A group of US lawmakers led by Senator Bob Menendez told the State Department in a letter that any sale of Russian S-400 air defense system should lead to new punitive measures as stipulated in the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

"We are writing today to specifically inquire about reported negotiations between Russia and certain countries over sales of the Russian government's S-400 air defense system and whether these reported deals could trigger mandatory CAATSA sanctions," the letter said on Friday. "Under any circumstance, a S-400 sale would be considered a 'significant transaction' and we expect that any sale would result in designations."

The lawmakers also requested that the State Department provide detailed analysis on the current status of Russian S-400 talks with China, Turkey, India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and any other country.

The senators based their letter on a report produced by the Congressional Research Service, which showed that Russia has been working on potential defense deals with different countries.

What has become increasingly visible is the largest political scandal in the history of U.S. government. A political conspiracy at the highest levels of the prior administration and across multiple agencies within the U.S. intelligence apparatus. The scale of corruption being exposed is astounding.

The investigative effort to unravel and bring justice is almost overwhelming. It is also very likely the issues surrounding Andrew McCabe are only just beginning.

Within the response letter from Michael Bromwich, the attorney representing fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, you might note the following (emphasis mine):

[...] The investigation described in the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report was cleaved off from the larger investigation of which it was a part, its completion expedited, and the disciplinary process completed in a little over a week. Mr. McCabe and his counsel were given limited access to a draft of the OIG report late last month, did not see the final report and the evidence on which it is based until a week ago, and were receiving relevant exculpatory evidence as recently as two days ago. (pdf link)

Within the Office of Professional Responsibility guidelines for Attorney Representation you might also note the following (again, emphasis mine):

The majority of OPR investigations are administrative in nature, and employees are not entitled to counsel as a matter of law. However, counsel may be permitted if counsel does not interfere with or delay the interview. Counsel must be actually retained by the employee as his legal representative, not as an observer. Counsel are not permitted access to certain confidential criminal investigative information and may not be permitted access to grand jury information.. (link)

Put both of those statements together, along with the underlying issues that Inspector General Michael Horowitz was investigating, and there's even more likely evidence of the "outside Washington DC" prosecutor noted in the following statement from Attorney General Jeff Sessions:

... I have appointed a person outside of Washington, many years in the Department of Justice to look at all the allegations that the House Judiciary Committee members sent to us; and we're conducting that investigation. (read more)

I would strongly encourage readers to review the OPR standards -SEE HERE- and also review the information -HERE- to understand the process used by the Office of Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, as well as the conclusions reached. It is an exhausting process and it is NOT easy to be fired. Not by a long shot.

A few more important points:

♦First, the question: If Jeff Sessions has appointed a prosecutor to work with Inspector General Horowitz, why do congressional reps keep asking for a second special counsel?

The answer is a lot simpler than we might think: They don't know.

The legislative branch of the government doesn't know what the criminal investigations are of the executive branch of government; AND AG Jeff Sessions has repeatedly said his intention is to restore the proper, appropriate and professional standards of the U.S. Department of Justice. (ie. no talking about criminal investigations)

Within this specific investigation there is a triple role. ¹A DOJ Inspector General conducting an internal investigation; ² Appropriate congressional oversight; and ³ the collection of evidence that might also be used in criminal indictments.

Within the IG collection of evidence there are two competing issues: #1) Evidence of misconduct and political bias (shared openly with congress and oversight); and #2) evidence of illegal activity (retained from congress to preserve integrity of evidence for later used in criminal proceedings); this is where the "outside DC prosecutor" comes in.

Which brings us to point #2
♦Accusations of DOJ hiding evidence from congress.

Several congressional representatives have stated the information about Judge Rudolph Contreras was not readily know because his association with Peter Strzok was redacted within text messages sent from DOJ to congress. Therefore the DOJ is trying to hide damaging information. That claim is not the correct framework/context.

Congress as a whole (reps, staff and investigators) can go to the DOJ and look at ALL unredacted text messages. However, if congressional staff wish to take copies with them the copies must be redacted. Why? Because, just like the Contreras issue within the Strzok and Page text messages, there's a possibility specific texts are evidence of a crime.

Go back to December 2nd, 2017, when the first reports of the IG investigative findings were hitting the news media and you'll note IG Horowitz said he has no issues with congressional oversight getting his investigative evidence with the approval FROM the DOJ. In this example the "prosecutor", working with Horowitz, has to make a determination if a potential criminal case would be compromised by allowing the release of specific information/evidence gathered by the Inspector General.

♦Lastly, where all this appears to be going. It is not likely there will be a 'second special counsel' per se'. With a prosecutor already working with Inspector General Horowitz that person already has a thorough knowledge of all the evidence. As soon as the IG publishes his report, the prosecutor can begin subpoenaing witnesses. It's more than likely there's already a Grand Jury seated somewhere hearing the criminal evidence he/she has carved out from the overwhelming IG evidence as collected.

You and I might be frustrated with the pace of the activity for a myriad of righteous reasons. However, we must also remind ourselves of the scale and scope of the corruption here that is inherent within the BIG PICTURE. All of this was done on purpose. None of this was accidental.

The prosecutor could, likely would, be having to outline the biggest political conspiracy in the history of politics. It is entirely possible officials within the CIA, NSA, DOJ, FBI, State Department, ODNI, and national security apparatus along with the Obama White House, Clinton campaign officials, politicians, career bureaucrats and possibly judges are all entwined and involved.

Add into this likelihood the complicit ideological media who will go absolutely bananas about any single member of their team being indicted; and a better than average chance the media will follow instructions from their leadership and send tens-of-thousands of low-info sycophants into the streets in protest, and well... you see the picture.

The left only know one narrative: "Jeff Sessions is doing Trump's evil bidding." That's it. That's the drumbeat. 24/7/365 That's the narrative pushed over and over.

Look at their reaction to Andrew McCabe's simple firing, which Trump had nothing to do with, and think about what their response would be to indictments?...

Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte has called on more countries to follow his lead and withdraw from the treaty underpinning the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The firebrand strongman described the treaty as "bull" during an address at a graduation ceremony for army cadets, according to Rappler. "The treaty, if you read it, it's all bull...," Duterte said, seemingly stopping short of using the word 'bullsh*t'. Later he joked about his colourful use of language. "I'll just say 'volleyball' so there's no issue," he said.

Duterte vowed to convince others to withdraw from the treaty. The court was created by an EU-sponsored treaty, the Rome Statute. The president claimed that the court was created as a means for Europe to atone "for their sins,"according to the Inquirer. He further claimed that the Rome Statute is "clearly a criminal law."

Incumbent Russian leader Vladimir Putin is set to secure a resounding victory in the Russian presidential election, according to partial results made public by the electoral commission.

Vladimir Putin is now leading with 76.22 percent of the vote, well above the simple majority needed to avoid a run-off.

First-time Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin is running second with 13.28 percent, while veteran nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who first ran against Boris Yeltsin in 1991, rounds out the top three with about six percent.

At the time, the accusations against me and my fellow journalists from Downing Street ranged from calling us 'naive dupes' to 'propagandists for the Saddam regime'

Boris Johnson declares that "there is something in the smug, sarcastic response that we've heard from the Russians that indicate their fundamental guilt." Gavin Williamson's considered response to the crisis is that Russia "should go away and shut up".

There is, of course, more than Boris's cunning deductions from Kremlin sarcasm and Williamson's marching order to Vladimir Putin - surely one of the most unintentionally comic turns in modern political times - behind Theresa May's assertion that Moscow has carried out an attack with a nerve agent for the first time in Europe since the Second World War. By this afternoon, the Foreign Secretary was holding that it was "overwhelmingly likely" that the Russian President had personally ordered the attempted murder.

The British Government came to the conclusion of Kremlin culpability very early after the poisoning of former MI6 agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on 4 March. There had been criticism of the slowness of the police investigation into the attack on Alexander Litvinenko, who was contaminated with polonium also allegedly by the Russians, and on this occasion the inquiry has moved at remarkable pace.

Vladimir Putin is making an address in his electoral campaign headquarters. Putin leads the elections with some 75.5 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results.

Vladimir Putin expressed gratitude to all his supporters and voters, stating that the election results clearly indicate that the people support his political course, despite the hard times Russia recently went through.

Speaking with the reporters at his HQ, Putin addressed the hottest political issues. The president commented on the Skripal case and the accusations the UK has raised against Russia. Putin dismissed them, stating that it was "nonsense and absurd to claim that Russia would do anything like that before the elections and the World Cup."

Russia's leader condemned the situation in Ukraine, stating that the Kiev's decision to block Russian diplomatic facilities and prevent voters from accessing polling stations was a clear violation of international laws.

As lawmakers and former intelligence officials defend Trump's CIA pick, civil libertarians argue she "should be in jail." President Donald Trump's decision this week to nominate Gina Haspel - an intelligence official civil libertarians argue "should be in jail" for her role in the Bush administration's torture regime - as the next CIA chief has illuminated something of a spectrum of torture apologists among America's political elite. Placing herself firmly on the far-right end of this spectrum on Tuesday was Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.), daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who tweeted a proud defense of the CIA's euphemistically-named torture program at Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who argued the Senate should closely scrutinize Haspel's role in overseeing the torture of detainees at U.S. black sites overseas.

Of course, there were going to be a few people who thought Hillary Clinton's remarks in India about the voters and states who didn't vote for her was right. Over there, Hillary trashed American voters, saying that

Middle America was a bastion of "backwards" folks who can't stand black people having rights, littered with white married women enslaved to their husbands, and oozing with misogyny. She called Trump voters deplorable without saying the word.

Of course, she's wrong. And the notion that she has to revert back to this failed line of attack just shows, among the many reasons, why she lost the election.

That's the line: I can't convince these people, so I guess they're all racists, sexists, and misogynists. Yeah, that's expert messaging right there. Maybe this rural revolt was partially your party's doing, relegating large swaths of the country as insignificant. Some of that has to do with the fact that these areas have become decidedly and unshakably Republican, but there's another reason. Democrats shun rural voters as country bumpkins, a lesser form of human due to their more socially conservative slant, support for gun rights, pro-life tendencies, and cultural divergence from the far left Democratic base. They hate these people.

Andrew McCabe, the freshly-fired ex-FBI deputy director, reportedly kept track of his interactions with US President Donald Trump and handed over his notes to "Russia collusion" probe chief FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

McCabe's alleged accounts of his personal meetings with Trump are believed to be similar in nature to what former FBI Director James Comey admitted to leaking to the media through a friend last May. Comey's notes prompted the start of Robert Mueller's investigation into the "Trump-Russia" collusion that Trump's opponents are pinning their impeachment hopes on.

CNN, citing a person with the knowledge of the matter, reported that McCabe not only submitted his notes to the office of the special counsel, but he has already been interviewed by Mueller's team. It's not clear when the interview took place, however.

The Constitutional Appointments Clause (found in Article II, Section 2, clause 2) was designed to prevent a Robert Mueller-type prosecutor - a prosecutor with all the powers of the executive branch and all the powers of the grand jury at his disposal who is: 1) not elected by the public, 2) not appointed by anyone who was elected by the public, and 3) not directly accountable for his actions to anyone who was elected by the public. In other words, the Appointments Clause is about protecting democracy and insuring civil liberty. The Appointments Clause does not give unfettered prosecutorial discretion to what the law calls "inferior officers" - those never elected, never appointed by elected officials, and never accountable to elected officials.

Thus, in my opinion, Manafort's legal position in his motion to dismiss the Mueller indictments is constitutionally correct - the Special Counsel's behavior makes Mueller's appointment and actions unconstitutional, in violation of the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution. Dismissal of both the Manafort and Flynn indictments would be the right remedy. The end of Mueller's tenure should soon follow.