Within a sentencing memo filed today (full pdf below) the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York recommends “a substantial term of imprisonment” for Michael Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to fraud and tax charges and campaign finance crimes, as well as lying to Congress.
Reading through the memo – the content of cooperation, and the details that surface as a result therein, are entirely different from all previous media claims:

Additionally, special counsel Robert Mueller filed a second memorandum, recommending no additional prison time for Cohen’s guilty plea for lying to Congress, saying it would be “appropriate” for Cohen to serve any sentence in that case concurrently with the sentence in the SDNY case.
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Apparently the institutional protection system was in full force today as current FBI lawyers blocked any questions directed toward former FBI Director James Comey as they related to FBI investigations of Hillary Clinton; applications to the FISA court and the use of the Steele Dossier.  Darryl Issa explains a transcript will show the severity of shielding:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released the latest jobs report for November.  The U.S. economy created an additional 155,000 jobs.  The unemployment rate remains 3.7%.  The annualized rate of wage growth is 3.1%.   All good MAGAnomic news.
It’s a little funny to see the pontificating naysayers worry over results that are structurally solid and fundamentally strong.  If you had told those same knuckleheads a year ago that wages would be growing 3.1% they would have been stunned at your audacious optimism.

Things are going swimmingly. Exactly as predicted.  Wall Street (paper economy) is reacting based on an entirely new economic landscape.  Main Street USA (read economy), the Blue/White collar middle-class, is dancing and singing carols en-route to buy the fancier set of Christmas decor this year… Who’s better than our economy?  Nobody, baby, no-body…  Throw them ju-ju bones out the windows.  Here’s the data:
BLS Report: Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 155,000 in November, compared with an average monthly gain of 209,000 over the prior 12 months. In November, job gains occurred in health care, in manufacturing, and in transportation and warehousing. (See table B-1.)
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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

We shared a discussion thread several months ago about how the media are enmeshed within the story of the DOJ and FBI corruption. The media engagements with the parties swirling around the FBI, DOJ and Clinton-Steele Dossier are so pervasive they cannot reasonably report on any aspect of the story without exposing their own duplicity.
As more and more information surfaces about corrupt DOJ and FBI activity, it’s worth remembering the media’s complicit role.  Here’s an updated review for context:

Michael Isikoff highlighted that level of how enmeshed media is with the story in February when he admitted his reporting was being used by the DOJ and FBI to advance the political objectives of the intelligence community. Additionally, FBI investigator Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page were shown in their text messages to be leaking stories from the Clinton Investigation, the Trump investigation and the Mueller investigation to journalists at Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. –SEE HERE–
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was busted by the Inspector General leaking stories to the media and then lying about it to INSD and IG investigators. FBI Director James Comey admitted to leaking stories to the New York Times, and even hired his friend Andrew Richman (off-the-books), gave him access to FBI and NSA databases, and then leaked information to Richman along with another friend Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare blog.
Lest we forget, the IG report on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation revealed that dozens of FBI officials were actually taking bribes from the media for information:

IG REPORT – We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. Attached to this report as Attachments E and F are two link charts that reflect the volume of communications that we identified between FBI employees and media representatives in April/May and October 2016. We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.

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President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump attended two Hanukkah receptions today, one in the afternoon and one in the evening.  The video below are the remarks during the first reception. The President and First-Laady marked Hanukkah Thursday evening with a reception including eight survivors of the Holocaust.:

Bloomberg news is asserting that President Donald Trump will soon announce his selection for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. is Heather Nauert.

(Via Bloomberg) President Donald Trump has decided to nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to replace departing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, according to three people familiar with the decision.

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Background first:  There’s a massive shifting of manufacturing in the auto-industry and President Donald Trump is at the center of it.  The USMCA trade agreement is the newly constructed Trump fulcrum underneath the structure of all auto manufacturing.  POTUS Trump has shifted the location of this fulcrum through auto-tariffs; and the final determinations therein are still ongoing.
On Tuesday, POTUS invited the EU auto executives to the White House.  No doubt Trump, the executive businessman, was seeking to understand their position on how the EU crew will comply with a 75% USMCA rule of origin…. and feel-them-out over what leverage he could apply (tariff threshold) to enhance their manufacturing relocation decision.

Example: With tariff at 2.5% they won’t move anything just pay the duty; however at 10% or higher they might move engine building or transmission building to North America etc to get inside the rules of origin threshold.  Trump was likely exploring the Mercedes, VW and BMW perspectives while Angela Merkel was gnashing her teeth… “curse you villian”.
President/Businessman Trump is setting up a future for high-wage U.S. manufacturing workers.  POTUS is in apex predator mode… the combination of USMCA and tariff possibilities are like blood in the water surrounding: Dr. Dieter Zetsche (Mercedes), Dr. Herbert Diess (VW), and Dr. Nicholas Peter (BMW); while Trump asks questions.
Mike Manley the new CEO of Fiat Chrysler wants nothing to do with that scenario.  He ain’t about to get in the water.  Swimming with Trump? Oh, hell to the no:
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If the latest reports are accurate, this is *not* good.  Remember, there are trillions at stake and Wall Street has spent hundreds-of-million on behalf of multinational interests lobbying to keep the current status with China unchanged.
There’s a deep financial motive within this dynamic to stop President Trump from resetting the trade relationship with China. Additionally, Canada is aligned in self-interest with Wall Street and Trump’s adversaries toward the same goal.

Apparently National Security Adviser John Bolton was aware the CFO of Huawei was going to be arrested in Canada.  However, President Trump was kept out of the loop.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said in an interview with National Public Radio that he knew in advance about the arrest of a top executive of the Chinese technology giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL], according to an NPR reporter on Thursday.
Bolton said he did not know if the president was aware in advance of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou in Canada on Saturday, the day Trump struck a 90-day truce on trade in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Argentina, NPR reporter Steve Inskeep said in a tweet.

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