are essentially meaningless without some form of structural review process.
However, the new 2020 FISC Presiding Judge James Boasberg selecting David Kris has been noted by several people as a rather weak effort on behalf of the court.

As an outcome of our former FISA-702 reviews CTH has an entirely different reason for questioning the selection of Kris; there’s much more substantive reasons to be alarmed about it; but first here’s the general consensus opposition:

WASHINGTON – The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has stunned court-watchers by selecting David Kris — a former Obama administration lawyer who has appeared on “The Rachel Maddow Show” and written extensively in support of the FBI’s surveillance practices on the left-wing blog Lawfare — to oversee the FBI’s implementation of reforms in the wake of a damning Department of Justice inspector general report last year.
[…]  “Of all the people in the swamp … this is the guy that you come up with?” Nunes asked. “The guy that was accusing me of federal crimes? The guy that was defending the dirty cops at the FBI? … The court must be trying to abolish itself. There is long-term damage.”

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House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss two very important issues.  The first is the origination of the “whistle-blower” complaint and new issues surrounding Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.  The second important subject is the background of newly installed FISA Court monitor, David Kris, to oversee the FBI reform promises.
CTH has some explosive new information which has been shared with Mr. Nunes on both issues; but we start with the interview and ICIG Michael Atkinson.

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Since our original research into Atkinson, there have been some rather interesting additional discoveries.
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Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon joins Sunday Morning Futures to discuss rising support for democracy around the world and connects the movement to the impeachment effort against President Trump.  Big Stuff. Big Ugly type stuff.
A fired-up Bannon looks at the Senate impeachment trial as the “trial of the century”, where the professional political class gets brought into the trial and the framework becomes an expose’ on how President Trump is willing to take down the system.

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In an effort to retain a manufactured anti-Trump narrative, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears on ABC to deny the uprisings in Iran are against the Iranian government.  It really is ridiculous how far the democrats will push a false pretense to keep a narrative.
The insufferable House clown attempts to deny Iranians oppose oppression, and spin the impression of current protests being against Trump administration.  WATCH:

Full interview below
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With increased scrutiny toward the actions, and lack thereof, from current FBI Director Christopher Wray, another sketchy aspect deserves some scrutiny.
Hat Tip Techno-Fog for noting some remarkable FBI activity.

Supervisory Special Agent Joseph Pientka III was first identified by Senator Chuck Grassley in May of 2018 as the second FBI agent involved in the 2017 interview of Lt. General Michael Flynn.
Frustrated by the FBI stonewalling his Senate inquiry, Chairman Grassley dropped the revelation publicly on May 11th, 2018, in a letter to the FBI.

[…] the Committee’s oversight interest in the underlying documents requested more than a year ago now outweighs any legitimate executive branch interest in withholding it. So too does the Committee’s interest in learning the FBI agents’ actual assessments of their interview of Lt. Gen. Flynn, particularly given the apparent contradiction between what then Directory Comey told us in March 2017 and what he now claims.
[…] In addition, please make Special Agent Joe Pientka available for a transcribed interview with Committee staff no later than one week following the production of the requested documents… (link)

The FBI never produced Supervisory Special Agent (SSA-1) Joe Pientka for Chairman Grassley’s committee, and the conflict between the Senate Judiciary Committee and the FBI was never reconciled.  (The DOJ/FBI made it to the safety of the mid-term election.)
Additionally, every single document containing information about the investigative activity of FBI agent Pientka has kept his name redacted.  Not a single DOJ/FBI document has ever included his name.
However, around two months after Grassley outed his identity; we discover from the Inspector General that the DOJ-NSD (National Security Division) admitted to the FISA court that Agent Pientka was significantly less than forthcoming with “factual omissions” in the Title-1 surveillance application he assembled against Carter Page.
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