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Friday, April 17, 2020

Work In Progress

As the pandemic crisis begins to move toward a resolution, with guidelines for "Reopening" now available, AG Bill Barr has followed up on his remarkable interview with Laura Ingraham--Bill Barr: "Without Any Basis"--and is using his broad declassification authority to reveal more and more of the inner workings and details of the atttempted Deep State coup against President Trump. The President's moves to finally clean house in the Intel Community are undoubtedly part of that process.

So much for those who doubt Barr's resolve.

I notice that sundance, has chosen not to submerge himself for now in the details of the latest declassifications of the Carter Page FISA applications (fewer redactions). I think that's a smart decision--we already know enough about that to have a good grasp of what was going on. Instead, this morning sundance has focused on a July, 2018, letter from DoJ to the Chief Judge of the FISC. The reason I think that this is a smart use of resources is that July, 2018, appears to have been a critical moment in Trump's counteroffensive.

By mid-July of 2018 Bill Barr had already sent his tightly reasoned 19 page memo to Rod Rosenstein, attacking Team Mueller's legal theories. That memo was dated June 8, 2018. By mid-July Barr, having taken the step of writing that memo, had either committed to taking on the AG post or was being strongly persuaded to do so by allies in the White House such as Pat Cipollone and Emmett Flood. We also know that by September, at the latest, John Durham was somehow involved in looking into aspects of the Russia Hoax--the details of that are foggy at best, but the point is that wheels were being set in motion for the counteroffensive, personnel decisions were being contemplated. Had Rod Rosenstein begun to have second thoughts about his role--and about his future?

In that context the DoJ's July letter to the FISC should probably be seen as a defensive move to protect Team Mueller from the coming Trump assault, which had rightly discerned the Carter Page FISA as a weak spot. More importantly, the letter places us in the middle of the Big Picture, pointing toward the impeachment that would inevitably come. We can assume that most of the major players are behind this letter, and that moves us closer to the heart of the conspiracy Barr is targeting.

I'll be doing a lot of reading today.

6 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this and thanks for sending me over to CTH, which I have been avoiding of late. After reading what Sundance wrote, pretty on-point analysis it seems, my single question is: why doesn't Trump fire Wray? He's a smarmy, evil, corrupt muppet.

    Even if confirmation would be difficult, a symbolically beheaded FBI might be just the ticket.

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    1. Hmmm. I see my original comment didn't take. I was saying that sundance has done pretty well, but misses a key factual detail that really nails his case for him. I'll try to get to that a bit later, but I got sidetracked partway through the letter by referring to the Carter Page FISA app. I was appalled by what utter BS they palmed off as "probably cause." Largely a string of unsupported non-sequiturs. And, while I understand that the FISC would be p*ssed, it speaks poorly of the four judges who signed off on this. The lack of legal justification should have been patent, even allowing for their apparent total naivete about foreign intelligence operations. It's all a joke, but the joke's on us.

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  2. As is becoming clear with each succeeding declassification and associated revelations, the Obama Administration really did succeed at "transforming" the Executive Branch in fundamental ways. In particular, under Obama's leadership, the nation's highest law enforcement institutions were seduced into becoming de facto criminal enterprises at the systemic level, and not just a few bad apples. This cancer also infected many other Executive Branch agencies (e.g. CIA/NSA/SoS/IRS etc) and persists to this day in the Fifth Columnists that still remain in civil service positions (hello corrupted IGs). And this is no trivial matter.

    Now the rub. Setting aside misfeasance and malfeasance, there are hundreds of current and former Executive Branch employees that have a left behind them a trail of evidence pointing to serious and repeated felony conduct. And if the ideal that "Justice is Blind" is to mean anything, then they should be accorded the same process as was dished out to Manafort, Stone, and Papadopolous. Otherwise, you codify the DC Double-Standard and send cynicism skyrocketing. And everyone is now stuck at home watching it unfold in real time.

    Rocky road ahead.

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    1. "Sprawling." I think that's the word I'd use to describe it all. But who really thought "draining the Swamp" would be as easy as pulling a plug in a bathtub? "Draining the Swamp" is no more than a metaphor, which makes the real process sound easy, straightforward, possible to complete quickly.

      None of the above. Barr knew that when he took the job, just as anyone with the qualifications to be an AG would have known. It speaks volumes for his character that he went ahead and took the job.

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  3. Mr. Wauck,

    As you and I discussed in the comments section many months ago, this spring is looking good in terms of developments. After many months of agony, being confident, only to start to lose faith at times, real progress is happening.

    I am so ready for accountability to the perpetrators. I agree with Unknown's 10:51 AM comment regarding the double standards as it applied to Dems and everybody else.

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    1. Yes. I think we'll ultimately find out that there were some honorable people in the FBI. Not nearly enough and not high enough.

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