Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the latest round of sanctions against Iran.  Secretary Mnuchin notes the economic engagement by China with Iran may open up Beijing to countermeasures for violating sanctions.
Additionally, Secretary Mnuchin outlines some aspects of the U.S-China ‘phase-one’ trade agreement and affirms the key point of enforcement mechanisms built into the agreement by U.S.T.R. Robert Lighthizer.  The official signing is this coming Wednesday.

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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National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien appears on Fox News Sunday to discuss the recent conflicts with Iran, and the government of Iran blaming the U.S. for their shooting down of Ukraine Airline flight 752.

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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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

Stephanie Grisham Twitter @StephGrisham45

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 †

President Trump asks: “Are these “dirty cops” going to pay a big price for the fraud they committed?” 

However, the only person who can honestly answer that question is the person in the mirror when President Trump brushes his teeth.   Perhaps forgotten…
In the spring of 2018 a group of congressional reps led by Devin Nunes, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Lee Zeldin and Bob Goodlatte, asked President Trump to declassify a series of documents so the public could see how former officials in the DOJ & FBI abused their offices and conducted political surveillance.
In September of 2018, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asked President Trump not to declassify those same documents until after the Mueller probe was complete.  Rosenstein informed the President (confirmed in later POTUS interviews) that declassifying the material could be interpreted as impeding the Mueller investigation.
Two months later, in November 2018, the mid-term election took place.  Republicans lost the House and their committee chairs.  Many people suspected (I concur) the mid-term election was the real motive for the Sept. 2018 request from Rosenstein.  Four months after the mid-term, March 2019, the Mueller investigation of President Trump ended.
Two months after the Mueller probe ended U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, a profoundly supportive voice for DAG Rosenstein, asked President Trump to grant him unilateral declassification authority to assist the purposes and intents of his DOJ effort.  President Trump granted U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr with the authority to declassify on May 23rd, 2019; granting access to the same documents requested by congress a year earlier.
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Protests against the regime of Ayatollah Khamenei erupted today in Tehran following the government admission of shooting down Ukraine Airline Flight 752. In scenes that look familiar to the 2010 ‘green movement’, thousands of Iranian protestors, many young women, have gathered to express their opposition to the dictatorial government.
Stunningly, it has been reported that the U.K. Ambassador in Tehran was arrested for filming the protests.

(Via Daily Mail) Iranians have gathered in the streets of Tehran to demand the resignation of Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei after the regime admitted it had mistakenly shot down a civilian passenger plane.
Angry crowds gathered on Saturday night in at least four locations in Tehran, chanting ‘death to liars’ and calling for the country’s supreme leader to step down over the tragic military blunder, video from the scene shows.

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The results of a massive turnout vote in Taiwan reflect the country wishes to remain free from the overbearing influence of communist China.

(Hong Kong Free Press) […] Taiwan’s incumbent leader Tsai Ing-wen has won Saturday’s presidential election, defeating her Beijing-friendly rival Han Kuo-yu by a wide margin.
[…] With 8.1 million votes as of 10:30pm, Tsai won the highest number of votes of any presidential candidate in Taiwan’s history of democratic elections. Han, on the other hand, received just over 5.5 million votes, according to the Central Election Commission (CEC).

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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

Stephanie Grisham Twitter @StephGrisham45