More IRS Agents Than Marines?

Our government is much less concerned about protecting the nation from external threats and more targeted than ever on its own citizens.

by JF Murphy for American Greatness

And so it may come to pass that the republic will have more prying,  nosey IRS agents targeting its own citizens, than ripsnorting, romping, stomping Marines ready to unleash focused, disciplined aggression upon our nation’s enemies.

As a veteran Marine who now owns a small business “S corp,” I am dumbstruck by what the IRS growth means when compared to historical numbers.

The Inflation Reduction Act will add 87,000 IRS agents to a current workforce of 75,000 special agents, revenue agents, and employees.

At the other end of the federal workforce utility spectrum, the Marine Corps’ Commandant recently requested a force reduction for an end strength of 182,000 Marines. In truth, though, the Marine Corps’ operational manpower is about 150,000 Marines, spread across the three corps-level expeditionary forces.

 Yet the more alarming insights emerge when comparing the IRS manpower to the number of American citizens and to the size of the American military.

 In 1960 there were 3.3 Marines per IRS agent. The historical average since 1960 is 2.4 Marines per agent. Once the IRS ramps up hiring, this ratio will be nearly one to one.

The numbers look worse when you consider the Army’s size. In 1960 there were 17 active duty soldiers for every IRS agent. The historical average is nine soldiers per IRS agent. After the IRS balloons, there will be three soldiers per IRS agent.

 (Please note the implied historical continuity that one Marine equals four to five soldiers.)

 And what about the American citizen? In 1960 there were 3,539 citizens per IRS agent. The historical average since 1960 has been 3,069 citizens per IRS agent.

 Once the IRS stands fully large and in charge, the ratio will be 2,155 citizens per IRS agent.

No political leader yet recognizes the quality control issue at hand, of course. Is there a McKinsey study or Harvard business case about a civilian organization that doubled its size while maintaining its culture and capability?

And, of course, the federal government is not enlarging its best organization. The IRS has become a political plaything. From Lois Lerner targeting conservatives to the ProPublica release of confidential taxpayer information earlier this year, the IRS has a tendency to promote the interests of the political party most likely to increase the revenue service’s own power.

Indeed, alongside the vast manpower increases, the Inflation Reduction Act earmarks $15 billion for enhanced technology. Get ready for more facial recognition proposals and more acquisition of data on American citizens from surveillance capitalism vendors.

The burden of the IRS new hires and technology upgrades will fall on the middle class. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that as much as 90 percent of the $200 billion in new revenue will come from targeting those making less than $200,000 a year.

While Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) negotiates with Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to protect her private equity donors from the proposal to close the carried equity loophole, no one seems to be looking out for the interests of the classic American entrepreneur.

We live in a turbulent era, from Russia’s near abroad to the tumultuous South China Sea. Islamic terrorism is still on the prowl and the illegal immigrants and drug cartels stream across our southern border at will. But this act turns more government power towards American citizens and fewer resources on external threats.

As a small business owner, I am very nervous about the potential impact of this bill on how I provide for my family.

But as a combat veteran, I am even more horrified at what this policy says about the scope and focus of the federal government—it is much less concerned about protecting the nation from external threats and more targeted than ever on its own citizens.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- August 12

 

Evening. Here's tonight's news:

Is the Biden Administration Trying to Start an Insurrection?

If the Mar-a-Lago raid proves anything, it is that the establishment still fears Donald Trump. What might the political class do yet to preserve its power?

by Matthew Boose for American Greatness

There should be no tut-tutting about the unprecedented FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. It is exactly what it looks like: a show of force against the opposition leader by the head of state and his personal bodyguards. If this happened in any other country, it immediately would be denounced as the act of a dictator. But since it is being done by Joe Biden, the putative leader of Our Democracy™, we are being told to “wait and see” whether this extraordinary action was justified as the Left does a war dance.

This raid is an unequivocal travesty for democracy. It will not “lower the temperature” in our fracturing republic, as Biden once promised to do. To the contrary, it will bring us further along to a boiling point, inflame deep and bitter divisions, and make a hellish descent into violent unrest more likely. It cannot but provoke a large part of the country, and solidify a conviction among them that they are living under the boot of a despotic occupation. 

And for what? So that a failing, unpopular president and his base can get their jollies? 

Trump supporters know the Left hates Trump, that they regard him as a latter-day Hitler, and that they have spent the past six years anxiously searching for one pretext or another to throw him in prison. After years of fruitless and unhinged “walls are closing in” speculation, there is just no way that Trump could be prosecuted now without arousing deep and well-founded suspicions of political retribution. 

The outrageous East Germany optics of the Mar-a-Lago raid show, at best, a careless if not malicious insensitivity to that reality. They are a clear indicator that this raid is politically motivated and not, as the Stalinists tell us, about making sure “no one is above the law.” 

Trump supporters know that when Democrats break the law, they get a slap on the wrist at worst. They know that Attorney General Merrick Garland is a craven partisan who has used counterterrorism tools to target conservative parents, and that despite his claim to combat “domestic extremism,” Garland does not give a damn about violent extremism coming from the Left

Trump supporters also know that the FBI is not their friend, and they are right to suspect malfeasance in the Trump raid. They know that the FBI spied on Trump’s 2016 campaign using a dossier of disinformation that came from Hillary Clinton and which the FBI knew was not reliable. They know that top-ranking agents in the Trump-Russia probe discussed “stopping” Trump among themselves and implementing an “insurance policy,” just in case the people made the “wrong” choice for president in 2016. They know that the FBI has had Hunter Biden’s laptop since 2019, and that the FBI raided the home of a journalist in possession of Ashley Biden’s diary, in which Biden’s daughter reportedly describes inappropriate showers with her father. They know that the FBI kicked in the doors of Roger Stone’s house before dawn for “obstructing” a bogus probe that consumed more than half of Trump’s term. 

It’s funny to hear some pundits now insist that we must simply trust the FBI, after the bureau has done so much to destroy its credibility.

Contra the Stalinists, there is nothing remotely normal or democratic about a raid on the home of an opposition leader and former president. Democrats, who claim a faithful devotion to “norms,” should understand that such actions are strongly discouraged—unheard of, really—because the United States is supposed to be a republic, not a banana republic. 

But times have changed. Americans have received a foretaste of this scenario for years from the Stasi-like shock-and-awe tactics the FBI has employed with increasing regularity against the Democratic Party’s enemies. Except this time, they’re going after a former president, a man who received 73 million votes in the last presidential election and who, barring improper interference in the political process, is likely to run again and quite possibly defeat the incumbent in a rematch. 

Nothing like this has ever happened before in the United States. It simply is not done. If we are to infer a motive for the raid from the effect that it is likely to have, we can suppose only that the Biden regime wants to radicalize the Right, that they are trying to make the bugbear of right-wing “domestic extremism” into a reality. 

If the past 20 years have taught us anything, it’s that the FBI is better at creating terrorists than catching them. Beneath all of the hysteria about the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021, the regime would like nothing more than to radicalize the Trump movement. 

But Trump supporters are not “domestic terrorists.” They are law-abiding, middle-class people who harbor entirely legitimate grievances about having their nation plundered by a corrupt political class. The Biden regime would make them into disillusioned guerillas. An actual insurrection would give the regime a reason to crack down even harder on political dissent, as it has done since January 6.

It is sobering to reflect on how this all began. Americans in 2016 had a simple request: stop plundering our country and enforce the immigration laws. The regime answered by waging a soft coup which, lately, is looking more like a real coup. The political history of America over the past six years can be summed up as the struggle of a corrupt, self-serving political class to eliminate the democratic process and assert its will by fiat. The message they have sent is that in Our Democracy™ the people cannot peacefully change their government. If they dare to choose new rulers, the political class will strike back with a vengeance.

If the raid proves anything, it is that the establishment still fears Trump. To Trump’s supporters, that is one reason for hope. But our nation should tremble to think what the political class might yet do to preserve its power.

For the Deep State, Trump Was Never President

How the deep state, the media, and the current president have treated Trump reveals that all the pious talk of Our Democracy™ is a pretext and a lie.

Christoper Roach for American Greatness

There is something peculiar going on with the post facto attempts to justify the search of Donald Trump’s home. At first we were told that he had purloined American nuclear secrets, complete with rank speculation that he sold them to the highest bidder. Then the magistrate who authorized the search warrant ordered the release of a highly redacted supporting affidavit.

The affidavit said nothing about nuclear secrets and also had no specificity about the documents being sought; rather, it showed that the whole affair arose from a spat with the National Archives, the presidential equivalent of overdue library books. 

When the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, evidently they took everything, including personal effects, passports, and a large number of sensitive documents protected by attorney-client privilege. In a separate lawsuit brought by Trump, another federal judge appointed a special master to review the seized documents. This decision implicitly recognized that Trump’s claims of executive privilege may have some weight. 

After this, the leaks changed. The leakers dropped the nonsense about American nuclear secrets, and said, instead, that Trump possessed a report about an unnamed nation’s nuclear capability. 

Like Schrödinger’s Cat, the seized documents have two fates at once. They are at once so secret that they justify an unprecedented imposition on a former president, and they are simultaneously fully suitable for being leaked and discussed in the pages of the Washington Post. 

One may recall that during the Obama years, the administration went hard against leaks, including subpoenaing phone records and other documents from reporters whose stories suggested access to classified information. Here, there has been no substantial effort to identify the leaker. Whoever is talking to the Washington Post is likely someone very high up, and the leaks are being made with the White House’s blessing.

Russiagate Precedent Suggests This Is All Pretextual

Because of the leaks and their earlier track record, it is hard to take the critics and their claimed concern for national security seriously. They told us for years about the other shoe would drop on Russiagate. The cloud created by these investigations hurt Trump and the nation for more than half of his term in office. But it turned out the foundation of these investigations was completely made up. 

There was no evidence of Russian collusion or compromising information about Trump. Worse, FBI Director James Comey and Special Counsel Robert Mueller knew early on that the Steele dossier was full of lies concocted by the Hillary campaign, but they kept that information to themselves. These tall tales were the pretextual reason for a two-year, distracting, and defamatory investigation of the president. 

Biden and partisan Democrats insist on the propriety of the recent raid, but there has been a substantial public backlash, and the documents supporting the raid do not match the gravity of the initial reporting. 

After all, Trump could share, use, or declassify anything he wanted in any manner he wanted as president. While in office, he was privy to the most sensitive secrets imaginable. Whatever he learned then, he still knows today. Just as important, he remains the former president, entitled by law to a staff, Secret Service protection, and national security briefings. 

Illegitimate from the Start 

Trump was an enemy of business-as-usual and had a unique everyman style, and they hated him for it. Members of the executive branch, whose power is on loan from the president, imagined themselves to be part of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances, accountable only to the hive mind of Washington, D.C. 

At first, they said he “stole the 2016 election” through “Russian collusion.” Once he was in office, they treated him as an interloper and continued to obstruct him in the name of middlebrow, career-government-worker ideology. Recall Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman’s paeans to the “interagency process.” During his presidency, military subordinates lied to Trump and sabotaged his plans, the civilian bureaucracy made a virtue of being #TheResistance, and he was harried for most of his term by FBI investigations and plots among the intelligence services. 

The contrast between the unelected government’s treatment of Trump and Biden is manifest. General Mark Milley was all broken up about “being used for a photo-op” when Trump visited a riot-scarred Lafayette Square. Today, Milley has no problem with two Marines flanking Joe Biden in an extreme partisan speech last week. 

This is why the establishment has lost it after Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ruling on a special master. While critics have suggested she is a partisan whose decision was poorly reasoned, their real complaint is that Cannon treated Trump as an ordinary former president. 

As a consequence, the special master’s review will focus not only on legal privilege, but also executive privilege. Her decision referenced relevant Supreme Court precedent, which contradicts the Biden Administration’s dangerous claim to have the power to waive the executive privilege of its predecessor. Ultimately, she ruined the Department of Justice’s plans to be the “fox guarding the henhouse” by having their own personnel do a review of material protected by attorney-client and executive privilege. 

If the military, the Justice Department, and the deep state would not treat Trump as president while he was in office, they certainly won’t give him deference as a former president today. The current persecution of Trump is designed to keep him from becoming president again. Like his persecution during his presidency, the process is distracting and expensive and staged to embarrass and humiliate him regardless of the outcome. 

If Trump is arrested—which I think is increasingly likely after Biden’s speech last week—they hope to use the optics of an arrest as an additional basis to prevent his reelection in 2024. They will also use his supporters’ angry reaction, as well as any excesses, to further demonize and crack down upon “MAGA Republicans.” 

How the deep state, the media, and the current president have treated Trump reveals that all the pious talk of Our Democracy™ is a pretext and a lie. For four years, they bent and broke every rule in the book in order to keep the people’s choice from governing. Today, they are breaking every rule to prevent him from becoming president again. This is the very opposite of democracy. 

Part 4, What Was in The Trump Documents Creating Such Fear in DOJ and FBI

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

In Part One we outlined the background of the modern Deep State {Go Deep}. In Part Two we outlined the specifics of how President Trump was targeted by political operatives using tools created by the DC system {Go Deep}.  In Part Three we outlined how and why President Trump was blocked from releasing documents {Go Deep}.  Here in Part 4, we begin to assemble the specifics of what documents likely existed in Mar-a-Lago.

It is important to remember, the presidential records act –the presented pretext for the document conflict– is not a criminal statute.  An FBI raid cannot be predicated on a document conflict between the National Archives and a former president.

The DOJ-NSD warrant, and the subsequent raid on Mar-a-Lago can only be related to records the U.S. government deems “classified” and material vital to national security interests.  Hence, DOJ National Security Division involvement.

In prior outlines we have exhaustively covered the details of President Trump’s desire to publicly release information about DOJ and FBI conduct in their targeting of him during the fabricated Trump-Russia claims.  However, to understand the nature of the documents he may hold, we first review the declassification memo provided by President Trump to the DOJ upon his departure from office.

In broad terms there are two sets of documents that intermingle and are directly related. First, documents that highlight the activity of Hillary Clinton’s team in creating the false Trump-Russia conspiracy theory (2015/2016).  Second, documents that highlight the activity of government officials targeting Donald Trump within the same timeframe (Crossfire Hurricane), that continued into 2017, 2018 and 2019 (Robert Mueller).

Think of the two sets of documents as evidence against two teams working in synergy.  Team one (Clinton) was outside government. Team two (DOJ/FBI) was inside government.  The documents pertain to both groups but are also divided.  That helps to explain the wording of the memo above.

The documentary evidence against the outside group (Clinton et al) would also involve government documented evidence as the DOJ/FBI inside group interacted with them.  Notes from interviews, materials provided, FBI 302 summaries of interviews, etc.

We can extract a lot of information on the first sets of evidence from the lawsuit filed by President Trump in March of this year, mostly against the outside actors. [LINK HERE]

The lawsuit was filed against specific persons and most of those persons were interviewed by the FBI as part of the originating investigation.  Within the subjects of the lawsuit we find names and groups including:

Hillary Clinton, Hillary for America Campaign Committee, DNC, DNC Services Corp, Perkins Coie, Michael Sussmann, Marc Elias, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Charles Dolan, Jake Sullivan, John Podesta, Robby Mook, Phillipe Reines as well as Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko, Neustar Inc., Rodney Joffe, James Comey Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith and Andrew McCabe.

In addition to being named in the lawsuit, many of those names were interviewed by the FBI as part of the origination of the Trump-Russia investigation, and/or part of the ongoing investigation of the Trump-Russia fabrication. Each of those interviews would carry an FD-302 report summarizing the content of the interview, the questions and answers given.

The totality of those 302 documents is a lot of evidence likely consisting of hundreds of pages.

For the government officials on the inside, in addition to 302’s (ex Bruce Ohr) there would be documents of communication between them.

Think about the full unredacted text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok as an example.  The DOJ publicly released over 600 pages of those text messages, and that wasn’t all of them.  The text messages were also redacted, under claims of privacy and national security.  We can assume any version of these text messages declassified by President Trump would not be redacted.  Hence, you go back to the January 20th memo and see the notes about “privacy.”

We also know there are many pages of communication between DOJ lawyer Lisa Page and her boss in the FBI Andrew McCabe.  Almost none of them were ever made public; but they exist.  This internal communication is likely the type of material contained in both the “binder,” left for the DOJ to release, and the boxes at Mar-a-Lago to be used as evidence against the named defendants in the lawsuit.

Bruce Ohr has 302’s and emails relating to his involvement as a conduit between Fusion GPS and the FBI.  Some of those were released in redacted form, and some of them were never released.  Additionally, Nellie Ohr, Bruce’s wife, who worked at Fusion GPS invoked spousal privilege when called to testify before the House committee investigating the issues.  However, it is almost certain the FBI interviewed her so there are likely 302’s on Nellie Ohr.

Chris Steele, Igor Danchenko and Rodney Joffe were also interviewed by the FBI.  Those 302’s were never released.  Presumably John Durham has stakeholder equity in that part of the Trump-Russia hoax, but the documentary evidence prior to January 20, 2021, that exists outside the special counsel could also be records at Mar-a-Lago.

Then we get to the big stuff…. The records and evidence in unredacted and declassified state, that would drive the DOJ-NSD to claim vital national security interests.

The NSA compliance officer notified NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers of unauthorized use of the NSA database by FBI contractors searching U.S. citizens during the 2015/2016 presidential primary.  That 2016 notification is a classified record.

The response from Mike Rogers, and the subsequent documentary evidence of what names were being searched is again a classified record.  The audit logs showing who was doing the searches (which contractors, which agencies and from what offices), as noted by Director Rogers, was preserved.  That is another big-time classified record.

In addition, we would have Admiral Rogers writing a mandatory oversight notification to the FISA court detailing what happened.  That’s a big and comprehensive classified record, likely contained in the documents in Mar-a-Lago… and then the goldmine, the fully unredacted 99-page FISA court opinion detailing the substance of the NSA compromise by FBI officials and contractors, including the names, frequency and dates of the illegal surveillance.  That is a major classified document the Deepest Deep State would want to keep hidden.

These are the types of documents within what former ODNI John Ratcliffe called “thousands of pages that were declassified by President Trump,” and given to both John Durham and Main Justice with an expectation of public release when the Durham special counsel probe concluded.

In short, President Trump declassified documents that show how the institutions within the U.S. government targeted him.  However, the institutions that illegally targeted President Trump are the same institutions who control the specific evidence of their unlawful targeting.

These examples of evidence held by President Donald Trump reveals the background of how the DC surveillance state exists.  THAT was/is the national security threat behind the DOJ-NSD search warrant and affidavit.

The risk to the fabric of the U.S. government is why we see lawyers and pundits so confused as they try to figure out the disproportionate response from the DOJ and FBI, toward “simple records”, held by President Trump in Mar-a-Lago.   Very few people can comprehend what has been done since January 2009, and the current state of corruption as it now exists amid all of the agencies and institutions of government.

Barack Obama spent 8 years building out and refining the political surveillance state.  The operators of the institutions have spent the last six years hiding the construct.

President Donald Trump declassified the material then took evidence to Mar-a-Lago.  The people currently in charge of managing the corrupt system, like Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, Chris Wray and the Senate allies, are going bananas.  From their DC perspective, Donald Trump is an existential threat.

Given the nature of their opposition, and the underlying motives for their conduct, there is almost nothing they will not do to protect themselves.  However, if you peel away all the layers of lies, manipulations and corruption, what you find at the heart of their conduct is fear.

What do they fear most?…

…..THIS!

People forget, and that’s ok, but prior to the 2015 MAGA movement driven by President Donald J Trump, political rallies filled with tens-of-thousands of people were extremely rare; almost nonexistent.  However, in the era of Donald J Trump the scale of the people paying attention has grown exponentially.  Every speech, every event, every rally is now filled with thousands and thousands of people.

The frequency of it has made us numb to realizing just how extraordinary this is.  But the people in Washington DC are well aware, and that makes President Trump even more dangerous.  Combine that level of support with what they attempted in order to destroy him, and, well, now you start to put context on their effort.

The existence of Trump is a threat, but the existence of a Trump that could expose their corruption…. well, that makes him a level of threat that leads to a raid on his home in Mar-a-Lago.

Part 3, Why Did the DOJ and FBI Execute the Raid on Trump – A Culmination of Four Years of Threats and Betrayals

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

In Part One we outlined the origination of the modern Deep State {Go Deep}.  In Part Two we outlined the specific targeting of Trump that was carried out through the tools that originate in the modern Deep State {Go Deep}.  Here in part three, we outline how and why President Trump was blocked from releasing the evidence.

The motives of the DOJ and FBI are clear when you have a full comprehension of the background.  However, it’s the threats and betrayals against President Trump that most people have a hard time understanding.  Why he was blocked is clear, but how Trump was blocked is where you realize the scale of the threat that exists within this corrupt system.

In the spring and summer of 2018 everyone became aware of the DOJ and FBI collective effort to target President Trump under the false guise of a Trump-Russia collusion claim.  It must have been extremely frustrating for a sitting president to know there was nothing to the claims yet be constantly bombarded by media and political people in Washington DC who held a vested interest in maintaining them.

By the time we get to September of 2018 the basic outlines of the Trump-Russia targeting operation were clear.  However, the Robert Mueller investigation was at its apex, and anyone in/around Donald Trump was under investigation for ancillary issues that had nothing to do with Russia.

It was into this fray of constant false narratives that President Trump first made statements that he would declassify documents related to his targeting.  It was after Trump made those statements when the real motives of putting Robert Mueller as a special counsel became clear.

With Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused from anything to do with the Trump-Russia investigation, it was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who delivered the message to President Trump in September of 2018, shortly before the midterm election, that any action by him to release documents, now under the purview of the Mueller special counsel, would be considered an act of “obstruction” by the DOJ/FBI people charged with investigating him.

Immediately after meeting with Rod Rosenstein, Trump tweeted:

This was the first act of betrayal by political operatives within Main Justice who did not recognize or accept the concept of the ‘unilateral executive.’   According to Rod Rosenstein, FBI Director James Comey, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and even later (including recently) AG Bill Barr, the office of the president cannot exercise unilateral executive authority when he himself is the subject of their investigative power.

In essence the DOJ and FBI, along with white house counsel and a collaborating senate and media, kept President Trump from declassifying and releasing documents by threatening him with impeachment and/or prosecution if he defied their authority.  The threats created a useful Sword of Damocles, and blocked Trump from acting to make documents public.

In the months that followed President Trump frequently made public statements and tweets about the frustration of documents not being declassified and released despite his instructions to do so.  Many Trump supporters also began expressing frustration.

The external debate and consternation surrounded how the Administrative State has seemingly boxed-in President Trump through the use of the Mueller/Weissman counterintelligence probe, authorized by Rod Rosenstein, where President Trump was the target of the investigation.

A widely held supporter perspective was that President Trump could expose the fraudulent origination of the counterintelligence investigation; of which he is now a target; if he were to declassify a series of documents as requested by congress and allies of his administration. This approach would hopefully remove the sword of Damocles.

The core issue within the debate surrounded two contradictory reference points: (1) President Trump has ultimate declassification authority.  Yes; however, in this example President Trump is also the target of the investigation; so, (2) declassification could be viewed by elements within the investigation as ‘obstruction’. Both of these points were true.

Also true was the reality that both laws and politics were in play.

In November 2018 President Trump gave an interview where he discussed the situation as it was visible to him.  Democrats and republican opposition, writ large, were working earnestly to remove him from office.

Here’s a link to the General Principles of declassification [SEE HERE] Yes, the President can declassify anything; however, there is a process that must be followed. Executive order 13526 [Citation Here]

Following that declassification process the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, then Dan Coats, and the FBI Director, Christopher Wray, and the Attorney General, in this example Rod Rosenstein, needed to “sign-off” on the declassification.

The process reasoning is simple in the ordinary (non-corrupt) flow of events.  The intelligence agencies might need to protect part of the information, such as “sources or methods” of intelligence contained within the classified material.

Under ordinary declassification procedures the President would likely not want to compromise the ‘sources’ and ‘methods’ and would defer to the intelligence experts.

President Trump is aware of material that he can use to defend himself from the ongoing ‘impeachment’ plans of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.  However, President Trump is also seemingly aware of the issues within the process to gain access to the material and actually use it.  This is where the concentric circle of lawyers around the Office of The Presidency come into play.

We have the constitution, we have laws, and we have politics.

Moving forward there are three background threads that are critical to understanding how this process has unfolded so far:

• The Declassification Conundrum.
• Understanding the Ramifications of President Trump as a target.
• Understanding how intelligence is compartmented.

All three of these issues come into play.

Unfortunately, if you have not already invested the time in those three aspects it is easy, very easy, to get lost.

Because none of the legal linguistics took into account the reality of the actual process for declassifying information, many people were stuck thinking President Trump held sole authority to classify and declassify intelligence without understanding the process.

Declassification of intelligence is a process, and each person -within the executive branch- inside the process must agree to the process.  Making the process even more riddled with issues is the reality that President Trump was the target in a counterintelligence investigation. President Trump was being investigated by Mueller to see if he is under the direct or indirect influence of a foreign power. [In this example, Russia]

The Mueller probe is an originating counterintelligence investigation that ‘can find’ espionage (see Russian indictments) as well as violations of law (Papadopoulos, Manafort, Flynn).  It is critical to remember, the originating probe is not a criminal probe; but Mueller and Weissmann can charge criminality if the investigators encounter interference of their counterintelligence probe; these are the process crimes (perjury, obstruction, lying to congress); or if the probe uncovers direct criminal activity (tax evasion, money laundering, FARA violations etc.).

Yes, technically President Trump can declassify anything. However, it is also true that technically POTUS doesn’t actually declassify anything.  The Office of the President asks for a document to enter into a declassification review process.

Officials within that process (ODNI, DoD, DoS, FBI, DOJ-NSD, CIA, NSA, etc), based on their unique relationship to the interests within the document(s), can approve or refuse to sign-off based on their specific intelligence interests.  This is where compartmented intelligence comes into play.

Any officer who refuses the request for declassification must justify to the intelligence hub; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI, Dan Coats). The executive branch intelligence official tells the ODNI (Dan Coats) why they, their unique interests, cannot approve of the declassification request.

DNI Dan Coats then informs POTUS why the document is not cleared for declassification.

If he disagrees with the decision of the intelligence official, POTUS then would have to fire, replace and hope the next person in the chain-of-command would sign-off.  Given the nuance in the example of President Trump declassifying information that would show he was targeted, and considering the President is under a counterintelligence cloud it was unlikely any officer would break ranks.

President Trump would have to fire people, and keep firing people, until he gets to a person, inside that specific agency, who would comply.

Now stop and be reasonable.

Think about the general political ramifications to that decision.  And then think about the ramifications against the reality that President Trump is a target, under the cloud of a counterintelligence probe.

President Trump asks DNI Dan Coats (intelligence hub) to coordinate the declassification of [fill_in_blank].  If he agrees, in November of 2018 Dan Coats then asks all of the compartmented principles with interest in that specific document.  That likely includes the DOJ (after the midterm it’s Matt Whitaker), FBI (Chris Wray), and likely DoS (Mike Pompeo – because of the State Dept aspect to Chris Steele). Also, possibly the NSA and/or Cyber Command.

If FBI Director Christopher Wray refuses to declassify the document(s) because it is part of the current Mueller counterintelligence probe, of which Trump was a target, then President Trump would have to fire Chris Wray; and, while awaiting a replacement (Senate confirmation seriously doubtful), the request then falls on FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich.  [Who would also likely refuse]

As this hypothetical declassification example is unfolding you can imagine the political damage being carried out.  In addition, there’s the looming impeachment process waiting to start. Hopefully, you can see how President Trump could easily be accused of interference or obstruction of justice.  So, he had to wait for Mueller to finish.

Here comes the second betrayal and threat.

Mueller completed his investigation in April of 2019.

Within a few weeks, May 2019, the newly appointed and confirmed Attorney General Bill Barr tells President Trump to remove himself from the declassification issue and give him the authority to declassify and release documents because Barr has an investigator (John Durham) to look into the corrupt activity behind the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Ten days before he made the request, Bill Barr had enlisted John Durham to look into all of the issues surrounding the targeting of President Trump and the Clinton campaign involvement in the creation of the Trump-Russia collusion story.

At the time most people thought what Barr was doing was a good thing.  As a result, President Trump agrees to support Bill Barr and on May 23, 2019, delegates the declassification and release to the Attorney General.

The President is trusting his cabinet officer, the highest law enforcement officer in the country, to do the right thing and expose the wrongdoing he has been the subject of for the past two years.

It was an easy sell, because the purpose of declassification was ultimately to facilitate a DOJ review of how the intelligence apparatus was used in the 2016 election.

However, because the DOJ review encompassed intelligence systems (DOJ, FBI, NSA) potentially weaponized in 2016 for political purposes and intents, a strange dynamic existed.

President Trump carries: (a) declassification authority; but also: (b) an inherent conflict.

In the DOJ endeavor using John Durham, candidate Trump would have been the target of corrupt agency activity; and therefore, Trump would be considered the target/victim if weaponization were affirmed by evidence collected by Durham.

To avoid the conflict President Trump designated the U.S. Attorney General as arbiter and decision-maker for the purposes of declassifying evidence within the investigation:

…”The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long-established standards for handling classified information.”

Additionally, AG Bill Barr did not need to assemble the intelligence product for approval by the executive (Trump).  Instead, the office of the president is granting the AG full unilateral decision-making as to each product being considered for declassification.

At the time we noted, this was a huge amount of trust from the President to the Attorney General, and a big responsibility for William Barr:

[Sec 2] …”With respect to any matter classified under Executive Order 13526 of December 29, 2009 (Classified National Security Information), the Attorney General may, by applying the standard set forth in either section 3.1(a) or section 3.1(d) of Executive Order 13526, declassify, downgrade, or direct the declassification or downgrading of information or intelligence that relates to the Attorney General’s review referred to in section 1 of this memorandum.”

The position-designate slightly works around custom insofar as the intelligence hub, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (Dan Coats), is given conference – but the decision-making was designated to the Attorney General (Bill Barr).

Essentially the DNI will be following the instructions of the AG for this Memorandum.  This is slightly unusual; but given the purpose, necessary and expected.

Following protocol, the 2019 Memorandum was specific to the agencies carrying the documentation to be reviewed by the Attorney General: The Secretary of State (Pompeo); the Secretary of Treasury (Mnuchin); the Secretary of Defense (Shanahan); the Secretary of Energy (Perry); the Secretary of Homeland Security (McAleenan); the Director of National Intelligence (Coats); the Director of the CIA (Haspel), and the Attorney General himself (Barr).

Within the memorandum President Trump did not allow AG Bill Barr to delegate authority.  However, all agencies were required to respond to Barr’s authority.

The purpose of the Declassification Directive, as it was sold to President Trump, also appeared to permit the DOJ Inspector General to include classified material in the body of the (early 2019) pending report on FISA abuse; this memorandum was granting AG Bill Barr the autonomy to make that decision and declassify that content.

While the purpose of the authority was to empower AG Bill Barr to collect, process and declassify intelligence product that was part of the DOJ investigative review, President Trump did not preclude the public release of intelligence information in advance of the 2019 IG report on FISA abuse.

Much of the intelligence information may be collected external to the IG review parameters (FISA process) and may be released independently as part of stand-alone declassification that pertains to weaponized DOJ, FBI and CIA political activity.  Ultimately the decision to release, and the timing therein, was then in the hands of U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

On May 23, 2019, with the Mueller investigation in the rear-view President Trump tweeted:

 

Unfortunately, as time continued throughout 2019, Attorney General Bill Barr took no action that would declassify any material of interest to the targeting of President Trump.

 

AG Bill Barr used the “ongoing criminal investigation,” led by the man he appointed, John Durham, as a justification for non-release of documents.

Frustration continues to mount as impeachment efforts against President Trump and the painful reality of the Bill Barr motive starts to settle in.

Bill Barr replaced the obstruction and interference threat carried by Mueller special counsel, with the obstruction and interference threat carried by the Durham special counsel.   The ‘ongoing investigation‘ narrative created both swords of Damocles.  One created by Rosenstein/Mueller the other created by Barr/Durham.

Then Bill Barr did something even worse.  He made sure Donald Trump could never remove it.

The result?

The special counsel block of investigative material continued from May 13, 2019, all the way to today.  The Durham special counsel is an active and ongoing investigation.

This is the dynamic behind the declassification of records.

This is the dynamic where the law is used, structurally weaponized by the institutions who are sworn to uphold it, to protect the interests of the DC Deep State.

This is the dynamic that exposes how the DOJ and FBI are structurally corrupt.

Even as he was departing office, President Trump wanted those documents released.  Documents he declassified and outlined in this memo to the DOJ:

This is the heart of the battle over documents between the current DOJ/FBI and President Trump.

Again, the threats of a corrupt administration of justice are at the heart of the issue.

This four-year sequence of events, including all of the betrayals and threats made against Donald Trump, all intended to keep him from allowing the public to see the full nature of the corrupt Deep State operation that lies at the heart of our current political strife, is ultimately what led to an FBI raid on his home in Mar-a-Lago this week.

This is the scale of the issue.

In the final part four of this series, I will outline what specific documents are the most likely to have been retained by President Trump.

I hope the previous three outlines have provided a solid context for people to understand the scale of our national issue.  The DOJ and FBI will do anything to stop the release of those documents that outline how the system worked to target candidate and President Trump.

If the broader American public understood what tools and surveillance systems were used; if the broad American public knew what the DOJ, FBI, intelligence apparatus and aligned Senate committees have done; if the broad American public became aware of the scale and scope of the corruption in DC as it now exists; entire institutions within that framework would start to collapse.

This is what they are trying to stop.  That is the scale of their zero-sum approach.

[ Support CTH Research Here ]