U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross discusses President Trump’s tariffs against China and the significance of America’s trade deficit.

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One of the information issues with the IG report is that it’s written entirely from an insider’s perspective.  Therefore without an understanding of how divisions within Main Justice related to the discussed activity within FBI main DC offices it can be very confusing to understand.

The ‘insider narration’ makes it difficult to see what happened with the Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner laptop; and how the Clinton emails were discovered.  However, because the issue is so important the IG report spends three chapters on this time-frame between September 28th and October 29th, 2016; and ultimately the next day, Oct. 30th, when a search warrant was executed for the laptop content.

IG Horowitz takes this aspect of the investigation into granularity and nuance (Chapters 8, 9 and 10).

At the heart of the activity during this critical period is FBI lawyer #1 Tashina “Tash” Gauhar who was on a video conference call with the FBI New York Field Office (NYFO) as the discoveries of hundreds of thousands of Clinton emails were relayed internally to the Mid-Year-Event (MYE) team in DC on September 29th, 2016.

Almost a full month went by until October 27th, 2016, when the MYE team all gathered with James Comey to talk about the laptop issues and the emails.   Within the IG review of this period, there is a bunch of ass-covering documentation that takes place in hindsight to the events.  The IG is careful to point out each time his investigation is presented with documentary evidence that was clearly written long-after the events being questioned.

The central IG question is: why didn’t the FBI take immediate action to review 725,000 Clinton-centric emails on the Huma/Weiner laptop?  Why did they wait a month before seeking a search warrant?  Why were they doing nothing?

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U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the current status of the U.S. -v- China trade reset.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Ambassador Robert Lighthizer are the targeted one-two punch behind the ‘America-First’ reciprocity program.  In this interview Lighthizer discusses the connectivity of tariffs within the larger trade strategy.

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We are very fortunate to have an awesome wolverine trade and economic team; stunningly so.  The main reason for their effectiveness is the reality that for the first time in our lifetimes we have an economic team acting entirely without influence from Wall Street, K-Street, special interest groups and CoC lobbyists.

As unbelievable as it sounds, we actually have pro-USA administration and government officials writing the actual trade policy without any influence by corporate interests.  And with trillions at stake, this is driving the multinationals -writ large- bananas.

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Wow, the highest rated (by far) morning show, @foxandfriends, is on the Front Lawn of the White House. Maybe I’ll have to take an unannounced trip down to see them?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2018

Fox and Friends morning television was broadcasting from the White House today. President Trump found out they were on the lawn, so he went down to spend 30 minutes with them on live-TV.

The subsequent interview encompassed a wide-ranging number of topics and current events including: the IG report’s accusations against former FBI Director Comey, new China tariffs, his relationship with G7 leaders, immigration, Mueller’s Russia investigation, North Korea and more.

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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 †

Michael Horowitz: FBI Agent Peter Strzok walks like a biased duck… looks like a biased duck… sounds like a biased duck… has all the same characteristics of a biased duck… and took the exact action a biased duck would take; therefore “We do not have confidence” FBI Agent Peter Strzok is not a biased duck.

[…] when one senior FBI official, Strzok, who was helping to lead the Russia investigation at the time, conveys in a text message to another senior FBI official, Page, that “we’ll stop” candidate Trump from being elected—after other extensive text messages between the two disparaging candidate Trump—it is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.

This is antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Department of Justice. Moreover, as we describe in Chapter Nine, in assessing Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop in October 2016, these text messages led us to conclude that we did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision was free from bias. (p.420)

Christopher Wray: “I take these findings seriously, and we accept these findings and recommendations.” … “This report did not find any evidence of political bias or improper considerations actually impacting the investigation under review.”

This is the infuriating part.  Think about this carefully.  This is not some arbitrary irrelevant institution within the bureaucracy of government.  The FBI is the “premier” law enforcement investigative apparatus within the entirety of the United States homeland security apparatus.  We rely upon the FBI’s investigative skills, training and application of common sense as they carry out their official responsibilities.

In essence the FBI has the primary responsibility for ensuring the internal safety and security of Americans through a process of evaluating evidence and threats; and more importantly taking action on clear evidence of those threats to avoid public safety issues.

Yet, the most important investigative body; within the system of U.S. law and order; cannot identify, admit, accept and take action upon a clear and present threat within its own organizational ranks. A political bias that is transparently obvious to the rest of America.

Allow me to put the IG/DOJ/FBI principle, at the heart of the matter, another way…

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FBI Director Christopher Wray will be holding a 5:30pn press conference to discuss the issues and fallout from the DOJ Inspector General report released earlier today.

UPDATE: Video Added

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Those reading the report will note the executive summary and conclusions were not written by the same IG officials who wrote the body of the investigative findings.  The investigation doesn’t match the summary.  The media is using the summary for their narrative; however the content within the IG report is entirely devastating.

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On Page Xii of the IG report the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (DOJ-OIG) highlights numerous FBI officials who accepted bribes from multiple media outlets including: “tickets to sporting events”, “golf outings”, “drinks and meals” as well as exclusive invitations and admission to “nonpublic social events”.

The OIG investigative finding was disturbing enough to launch a separate set of investigations that will be included in follow-up reports.

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.

In addition, we identified instances where FBI employees improperly received benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events. We will separately report on those investigations as they are concluded, consistent with the Inspector General Act, other applicable federal statutes, and OIG policy.

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivers the White House press briefing for Thursday June 14th, 2018.  Anticipated start time 2:45pm EDT:

UPDATE: Video Added

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