It is increasingly obvious that there is a pony in the heap of Mueller Trump-Russia dung, and the pony is a corrupt FBI and CIA covering up their unlawful conduct. Even the best efforts by the wrongdoers' media mouthpieces are not sufficient to keep us from seeing that.

Despite spending millions of dollars, hiring 13 of the most vicious anti-Trump prosecutors available, and having allies in the DoJ and FBI continuing to delay congressional efforts to reveal the machinations of their anti-Trump colleagues, it is increasingly obvious that they have turned up no evidence of any Trump-Russia collaboration. (Something common sense would have indicated at the outset.)

Scott Johnson at Power Line blog has a laugh at the latest "Mueller madness":

Today's New York Times exposé of the nefarious activities under investigation in the Mueller probe is "Prosecutors Examining Ukrainians Who Flocked to Trump Inaugural" (accessible here on Outline). It carries the bylines of four of the Times's top reporters – Kenneth P. Vogel, Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti and Iuliia Mendel, but they also had the help of Sharon LaFraniere and Maggie Haberman, who contributed reporting from Washington. That makes six. I read their long, long article with increasing incredulity and amusement. I asked a trusted friend who has closely followed the Mueller probe whether I was wrong to find the story funny. I regret that I must keep my friend's identity secret to protect him from the long arm of Team Mueller. He responds: Funny? This is serious stuff. Not only did these pro-Russian Ukrainians suggest peace plans, they posted pictures on social media about inaugural balls that some attended and some did not attend. We all know how nefarious social media posts are. And if you're going to propose a peace plan to lawmakers, you better darn well have your FARA filings up to date. Because FARA filings protect America against social media and peace plans. The knowledge of vigilance on this makes me sleep easier at night.

I've been to inaugural balls. Let me tell you about them. They are crowded and very noisy. The weather is usually cold, and there's no way for cars to get you near the venues, so you have to walk to them – often for blocks. The cloakrooms are always jammed, and you wait in long lines to check your garb. Entering, the rooms are packed with half-drunk revelers before the music starts. You'll be cheek to jowl with lobbyists for such things as the sugar lobby and some staffer's great aunt from Des Moines who complains her feet are hurting. The president and first lady enter at some point, do a quick turn on the raised stage, everyone claps, they leave, and the drinkers continue in earnest. When you try to get out of there, there's another long line to get your coat, and another hike to some transportation. If the Ukrainians managed any serious work at the balls, it would be a miracle – unless maybe they talked that aunt into a visit to Lvov, "the Paris of the Ukraine."

The Pony

On the other hand, Congress apparently has had it with the FBI's and DoJ's continued efforts to keep us in the dark about the skullduggery that went on prior to and after the president was inaugurated and is beginning to leak what it found out. As the story unfolds, no one in those outfits' higher ranks looks good, and the entire Mueller investigation appears to be, as Sharyl Attkisson in The Hill suggests, an effort to keep hidden and protect from disruption "long established money channels ... secret machinations that could arguably land some people in prison."

(a) Lisa Page Transcript

The Epoch Times received a leaked transcript of the Lisa Page testimony before the Joint House Congressional Committee – testimony that implicates the present FBI deputy director, David Bowdich, in the FBI's Russia investigation. And who has been keeping this testimony locked up from public scrutiny? David Bowdich, who also locked up the testimony of "confidential witness interviews" by the House Judiciary Committee: once again, the FBI posits its hold on "law enforcement sensitive information," the possibility of revealing "classified information" and the need for the FBI, the Department and the Special Counsel's Office to review this information.

Skeptics like "Sundance" believe that the Mueller investigation always had an ulterior purpose and that the refusal to release publicly what congressional investigations learned is part of the plan:

(1) Create an investigation -- Just by creating the investigation it is then used as a shield by any corrupt FBI/DOJ official who would find himself/herself under downstream congressional investigation. Former officials being deposed/questioned by IG Horowitz or Congress could then say they are unable to answer those questions due to the ongoing special counsel investigation. In this way Mueller provides cover for ideologically aligned deep state officials. (2) Use the investigation to keep any and all inquiry focused away from the corrupt DOJ and FBI activity that took place in 2015, 2016, 2017. Keep the media narrative looking somewhere, anywhere, other than directly at the epicenter of the issues. In this way, Mueller provides distraction and talking points against the Trump administration. (3) Use the investigation to suck-up, absorb, any damaging investigative material that might surface as a result of tangentially related inquiry. Example: control the exposure of evidence against classified leak participants like SSCI Director of Security, James Wolfe; and/or block IG Horowitz from seeing material related to the FISA abuse scandal and "spygate". In this way Mueller provides cover for the institutions and the administrative state. In all of these objectives the Mueller special counsel has been stunningly effective.

(b) Here's the Pony

The New York Times, which has been desperately digging through the dung for years, finally found the pony: "No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials." Then they buried it as deep in the pile as they could in a story sourced to unnamed former law enforcement officials and "others familiar with the investigation."

The story revealed that, as President Trump tweeted, "the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin' James Comey, a total sleaze." From this concocted rationale, the Mueller investigation was created and, like the brooms in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," keeps on and on and on.

Rudy Giuliani found fresh meat with which to criticize Mueller in this account.

In an acknowledgment of just how serious an FBI investigation of a sitting president would be, the report details a "vigorous debate" among former law enforcement officials about whether the probe was an overreach. Rudy Giuliani, Trump's attorney, said the FBI's investigation into Trump should have resulted in an outcome, otherwise the bureau is "imperiling our national security." But legal experts pointed out that a counterintelligence investigation is different from a criminal probe and the lack of previous public knowledge of the investigation or of any possible outcomes is not surprising. "If it was a counter intelligence investigation and it obtained any evidence, it would have to have resulted in some action being taken or they are imperiling our national security," Giuliani said in a statement to MSNBC. "This shows how out of control they are."

The Pony is not Russia – There Is No There There. The Pony is the hiding of deep-seated corruption in the intelligence community, FBI, and Department of Justice. No one explains this better than Sharyl Attkisson in the Hill article already linked above. I urge you to read it all as she explains, in a tongue-in-cheek hypothetical (which is not really hypothetical), that "the insurance policy" reference against Donald Trump in the Peter Strzok-Lisa Page correspondence and the Comey leakee Benjamin Wittes's blog was designed not to protect us from Russian influence, but to protect high-ranking bad actors from prosecution.

She begins her most plausible scenario:

Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the intelligence community and in politics worried that a wildcard Trump presidency, unlike another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable practices. Disrupt long-established money channels. Reveal secret machinations that could arguably land some people in prison. What exactly might an "insurance policy" against Donald Trump look like? He would have to be marginalized at every turn. Strategies would encompass politics, the courts, opposition research and the media. He'd have to become mired in lawsuits, distracted by allegations, riddled with calls for impeachment, hounded by investigations. His election must be portrayed as the illegitimate result of a criminal or un-American conspiracy. To accomplish this, bad actors in the intel community could step up use of surveillance tools as a weapon to look for dirt on Trump before his inauguration. They could rely on dubious political opposition research to secretly argue for wiretaps, plant one or more spies in the Trump campaign, then leak to the press a mix of true and false stories to create a sense of chaos.

Attkisson lays out the step-by-step plan as it unfolded and concludes with "ex-intel officials getting hired at national news outlets where they'd monitor and influence news organizations, and be[ing] invited to give daily spin on controversies surrounding their own actions."

Wait...what? How else to explain former director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Comey aide Josh Campbell being hired by CNN? Or former CIA director John Brennan and ex-Mueller-Comey aide Chuck Rosenberg by NBC and MSNBC, except that it is a continuing plan to cover their own malfeasance?

The (Partial) Shutdown

In the meantime, with some of the government shut down, traffic is sparse on D.C.'s streets, though tree-trimmers, road construction projects, and new housing and shopping mall building cranes still clog the thoroughfares (burly men still have jobs), and online restaurant delivery companies are offering their services free. Happy hours are crowded with people gobbling up the free tidbits with their drinks and leaving before dinner is served.

To emphasize how great is the effect of the partial shutdown, Democratic congressmen Jared Huffman and Jackie Speier hauled tons of trash by plane from the National Parks and dumped it in front of the White House.

The president emphasized the need for border security:

23% of Federal inmates are illegal immigrants. Border arrests are up 240%. In the Great State of Texas, between 2011 & 2018, there were a total of 292,000 crimes by illegal aliens, 539 murders, 32,000 assaults, 3,426 sexual assaults and 3000 weapons charges. Democrats come back! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2019

Nevertheless, thirty House Democrats left town to travel by chartered plane to Puerto Rico with 109 lobbyists for a weekend winter retreat. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who argued that the wall is unnecessary and immoral, is now absurdly arguing that the wall won't work because people can tunnel under it.