The firing of McCabe, and the finding of the House Intelligence Committee that there was no collusion is just the start of what is going to become a major scandal of Watergate proportions, except that it is the Clintons, the DNC, and senior officers of the FBI and justice, and the Obama White House who will be swept up this. All indications are there was a massive effort initiated by the Clintons to try to stop Trump, and then to undermine him after the election. The dossier was clearly the centerpiece of the conspiracy, and it was McCabe who pushed the FISA warrant using the dossier. He seems to have also been working with Strzok and his girlfriend in a separate conspiracy to undermine Trump with what they referred to as the “insurance policy'. Whether that was the just revealed relationship with the FISA judge, who was also the judge to hear the Flynn case is unclear yet.

We have Clinton and the DNC laundering money through Perkins Coie, to pay for the dossier, in a clear violation of campaign laws. A clear effort by McCabe and Comey to cover up for Hilary on her e mail and the failure to pursue an investigation of the corruption of the foundation payoffs. Then separately there is the unmasking by Susan Powers, the UN ambassador who unmasked over 200 names, the odd CYA memo form Susan Rice to the file the day before the inauguration, and the connection of Bruce Ohr and his wife.

What is clear from all of this is that there was a widespread conspiracy to go after Trump and then to undermine him once he won the election. What the Democrats were doing made whatever Putin was doing look like child's play. This was all combined with the clear effort by Schumer to stop as many appointment confirmations as possible, and by he and Pelosi to try to stop any legislation from passing to completely hobble Trump from governing. The clear anti Trump bias of the mainstream media and CNN was just more piling on to convince voters that Republicans should not be in control, and that Trump is a racist, bigot, and whatever else they could make up. The McCabe firing is just the first layer of the onion to appear, and now things will unravel fairly fast once the IG report is released and once Meuller and the Senate committee announce there was no collusion. Before this is over there will be people in jail. Someone will be the new John Dean. This unraveling will happen over the summer just before the election, and that is what matters to CRE.

The scandal will blow a hole in the Democrats effort to regain he House combined with the economic boom and the continued rise in the stock market and 401K's. If there is also a true treaty and solution to the N Korea crisis, then Trump is a huge winner and the Republicans retain the House. That will mean a continuation of deregulation, additional tax reform, and a continuation of the pro business attitude of government. It is very likely that the Republicans will pick up 4-10 seats in the Senate as well. If they can then get close to or at 60 votes, then many more things like an infrastructure program can get passed.

CRE will be the winner if all of this plays out as it appears it likely will do. The economic boom will continue, taxes will remain lowered, infrastructure will get rebuilt, and there will be no negatives for real estate. For the country, this scandal will be a major blot on our history, and will just confirm to Trump's base that Washington really is a swamp.

The views expressed here are those of the author and not ALM Real Estate Media.

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Joel Ross

Joel Ross began his career in Wall St as an investment banker in 1965, handling corporate advisory matters for a variety of clients. During the seventies he was CEO of North American operations for a UK based conglomerate, and sat on the parent company board. In 1981, he began his own firm handling leveraged buyouts, investment banking and real estate financing. In 1984 Ross began providing investment banking services and arranging financing for real estate transactions with his own firm, Ross Properties, Inc. In 1993 Ross and a partner, Lexington Mortgage, created the first Wall St hotel CMBS program in conjunction with Nomura. They went on to develop a similar CMBS program for another major Wall St investment bank and for five leading hotel companies. Lexington, in partnership with Mr. Ross established a hotel mortgage bank table funded by an investment bank, and making all CMBS hotel loans on their behalf. In 1999 he formed Citadel Realty Advisors as a successor to Ross Properties Corp., focusing on real estate investment banking in the US, UK and Paris. He has closed over $3.0 billion of financings for office, hotel, retail, land and multifamily projects. Ross is also a founder of Market Street Investors, a brownfield land development company, and has been involved in the acquisition of notes on defaulted loans and various REO assets in conjunction with several major investors. Ross was an adjunct professor in the graduate program at the NYU Hotel School. He is a member of Urban Land Institute and was a member of the leadership of his ULI council. In 1999, he conceived and co-authored with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Hotel Mortgage Performance Report, a major study of hotel mortgage default rates.