Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes appears with Maria Bartiromo for a wide-ranging discussion on a variety of current issues and events.  The interview begins with a discussion on China’s strategic economic objectives and continues into issues surrounding congressional investigations of the DOJ and FBI.
In the second half of the interview Chairman Nunes shares some insight from interviews, testimony and depositions from approximately 70 former administration officials and calls for the release of the transcripts.  According to Nunes 70 to 80% of all testimony is not classified.  The remaining 20% could be declassified for release by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Dan Coats.  The interview is in two segments:

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The second part of the interview is below:
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Bob Goodlatte is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee; and also the lead chairman (w/ Gowdy) of the joint House Oversight and Judiciary Committee that is conducting the interviews of witnesses for the investigation into corruption by the FBI and DOJ.   The joint committee has interviewed: Bill Priestap, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Bruce Ohr; no transcripts released (likely to avoid coordinated testimony).
In this morning’s interview with Maria Bartiromo Chairman Goodlatte discusses the need to interview Nellie Ohr and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson voluntarily or by subpoena.  Again, note the oft-repeated “sources and methods” declassification issue.

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Think about it.  What were the sources/methods for the Steele Dossier?  What were the sources/methods for the FISA application?  It’s the sources and methods that were/are corrupt. Declassification is futile without un-redacting the sources and methods.
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Today is likely to be a very busy news day.  President Trump will appear on Fox and Friends at the same time the Bureau of Labor and Statistics releases the August jobs report. RESULTS: Total employment increased by 201,000 in August, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.9 percent (data here)
Additionally, there’s the congressional requests (legislative branch) for President Trump (executive branch) to declassify redacted portions of the DOJ/FBI FISA application.  So it is worthwhile discussing the “declassification conundrum” beginning with this interview:

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The congressional request is for President Trump to declassify and release the Carter Page FISA applications (including specifically pages 10-12 and 17-34 and relevant footnotes), all of the Bruce Ohr 302s and other relevant documents, including exculpatory evidence regarding Carter Page and others, that were presented to the Gang of Eight, but not presented to the FISA Court.
At first glance it appears to be a simple request right? However, it is anything but simple for a lot of reasons.
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Regardless of how far into the DOJ and FBI investigative network/timeline you get with the story it always circles back to the 2015/2016 abuse of the NSA and FBI database.  The origin of “spygate” or the myriad of downstream issues all come back to a network of government contractors who were exploiting their database access for political opposition research.  Not only is this a reality, it’s also where the deep swamp doesn’t want the focus.

Other than a few intrepid researchers who keep drawing attention to this issue, no-one within mainstream media -or even allied media- can touch this third-rail of intelligence corruption which lies at the heart of FISA abuse.   One of those intrepid truth-tellers, Jeff Carlson, draws attention to it again today [SEE HERE].    If President Trump wants to dismantle the deep state, declassifying the April 2017 FISC ruling IS the place to start.

(TheMarketsWork) – One of the bombshell admissions from a closed-door testimony by DOJ official Bruce Ohr was that his wife, Nellie Ohr, was working for opposition research firm Fusion GPS already in late 2015.
Previously, it had been reported that Nellie Ohr was hired to find dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump in the spring of 2016.

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Yesterday we wrote about how the Associated Press was attempting to cloud and obfuscate details (now getting exposed) about DOJ Official Bruce Ohr and his engagements with Fusion-GPS, Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele and the collaboration with the FBI in their collective political targeting of candidate Donald Trump.
I noted it becomes frustrating because writing hundreds of words to: (1) initially outline, then; (2) describe as the fiasco unfolds with more details surfacing; then (3) affirm the original outline and description with irrefutable evidence; is like writing/reading the same chapter of the same novel over-and-over-and-over… yet no-one in authority makes a single move to indict these bastards because ‘muh institutions‘ must be protected.  I digress…
Here’s the cut-to-the-chase:  Those AP reporters are almost virtually guaranteed to be the same AP reporters that are participants within the Fusion GPS network; and the same AP reporters who collaborate with Andy Weissmann et al. These endless media scribes were willing participants within the 2015/2016/2017 plot, plan and execution; and as such they are clearly acting/writing to protect themselves and their interests.
Today we cue up another brutally obvious example of media collaboration to protect their own interests, where we see the New York Times attempt to engineer yet another narrative and hide a reality that DOJ and FBI officials were conspiring with Russians:

(Read Article Here)

See how the insufferable media now spin the connection between the DOJ/FBI and Oleg Deripaska as the FBI was trying to “flip” the Russian oligarch.
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The Trump Doctrine is easiest to describe as: deploying economic leverage to achieve national security interests.  The Trump Doctrine is unique and stunningly effective.

Many of the geopolitical decisions have multiple facets which connect like small gears on a much larger machine.  One of those small dual-purpose gears is the Doctrine as it is applied to Pakistan.  The downstream moves impact China, our #1 geopolitical and economic adversary, then Russia, and also support new alliances with India and the broader Middle-east.

Toward China = ♦Squeeze #3. In 2017 Trump and Secretary Tillerson, now Secretary Pompeo, put Pakistan on notice they need to get involved in bringing their enabled tribal “extremists” (Taliban) to the table in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s primary investor and economic partner is China. The U.S. removed $900 million in financial support to pressure Pakistan toward a political solution in Afghanistan, China has to fill void.  [NOTE: Last month the World Bank began discussions about a financial bailout for Pakistan.]  Again, more one-way bleed for China. {Go Deep}

When President Trump removed the $900 million in aid to Pakistan, he empowered the Pentagon via Defense Secretary James Mattis, with an option to give $300 million to Pakistan if Mattis felt positive steps were being taken to change behavior.  Today the Pentagon announces no change in behavior is noted:
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It will be very interesting when the joint committee releases the transcript from Lisa Page and Bruce Ohr.   In another article containing information from Bruce Ohr’s closed-door testimony we highlight two key points (emphasis mine):

Kim Strassell – […] Congressional sources tell me that Mr. Ohr revealed Tuesday that he verbally warned the FBI that its source had a credibility problem, alerting the bureau to Mr. Steele’s leanings and motives. He also informed the bureau that Mrs. Ohr was working for Fusion and contributing to the dossier project.

The admission that Nellie Ohr was contributing to the dossier is a really important specific point.  We always suspected some of the dossier content was attributable to Mrs. Ohr, this confirms that suspicion.
Additionally, on the day before Mr. Ohr testified to congress, embarrassingly the New York Times launched a proactive defense surrounding his predicted testimony; within the August 27th article they cited Fusion GPS as a source saying Nellie Ohr never worked on the dossier (see screengrab):

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Whoopsie…
Obviously Mr. Ohr did not tow-the-media-predicted-line.
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After the Michael Cohen guilty plea. his attorney Lanny Davis began pitching a claim that the longtime Trump loyalist/lawyer had information Trump knew of the Russian hacking of Democratic emails ahead of time.
Davis said: “I believe that Mr. Cohen has direct knowledge that would be of interest to Mr. Mueller that suggests -I’m not sure it proves- that Mr. Trump was aware of Russian government agents hacking illegally, committing computer crimes, to the detriment of the candidate who he was running against, Hillary Clinton.”  And the media ate it up, and put Davis on just about every possible TV show imaginable.
However, in an interview with the Washington Post this weekend, Mr Davis not only walked back that claim, he entirely retreated from it:

(Via Washington Post) An attorney for Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, is backing away from confident assertions he made that Cohen has information to share with investigators that shows Trump knew in 2016 of Russian efforts to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

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It is an inarguable fact that ideologues within the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation used their official positions to conduct a political operation against the candidacy of President Trump. It is also an inarguable fact that DOJ/FBI contractors were exploiting the NSA/FBI database for opposition research as evidenced in the FISA 702(16)(17) abuses admitted by the DOJ and outlined in a FISA ruling by presiding FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer.  There is currently an Office of Inspector General investigation by Michael Horowitz into FISA abuse to discover the scale of the corrupt use.

Major HatTip @JohnWHuber – Today in the Spectator U.K. another sketchy journalist with deep ties to the intelligence apparatus, and specific ties to leaks from former CIA Director John Brennan, outlines that Robert Mueller has “electronic records” showing Michael Cohen travel to Prague:

[…]  The more important question is whether Cohen has even been to Prague. Steele’s dossier claims he did go, in 2016, to meet Russian hackers and Russian intelligence officers. Cohen was asked by The Atlantic magazine about this claim, and about Russia. He responded: ‘I’m telling you emphatically that I’ve not been to Prague, I’ve never been to [the] Czech [Republic], I’ve not been to Russia.’ If my ‘eyewitness’ to the Moscow meeting is telling the truth, then perhaps Cohen was, in the same breath, being misleading about Prague, too — and the whole Russia ‘conspiracy’ starts to unravel. I have spoken to one intelligence source who says Mueller is examining ‘electronic records’ that would place Cohen in Prague. (link)

Michael Cohen has never been to Prague; even Cohen’s anti-Trump lawyer Lanny Davis admits the Cohen claims inside the Steele dossier are nonsense.  CNN, again another anti-Trump voice, confirmed in January Cohen was never in Prague as the dossier claimed.  Quite simply, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen has never been to Prague.
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Last Wednesday Michael Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, crushed an earlier July 27th CNN story about President Trump having advanced knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russian lobbyists.
According to CNN’s anonymous sources, Cohen claimed that Trump approved his son taking part in the meeting. That report has now been completely and thoroughly debunked; yet CNN is intentionally ignoring any correction.  WATCH:

Michaels Cohen’s attorney clarified the record, saying his client does not know if President Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting (out of which came nothing!). The answer is that I did NOT know about the meeting. Just another phony story by the Fake News Media!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2018

The refusal of CNN to walk back their earlier claim is further evidence of how far the media are enmeshed and invested within the ‘Muh Russia’ nonsense.  However, only recently did we discover the media engagements were not just pervasive, they were/are participatory.  Several media outlets were actually working with corrupt officials.
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