Month: June 2019

I don’t think it is a coincidence that just as President Trump is in the UK, we suddenly learn that “dossier” author Christopher Steele has agreed to be questioned by US authorities. Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller reports:

Former British spy Christopher Steele has agreed to meet in London with U.S. officials regarding the dossier, The Times of London is reporting.

A source close to Steele told the newspaper he plans to meet with American authorities within the next several weeks, but only about his interactions with the FBI and only with the approval of the British government.

Steele’s decision is an apparent about-face from his reported refusal to meet with U.S. investigators regarding his infamous report.

Reuters reported in May that Steele was unwilling to meet with a federal prosecutor who Attorney General William Barr tapped to lead an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. And Politico reported on April 17 that Steele was refusing to meet with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general, which is looking into the FBI’s use of the dossier to obtain surveillance warrants against Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser.

I have all along believed that part of President Trump’s mission in the UK was winning over British support for fully outing the role of its intelligence services in the Russia Hoax. He would have to guarantee that the overall relationship would remain sound even if highly embarrassing facts come to light. While speaking with outgoing PM May was necessary, she will soon be replaced.  I do not discount the importance of his 90 minute private conversation with Queen Elizabeth. The next PM cannot take office without going to her for permission, and in that conversation she is fully capable of laying out her expectations that this affair be made public to the extent that President Trump demands. The serene continuation of the Special Relationship with the US is precisely the sort of institutional matter of utmost importance that a British Monarch has a legitimate and important voice on.

YouTube screen grab (cropped)

Steele must have learned that the offer to speak with US authorities was one he couldn’t refuse. Her Majesty’s government would not support any efforts to resist extradition if he were to refuse cooperation and be indicted. They might even provide documentation to would lead to his conviction.

Joe Di Genova sees that this is really big news:

…Attorney General William Barr’s investigators are hot on the trail of former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and others who played a role in concocting the conspiracy to take down our duly elected president.

If investigators conclude that Comey, Clapper and others engaged in a criminal conspiracy – as seems increasingly likely – then Christopher Steele could easily be named as a co-defendant, which would trigger an extradition request that Britain would almost certainly honor.

Steele obviously doesn’t want that to happen, which is probably why he declined a previous request for cooperation from U.S. Attorney John Durham, one of Barr’s top investigators looking into the FISA warrants scandal.

We don’t yet know which investigators will be interviewing Steele in the coming weeks, but it’s a pretty safe bet that they’ve offered him some form of immunity in exchange for his candor. That should terrify the Democrats who enlisted him in their attempts to execute a Deep State coup against Trump.

If Steele spills the beans on his former handlers, the resulting prosecutions of former high-level federal officials would make Watergate seem trivial by comparison.

In addition to Comey, Clapper and Brennan, it’s entirely possible that Steele’s testimony will yield new insights that could eventually help to implicate even higher-ranking officials in the Obama administration.

Watch, as on Hannity last night, Joe says that walls are beginning to close in:

I don’t think it is a coincidence that just as President Trump is in the UK, we suddenly learn that “dossier” author Christopher Steele has agreed to be questioned by US authorities. Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller reports:

Former British spy Christopher Steele has agreed to meet in London with U.S. officials regarding the dossier, The Times of London is reporting.

A source close to Steele told the newspaper he plans to meet with American authorities within the next several weeks, but only about his interactions with the FBI and only with the approval of the British government.

Steele’s decision is an apparent about-face from his reported refusal to meet with U.S. investigators regarding his infamous report.

Reuters reported in May that Steele was unwilling to meet with a federal prosecutor who Attorney General William Barr tapped to lead an investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. And Politico reported on April 17 that Steele was refusing to meet with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general, which is looking into the FBI’s use of the dossier to obtain surveillance warrants against Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser.

I have all along believed that part of President Trump’s mission in the UK was winning over British support for fully outing the role of its intelligence services in the Russia Hoax. He would have to guarantee that the overall relationship would remain sound even if highly embarrassing facts come to light. While speaking with outgoing PM May was necessary, she will soon be replaced.  I do not discount the importance of his 90 minute private conversation with Queen Elizabeth. The next PM cannot take office without going to her for permission, and in that conversation she is fully capable of laying out her expectations that this affair be made public to the extent that President Trump demands. The serene continuation of the Special Relationship with the US is precisely the sort of institutional matter of utmost importance that a British Monarch has a legitimate and important voice on.

YouTube screen grab (cropped)

Steele must have learned that the offer to speak with US authorities was one he couldn’t refuse. Her Majesty’s government would not support any efforts to resist extradition if he were to refuse cooperation and be indicted. They might even provide documentation to would lead to his conviction.

Joe Di Genova sees that this is really big news:

…Attorney General William Barr’s investigators are hot on the trail of former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and others who played a role in concocting the conspiracy to take down our duly elected president.

If investigators conclude that Comey, Clapper and others engaged in a criminal conspiracy – as seems increasingly likely – then Christopher Steele could easily be named as a co-defendant, which would trigger an extradition request that Britain would almost certainly honor.

Steele obviously doesn’t want that to happen, which is probably why he declined a previous request for cooperation from U.S. Attorney John Durham, one of Barr’s top investigators looking into the FISA warrants scandal.

We don’t yet know which investigators will be interviewing Steele in the coming weeks, but it’s a pretty safe bet that they’ve offered him some form of immunity in exchange for his candor. That should terrify the Democrats who enlisted him in their attempts to execute a Deep State coup against Trump.

If Steele spills the beans on his former handlers, the resulting prosecutions of former high-level federal officials would make Watergate seem trivial by comparison.

In addition to Comey, Clapper and Brennan, it’s entirely possible that Steele’s testimony will yield new insights that could eventually help to implicate even higher-ranking officials in the Obama administration.

Watch, as on Hannity last night, Joe says that walls are beginning to close in:

Venezuela’s central bank published comprehensive economic data this week for the first time since 2015. The report published by the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro was not as horrifying as projections from outside observers like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but nevertheless admits to dizzying rates of inflation and a collapsing economy.

The Central Bank of Venezuela admitted to an annual inflation rate of 130,000 percent at the end of 2018 and a current inflation rate of over 282,000 percent. As mind-blowing as those figures may be, the International Monetary fund thinks the central bank is soft-pedaling the numbers and the actual inflation rate is closer to one million percent, on its way to ten million percent by the end of 2019.

The central bank said the once-growing Venezuelan economy began contracting in 2014 and went into free-fall after 2015, with a GDP contraction of 23 percent calculated for the third quarter of 2018. The national economy is now about 52 percent smaller than it was when Maduro took power after the death of his mentor Hugo Chávez. The IMF believes Venezuela’s economy will contract by at least 25 percent this year.

Income from oil, which accounts for 95 percent of Venezuela’s export revenue, has been declining by several billion dollars per year according to the central bank, and now stands at just $29.8 billion compared to $85 billion in 2013.

“What’s really incredible is that the Venezuelan state has now confirmed that Maduro’s government has caused the economy to shrink by 50 percent. This is confirmation of what an economic disaster Maduro has been for Venezuela,” Geoff Ramsey of the Washington Office on Latin America observed, as quoted by the Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times speculated Maduro decided to allow publication of the central bank report to dampen support for Maduro’s opponent Juan Guaido at the IMF and World Bank, which are both running out of patience for Maduro keeping Venezuela’s appalling economic data secret.

The central bank is also attempting to push a narrative that hyperinflation is slowing down, an analysis the IMF does not share. Outside analysts believe inflation may have been temporarily slowed by Maduro imposing tight monetary restrictions to prevent Venezuelans from buying dollars on the black market – restrictions that would reduce inflation at the cost of slowing down the moribund economy even further.

“The Maduro regime has been quietly taking steps to liberalize the economy. It is possible that the government perceives that the posture of not acknowledging the dire economic reality being felt by the Venezuelan people is untenable,” Paula Garcia Tufro of the Atlantic Council told Al-Jazeera News last week.

“However, it is more likely that this data will be used as part of an official narrative on the part of the Maduro regime that seeks to point to external sanctions as the cause of the economic collapse,” she added.

Garcia Tufro noted the central bank’s report would weaken Maduro’s preferred narrative if studied carefully, as it shows the economic crisis was “well underway prior to the significant ratcheting up of sanctions on Venezuela, and importantly, preceded the imposition of US sanctions on Venezuelan oil in January 2019.”