The Morning Briefing: Mueller Fake Firing, Obama Admin Gave Pass to Iranian Narco-Terrorists, and Much, Much, More

Good Monday morning.

Here is what’s on the president’s agenda today:

In the morning, President Donald J. Trump will receive his daily intelligence briefing.
In the afternoon, the president will depart the White House en route to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, where he will deliver remarks regarding the administration’s national security strategy.
The president will then return to the White House.
Later in the afternoon, the president will meet with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Today: Trump to unveil national security strategy; here’s a preview from CBS.

Coming up this week: Senior DOJ partisans Bruce “Fusion GPS friendly” Ohr and Andrew “Andy’s office” McCabe will testify before Congress.

Politico’s bombshell: Obama admin gave Hezbollah narcoterrorism a pass in order to broker horrible Iran “deal.”

Cash for clunkers?

This is a very long story that is worth your time to read. In a nutshell, the Obama administration killed intelligence and law enforcement agency efforts to shut down Hezbollah’s narco-terror network and arrest the network’s operators in order to grease the diplomatic skids for the ridiculous Iran deal.

All of that information was shared with other law enforcement and intelligence agencies — and the White House — via the DEA’s Chantilly nerve center. But by early 2009, Obama’s national security team batted down Project Cassandra’s increasingly urgent warnings as being overly alarmist, counterproductive or untrue, or simply ignored them, according to Kelly, Asher, Maltz and other participants in and out of government.

By following the money, though, Asher had become convinced that the task force wasn’t overhyping the threat posed by Hezbollah’s criminal activities, it was significantly underestimating it. Because Hezbollah’s drug trafficking was bankrolling its Islamic Jihad military wing and joint ventures with Iran, as Asher would later testify before Congress, it represented “the largest material support scheme for terrorism operations” the world had ever seen.

…

After Obama won reelection in November 2012, the administration’s pushback on Hezbollah drug cases became more overt, and now seemed to be emanating directly from the White House, according to task force members, some former U.S. officials and other observers.

Small side note: One of the ways Hezbollah laundered narco-terror money was through American used car dealerships. You know who owned a used car dealership? The Awans. You know who owed money to a suspected Hezbollah associate? The Awans.

Trump will fire Mueller…whoops no he won’t

All the elites were really worked up after “reports” surfaced that Trump was going to make a big announcement this week where he would fire Robert Mueller and shut down the RUSSIA collusion fantasy task force. Did you notice how I used the passive voice in the previous sentence when I wrote that reports surfaced? It’s a little misleading because the reports didn’t just surface sui generis, but rather with the assistance of complicit media outlets that run with favorable anti-Trump fables from sources who have repeatedly burned them…like Democrats on the two intelligence committees.

Secretary Mnuchin, who was dispatched to the spin circuit on Sunday to promote the tax plan, offered this:

“I don’t have any reason to think that the president is going to do that, but that’s obviously up to him,” Mnuchin told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that the topic did not arise when he dined with Trump and Vice President Pence on Saturday night.

The topic didn’t arise? I assumed this was the only thing discussed in the WH based on how often the media warns that Trump is about to fire Mueller.

Anyway, Trump says this is not true. “No, I’m not,” Trump said to reporters when asked by the media if he was going to fire Mueller and then turned the tables on them, “What, are you surprised?”

Other news on the Mueller front: Mueller has obtained tens of the thousands of emails from the transition team but he didn’t get them from the team, he got them from another agency archiving officials’ communications, leaving all the subjects of Mueller’s email dragnet in the dark. What do these emails have to do with his investigation, which is supposed to deal with the 2016 campaign? Transition officials are claiming the emails were improperly obtained.

A transition attorney sent letters Saturday to two congressional committees saying the General Services Administration had improperly provided the transition records to Mueller’s investigators. Kory Langhofer, general counsel for the transition group, wrote to the Republican chairmen of the House Oversight committee and the Senate Homeland Security committee about what the transition contends was an “unauthorized” disclosure of its emails.

The transition team wants the emails back. Rep. Trey Gowdy says the issue has to be settled in the courts. Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Jordan said on Saturday night he has been assured that Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte will subpoena some of the scoundrels at the DOJ.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh.) said late Saturday that he received an assurance from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) that subpoenas would be issued for various senior FBI and Justice Department officials amid increased GOP allegations of anti-Trump bias in the bureau.

“Chairman Goodlatte has told us he is going to subpoena those individuals,” Jordan told Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro on “Justice with Judge Jeanine.”

Who paid for the dossier? Was the dossier used to obtain a snoop FISA warrant on Trump campaign officials? We need answers.

[Alleged] harassment news roundup

Here Are All the Public Figures Who’ve Been Accused of Sexual Misconduct After Harvey Weinstein

!!!—–>Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour accused of covering up sex abuse

Cuomo Proposes Gun Control Legislation To Combat ‘Cultural And Institutional Harassment Of Women’

Doug Jones doesn’t think Trump should resign over harassment allegations

Fourth woman accuses Nevada lawmaker Ruben Kihuen of sex harassment

NBC paid out severance to staffer who accused Chris Matthews of sexual harassment

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) denies sexual misconduct allegation

Major media players start commission for sexual misconduct

Important: Rome revokes Ovid’s exile…2,000 years post facto

Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid by those who are familiar with his work, has been welcomed back to Rome. Emperor Augustus exiled Ovid to modern-day Romania, where he died around 17 AD, for reasons that no one quite knows.

He remained there until his death, never seeing Italy again. He found life there uncouth and uncomfortable, sending endless pleas to the emperor asking to be allowed to return to Rome.

So how did this great rectification happen?

A motion to officially revoke the exile order was approved by Rome city council, the distant successor to the imperial authority of Augustus, on Thursday.

It was put forward to mark the 2,000th anniversary of the poet’s death, in 17AD, by politicians from the Five Star Movement, the anti-establishment party that has shaken up Italy’s political landscape in the last five years.

They said they wanted to “repair the serious wrong suffered by Ovid by revoking the order with which the emperor sent him into exile in Tomis (modern-day Constanta).”

Justice has been done. SPQR.

Historical picture of the day:

President Clinton, accompanied by sixth-grade students from Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Arlington, Va., gestures while speaking in the Oval Office of the White House Monday, Dec. 18, 1995, after vetoing two spending bills. He was expected to veto a third spending bill, for the departments of State, Justice and Commerce later in the day. (AP Photo/J.Scott Applewhite)

Other morsels:

Putin just thanked Trump for an intelligence tip

Diddy wants to buy the Panthers and sign Colin Kaepernick

HHS disputes report that it has banned CDC from using words like ‘diversity’ and ‘fetus’

Thomas Fire on course to become California’s largest-ever wildfire

Oprah Winfrey, Rob Lowe, more stars could lose their homes in California Thomas fire

Power restored to Atlanta airport after daylong outage paralyzes travel

McCain to miss vote on tax bill, receive treatment in Arizona

Don’t Waste Your Time With Bad Resolutions. This Is How to Do Them Right

‘Luke Skywalker’ battles with Ted Cruz over net neutrality

U.S. soldier ambushed in Niger wasn’t captured, died returning fire

Sarah Palin’s son Track arrested on burglary, assault charge in Alaskan town where his mom was mayor