The pundits don’t stop yammering and carping on every step President Trump takes to solve the greatest threats the world has ever seen: The joint North Korean/Iranian development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles systems to deliver them.

But, despite 24 years of what any objective observer would see as the abject systemic failure of 3 different US administrations to solve the Korean/Iranian nuclear file, the media does nothing but act like 24 years of failures have been successful. Their experts appear to fatuously opine Trump should continue with the same appeasement idiocy three different US administrations have applied to the Iran/North Nuclear nuclear problem.

Instead, Trump has hewed to a 2-step common sense approach. First, divide and conquer. Second, isolate the real nuclear emergency priority: North Korea. In effect, Trump is ingeniously putting the North Korean nuclear “horse” in front of the Iranian nuclear “cart,” and thus Trump stands to use common sense to successfully solve both the North Korea and Iranian nuclear problems.

Why is the North Korean nuclear file the “horse,” and not the “cart”? North Korea is the “horse” or the first to be focused on because North Korea actually already has the nuclear bomb, and Iran relies on North Korea’s technical nuclear expertise to develop its own. So, if President Trump can turn North Korea, he has at best, paralyzed, and at worst, dramatically slowed Iran’s progress and pathway to an actual functional nuclear weapon.

Obama did the exact opposite and put the Iranian nuclear “cart” before the North Korean nuclear “horse.” So, instead of stopping the nuclear technology at its source, Obama infused Iran with hundreds of billions of dollars for Iran to actually pay North Korea for a nuclear bomb. Instead of stopping both Iran and North Korea from attaining Nuclear weapons, Obama appears to have done everything to enable both rogue terrorist nations to attain nuclear weapons. What’s worse, Obama set the catastrophically bad example of bombing Mummar Qaddafi out of power where even though the Libyan dictator had volunteered to give up his nuclear weapons.

Not only did Obama set a horrible example in Libya, he also inflated North Korea’s conventional expectations of a nuclear windfall by appeasing Iran with complete conventional hegemony over Syria and the entire Arab world as a “carrot” for agreeing to Obama nuclear “deal” (never signed by Iran to begin with.)

Trump, in contrast, applied the “stick” to North Korea’s greatest weakness – its economy – with incredibly effective sanctions. And, at the same time, he offered a “carrot” to North Korea’s leader with an economic deal he couldn’t refuse that vastly outstripped Iran’s ability to pay North Korea for its nuclear bomb.

In short, Trump has dramatically outbid Iran for North Korea’s nuclear tech by many, many billions of dollars. How? Well, you have to look at the real organic numbers. North Korea has 25 million people who are starving. South Korea has 50 million people who are the Asian success story. But the real numbers are that North Korea has a 2016 Gross Domestic Product of about 14 Billion dollars, and South Korea has a 2016 GDP of about 1.4 Trillion dollars..

Even adjusting for the size population, South Korea’s GDP is 50 times the size of North Korea. These are two places where the people are the same and the resources are roughly the same. In fact, North Korea might even have better natural resources and water resources.

Trump’s offering North Korea economic integration with the free world, means that Kim Jun-Un stands to become one of the world’s richest man who can actually spend his money and go to a LA Laker basketball game with Dennis Rodman in Los Angeles in a chauffeured Rolls. The keys will be guaranteeing Kim and his family rights to land and resources in North Korea that can’t be taken away, and amnesty for Kim past crimes. Given he was the North’s leader for a relatively short time, the amnesty will likely not be a real barrier. And, given the immense wealth Kim would possess and possible sovereign immunity, any lawsuits against will likely be few in number, and settled rather quickly.

Therefore, in effect, when Trump decides on solving the North Korean nuclear file first, he kills two nuclear problems with one deal. Without North Korea, Iran will face impossible hurdles to build a safe nuclear bomb. And, Trump will have likely “flipped” North Korea against Iran, and will likely reap a huge intelligence windfall from North Korean Intelligence detailing all of Iran’s nuclear skeletons and JCPOA violations.

President Trump is possibly on his way to solving the world’s greatest nuclear threat – the very same one that bevies of Washington “experts” appeased into a terrible nuclear crisis.

Much has been made of the possibility that Special Counsel Mueller will attempt to legally force President Trump to sit down to an interview under oath where Mueller’s team can ask a multitude of wide ranging questions.

Of course, everyone knows that the sole purpose of this interview will be to catch President Trump in some perjury trap. In a perjury trap, the Person A who is “trapped” can even be telling the truth but be prosecuted for perjury.  This is because someone else, Person B, who is lying but “believed” by the prosecutor to be telling the truth is used as the foil to prosecute Person A. In this case Comey will be the Person B to paint anything Trump says as false.

So, there you have Mueller’s “perjury” case.  Some people have even said Mueller can force Trump to testify because he can give the President trump total immunity and thus vitiate President Trump ability to claim the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination.

However, Mueller’s granting “immunity” to Trump is a legal chimera because Mueller isn’t seeking to indict Trump for a regular Federal crime.  Instead, Mueller is seeking to lay a foundation for crime that allows for Congressional Impeachment. And, Mueller can not grant Trump immunity from Congressional impeachment. Therefore, President Trump’s 5th Amendment protection is legally impervious to Mueller’s legal legerdemain.

First, I must emphasize that there are many legal theoretical and tactical reasons why any Mueller subpoena against President Trump will be defeated. For example, some say a sitting president can’t be indicted, and therefore a President can’t be forced to testify.  Tactically, Rudy Giuliani recently said, the only people who have engaged in “misconduct” have been people in Mueller’s legal team.

Putting these possible arguments aside, at the very end of the day, with just the 5th Amendment and the Impeachment of the Constitution clause at play, President Trump can’t be forced to testify because he can not be “compelled” in the criminal case of Congressional Impeachment “to be a witness against himself.”

Let’s look at the two operative clauses of the United States Constitution that would form the basis of his legal defense: The 5th Amendment to the US Constitution and Article 2 Section 4 of the Constitution.

The 5th Amendment to the US Constitution reads (in pertinent part):

“No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, . . ..”

Article Two of the United States Constitution states in Section 4 that “The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

So again, the key concept is a prosecutor can force a person to testify to facts that would implicate the person in crimes – but only if the prosecutor grants the person criminal immunity.  The theory is that if the prosecutor has granted the person immunity, then any testimony by the person can’t be used in a criminal case against the person testifying. Prosecutors grant immunity when they think they will land a bigger criminal with this person’s “immunized” testimony.  There are variants of immunity given by prosecutors. But for purposes of this discussion, we’re assuming Mueller gave the highest level of immunity to President Trump that he could possibly give.

In the Mueller game with President Trump, once Trump sits down and invokes the 5th, Mueller will give him “total immunity.”  But, that’s only immunity for other crimes, and not immunity for Mueller asserting Trump is now lying in his present testimony.  So, Mueller can legally attack Trump claiming anything Trump says is false. There’s the perjury trap.

The key is that Mueller is not looking to indict President Trump, but to create a “criminal record” for referral for impeachment by the Congress.  And, Special Counsel Mueller is created from the Article 2 constitutional powers and holds no Congressional powers. So, Mueller can not “immunize” President Trump from the Congress using any of his testimony as the basis for the crime of Impeachment.

In fact, the sole reason Mueller wants to examine President Trump is to concoct a fictitious basis for a criminal Congressional impeachment. If Mueller had any real evidence of Russian collusion, the entire world would have known about it already. Mueller has nothing, so he desperately needs Trump to slip up and say something that Comey can falsely contradict to concoct a perjury impeachment charge.

Therefore, the simple legal question is whether the Article 2 section 4 acts of “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors” are in fact “crimes” under and within the definition of “crimes” under the 5th Amendment.  “Treason, Bribery, and other High Crimes and misdemeanors” would seem to be the archetypal crimes covered under the 5th Amendment.  In fact, the Impeachment article doesn’t just talk about “crimes,” but “High Crimes.”  Therefore, the crimes that would satisfy an Impeachment charge surely fall within “crimes” as countenanced under the 5th Amendment.

Any President can clearly invoke the 5th Amendment in an Impeachment proceeding.  If so, then any president can surely invoke the 5th in a preliminary proceeding where his testimony will surely be used in the ultimate Impeachment proceeding.  Hence, Trump can surely invoke the 5th in any Mueller interrogation.  And, since Mueller doesn’t have any power to immunize President Trump against the use of that testimony in a future Congressional Impeachment, Trump can remain silent despite any Mueller proffer of what would be a meaningless “immunity.”

If Trump remains silent, any attempt to interrogate him will ultimately prove legally fruitless, except for the political optics of President Trump “taking the 5th.”  Those optics might actually benefit President Trump given the plethora of overzealous actions the Mueller team has already displayed.

In conclusion, Mueller is both constitutionally and legally powerless to immunize President Trump from the criminal trial of a congressional impeachment when Mueller’s very goal of forcing President Trump to testify is to create the factual grounds for a criminal Congressional Impeachment.

From the ashes of the catastrophic Obama’s “Iran-First” years, and at almost no cost in American precious blood and treasure, President Trump and Secretary of Defense Mattis have executed what I called “rock-paper-scissors-shoot” strategy. 

In that strategy, Secretary of Defense Mattis has engineered a local multiplier-effect army of Kurds and Arabs to form a metaphorical “scissors” holding Eastern Syria down the eastern banks of the Euphrates River of Syria, this to effectively “cut” Iran’s attempt at creating a continuous topological “paper” from Iran through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Trump/Mattis’ plan – remember, “scissors cuts paper” –  will succeed for many reasons.

Most critically, American denial of Iranian topological hegemony over the Mesopotamian east-west axis is not only in Russia’s best interests, but is also in the Arabs’ best interests.

As for the Russians, Putin must have been up in arms when Iran recently announced it was building a “super-highway” from Iran through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean Sea.  In the face of Putin’s enabling the Iranian super-victory, the Russian ruler must have felt like saying “Gee, Mom, I won the entire Syria for Iran, and all I got was a lousy t-shirt.”  Russia is now coming around to the ugly reality that its strategic “win” in Syria is, in reality, a super-win for Iran and is, at best, nothing for Russia.

It is actually a catastrophic loss for Russia because today Iran is an “ally” and tomorrow the Neo-Safavidic Iran will be the Russian enemy it always was.  Unlike Russia’s non-contiguous relationship with the United States, the Christian Russia has fought 5 separate contiguous territorial wars with the Islamic Iran/Persia from the 1600’s until today.  Russia’s support for Assad has bought Russia a pyrrhic victory, and assembled for Iran a new Safavidic Empire at Russia’s cost. Therefore, an American Eastern Syrian partition is in the best strategic interests of Russia – Russia’s “rock” has lost to Iran’s “paper.”  Continuing the “scissors-paper-rock” analogy, Russia should welcome America’s Syrian partitioning “scissors” which defeats Iran’s “paper.”

One has only to look at Iran’s rape and plunder of Iraq’s oil resources to see that the Iraqi Shiites have less under Iran’s thieving puppet Iraqi government than they had under the Sunni Saddam Hussein.  President Trump needs to use his twitter account to expose Iran as robbing both Shiite and Sunni Arabs of their oil and gas resources.

In my June 13, 2017 article, Comey’s own words prove his memos weren’t his “Personal Documents”, I argued that James Comey’s testimony before the Unites States Senate Judiciary Committee could be considered perjury as Comey, under oath, swore that his “memos” were his “personal document[s],” and not a “government document[s].”

Now that the actual documents themselves have been released, not only does the fact that Comey contemporaneously emailed these to other government officials make them “government documents,” but critically, Comey’s own designations of the documents makes them “Official” documents.  Apart from some of the “SECRET” designations, Comey personally and specifically designated some of the documents as “FOUO,” which means “For Official Use Only.”  Therefore, Comey’s Senate Judiciary testimony that any of his memo documents were his “personal documents” and not “government” documents can be defined as perjury.

Remember, after Comey was fired, the then-private citizen Comey had given at least some of the memos to the law professor whom he directed to leak to the New York Times.  So, Comey was caught in a legal bind.  The only way he could give the documents to anybody he wanted was if they were his own “personal documents.”  Otherwise, Comey would have to have admitted to taking and misappropriation of the government property of his memos.

Let’s review the transcript of Comey’s June 8, 2017 sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Under Republican Senator Roy Blunt’s questioning:

“BLUNT: So you didn’t consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document? You consider it to be somehow your own personal document that you could share with the media as you wanted to?

COMEY: Correct. I…

BLUNT: Through a friend?

COMEY: … I understood this to be my recollection, recorded, of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I felt free to share that. I thought it very important to get it out.”

You can’t get more clear than that!!  Comey swore that all the documents were his “personal document[s]” and not [government document[s].”

Now, let’s look at the actual designations Comey gave to each of the memo documents he wrote, and in many cases personally initialed with his own handwriting:

• January 7, 2017 Memo- “SECRET//NOFORN”

Sent from Comey’s E-mail, typed initials “JBC”

• January 28, 17 Memo- “CONFIDENTIAL//NOFORN” Personally handwritten initialed “JBC 1/28/17” on page 4
• February 8, 2017 Memo–“SECRET//NOFORN”

Personally handwritten initialed “JBC” and Typed “JBC 2/8/2017”

• February 14, 2017 Memo– “UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO”

Personally handwritten initialed “JBC 2/14/17” and Typed “JBC 2/14/17”

• MARCH 1, 2017 Memo- “UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO”

Sent by Comey’s E-mail

• March 30, 2017 Memo– “UNCLASSIFIED//FOUO”

Personally handwritten initialed “JBC 3/30/17” and Typed “JBC”

• April 11, 2017- “CONFIDENTIAL//NOFORN” Personally handwritten initialed “JBC 1/28/17”

Where, I have written “personally handwritten initialed” is where on the released document Comey’s actual handwritten initials appear on the released document.

The designation used in the above-herein-referenced memos are defined as the following:

SECRET: This is the second-highest classification. Information is classified Secret when its unauthorized disclosure would cause “serious damage” to national security.

NOFORN: Distribution to non-US citizens is prohibited, regardless of their clearance or access permissions (NO FOReign National access allowed).

COFIDENTIAL: This is the lowest classification level of information obtained by the government. It is defined as information that would “damage” national security if publicly disclosed, again, without the proper authorization.

UNCLASSIFIED: Unclassified is not technically a classification; this is the default and refers to information that can be released to individuals without a clearance. Information that is unclassified is sometimes restricted in its dissemination as Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) or For Official Use Only (FOUO).

FOUO: For Official Use Only. Used for documents or products which contain material which is exempt from release under the Freedom of Information Act.

We don’t know exactly which of these specific memos Comey took from the government and subsequently gave to the leaking law professor, but it is believed Comey gave at least 4 of the above-referenced memos to the law professor. The law professor had no security clearance whatsoever, and Comey admits he directed the professor to have them published because Comey wanted the memo information to be “out in the public square.”

Let’s exclude, for the moment, the Comey memos that are labeled “SECRET//NOFORN” and “CONFIDENTIAL//NOFORN.” I’m excluding those memos because anyone who testifies or remotely claims under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee that any “Secret,” “Confidential,” and/or “NO Foreign National” access document is his “personal document” and not a “government document”  is acting irrationally. And, Comey wasn’t just “anybody.”  He was the former Director of the FBI!!  So, if Comey was testifying about the Secret/Confidential documents, he clearly lied.

So, the question narrows to: How could Comey possibly truthfully testify that his Trump memos were his “personal documents” even where he personally designated them with weakest classification of the batch as “FOUO” meaning “For Official Use Only”?  Remember, “Official Use” is the exact opposite of “personal use.”  “Official Use” means the document is an “official” document, not a “personal” document.  Therefore, the answer to the question is Comey could not possibly have testified truthfully that the memos weren’t “government documents,” and even about the “FOUO” documents.

The conclusion is Comey knowingly and purposefully seems to have perjured himself to Senator Blunt and to the entire Senate Judiciary Committee in saying that any of the documents were his “personal documents,” and not “government documents.”  And, since, Comey both took the documents and perjured himself to the Senate Committee after he was fired, the DOJ Inspector General doesn’t have jurisdiction and AG Sessions must authorize an investigation of Comey’s post-firing crimes.