Free Republic

As Hillary Clinton was beginning her job as President Obama’s chief diplomat, federal agents observed as multiple arms of Vladimir Putin’s machine unleashed an influence campaign designed to win access to the new secretary of State, her husband Bill Clinton and members of their inner circle, according to interviews and once-sealed FBI records. Some of the activities FBI agents gathered evidence about in 2009 and 2010 were covert and illegal. A female Russian spy posing as an American accountant, for instance, used a false identity to burrow her way into the employ of a major Democratic donor in hopes of...

Billionaire Clinton Foundation Donor, Feds Settle Lawsuit Over Reports of Terrorism TiesA billionaire Clinton Foundation donor has struck a deal with the U.S. government to settle a lawsuit over leaks that indicated he was fundraising for a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian-born businessman who lives in Lebanon, filed a lawsuit last September against the FBI, CIA, Department of Justice, and several other agencies over leaks that "improperly impugned" his reputation and denied his constitutional rights, Politico reported Monday. News reports surfaced last year that Chagoury, who contributed millions to the Clinton Foundation and pledged $1 billion to...

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is admitting his guilt, bringing an end of sorts to one of the most shameful episodes of President Barack Obama’s tenure. Bergdahl, who faced an Army court-martial this month, will plead guilty to the two counts with which he’s been charged: desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, the Associated Press reports. So much for Team Obama’s insistence that Bergdahl had served “with honor and distinction.” Even National Security Adviser Susan Rice’s claim that he’d been “captured on the battlefield” was untrue. That happy talk — complete with a Rose Garden celebration — was an effort to justify...

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is being accused of groping a 22-year-old Italian model on the opening weekend of his Radio City “New York Spring Spectacular,” police sources said Monday. The model told cops that the Oscar-winning Hollywood producer sexually abused her after coaxing her to his Manhattan office on the pretense of talking business, sources told the Daily News. The woman told cops that Weinstein — a married, 63-year-old father of five — groped her private area and her breasts around 6 p.m. Friday in his third-floor office at the Tribeca Film Center on Greenwich St., the sources said. “He...

As Britain readies to host the G8 summit, the documents uncovered by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed that back in 2009 US spies intercepted top-secret communication of then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to London. The shocking news has been broken by The Guardian which has seen the documents. It also revealed that a UK intelligence agency, GCHQ, monitored foreign politicians and intercepted their emails during the 2009 G20 summit held in the British capital. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by UK intelligence agencies to read their email traffic....

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained Department of State emails showing that top Clinton aide Laura Pena helped push through the political appointment of former Clinton for President IT director Bryan Pagliano to a Schedule C position at the State Department in 2009. The new documents also show the involvement of Patrick Kennedy, Under Secretary for Management, in Pagliano’s hiring. The emails show others in the State International Resource Management (IT division) in which Pagliano would work questioned why a political appointee was being placed in the office. And the emails reveal that a political...

Was this the “collusion” you were looking for? Just two months into her term as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton’s foundation invited Russian leader Vladimir Putin, along with several other prominent heads of state, to the Clinton Global Initiative’s 2009 annual gathering, emails obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch reveal. The March 13, 2009, email from the Clinton Foundation showed that Putin and about 200 other leaders (including others just as controversial) were invited to attend a gathering that occurred at about the same time that the newly appointed secretary of state was attempting a “reset” with Moscow. The...

The website FreeRepublic.com earns a spot in The website FreeRepublic.com earns a spot in Keith Olbermann's "Worst Persons in the World" segment after waiting all of three days to step in and take action on a message board thread making racist comments about the Obama family, after a photo of daughter Malia wearing a T-shirt with a peace sign on it was released. after waiting all of three days to step in and take action on a message board thread making racist comments about the Obama family, after a photo of daughter Malia wearing a T-shirt with a peace sign...

Terry Bean, a Portland power player in national Democratic politics and the gay rights movement, was arrested today on charges of sex abuse in a case involving a 15-year-old boy. Law enforcement sources familiar with the case say Bean will be charged with two counts of sodomy in the third degree, a felony, and sex abuse in the third degree, a misdemeanor. The arrest comes after a six-month investigation that began with allegations Bean secretly made video recordings of men having sex in his bedroom. As WW reported in June, Bean accused a former lover, Kiah Lawson, of attempting to...

The Central Intelligence Agency apparently didn’t trust its partners in the American intelligence and created a fake software update to steal their data. Part of an internal project called ExpressLane, the bogus update was installed by the CIA Office of Technical Service (OTS) agents purported to be upgrading the biometric collection system.This biometric system was installed at the “liaison services” that included National Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Intelligence. The agency reportedly installed these at partner offices around the world to gain biometric data that was collected by the other agencies. The scathing revelation...

Blackwater involved in Bhutto and Hariri hits: former Pakistani army chief Tehran Times Political Desk TEHRAN - Pakistan’s former chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg (ret.), has said the U.S. private security company Blackwater was directly involved in the assassinations of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Blackwater later changed its name and is now known as Xe. General Beg recently told the Saudi Arabian daily Al Watan that former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had given Blackwater the green light to carry out terrorist operations in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi,...

The Fusion GPS news-for-hire scandal has not only led to the public identification of the source of the “Trump Dossier”—a for-profit company that provides opposition research to whoever could write big checks, which is staffed by four former Wall Street Journal reporters led by Glenn Simpson. The scandal has also lifted the lid off a sewer of corporate information warfare and opposition research that the flailing institutions of the mainstream press now regularly re-package as news, without ever saying where it came from—or who paid for it. While the idea that the products of paid opposition research are being main-lined...

For instance, a ruling declassified this month by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) chronicles nearly 10 pages listing hundreds of violations of the FBI’s privacy-protecting minimization rules that occurred on Comey’s watch. The behavior the FBI admitted to a FISA judge just last month ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight the bureau promised was in place years ago.

McChrystal and a few other key figures converted JSOC from a Ferrari in the garage to the long-haul truck of the war on terror. The targeting of low-level insurgents continued when JSOC shifted resources from Iraq to Afghanistan in 2009. But the enemy’s continual replacement of losses with recruits from Pakistan and unpacified eastern Afghanistan eventually eroded JSOC’s morale. One Ranger officer tells Mr. Naylor that, by 2011, morale had sunk to the point that he had to yell at his noncommissioned officers just to go out on operations.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Kimberly Strassel is in the Wall Street Journal today with an amazing piece: "Trolling for Dirt on the President's List." Listen to this: "Here's what happens when the president of the United States publicly targets a private citizen for the crime of supporting his opponent. Frank VanderSloot is the CEO of Melaleuca Inc. The 63-year-old has run that wellness-products company for 26 years out of tiny Idaho Falls, Idaho. Last August, Mr. VanderSloot gave $1 million to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Mitt Romney. "Three weeks ago, an Obama campaign website, 'Keeping GOP Honest,'...

The Export-Import Bank charter will expire in a few days, on June 30, unless Congress acts to reauthorize it. The Export-Import Bank was created more than 80 years ago by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help foreign customers buy goods from the United States. Some companies benefit from the Export-Import Bank and they are the first ones to defend its reauthorization. But let’s be clear: Companies benefit from Export-Import Bank loans at the expense of taxpayers and other businesses. Taxpayers—not the companies themselves—assume the risk of a foreign loan, made through a private bank (like Goldman Sachs), to purchase a...

An iconic photograph of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton using her BlackBerry while wearing sunglasses on a military plane in 2011 prompted a recordkeeping official in her office to inquire about whether Clinton had been assigned a State.gov email address, the State Department disclosed this week.Clarence Finney, who oversaw an office responsible for Freedom of Information Act searches, raised the question about an official account after seeing the photo in the media, according to testimony at a deposition held Wednesday and released Thursday. The image went viral on social media in 2012, prompting a "Texts from Hillary" meme."When Mrs. Clinton's...

Back in May 2009, Professor Glenn Reynolds, better known to his followers as Instapundit, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he discussed some odd rhetoric from President Obama. Obama had been refused an honorary doctorate by Arizona State University, and Obama remarked, “President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.” Reynolds pointed out: Just a joke about the power of the presideBut as told by Mr. Obama, the actual president of the United States, it´s hard to see the humor.

A State Department contractor charged with leaking top-secret information about North Korea to Fox News entered a guilty plea Friday and agreed to serve a 13-month prison term.During an 80-minute hearing at U.S. District Court, Stephen Kim pled guilty to a single felony count of disclosing national defense information to an unauthorized person, Fox News reporter James Rosen.Kim admitted providing Rosen with the contents of a top-secret intelligence report on North Korean intentions to carry out nuclear tests. The contractor acknowledged that he and Rosen stepped out of their offices at State Department headquarters for a short meeting nearby on...

House leaders seek GAO probe of State Department failure to report Russian nuclear missile treaty violationsTwo senior House leaders on Friday requested an investigation by Congress’ General Accountability Office (GAO) into the State Department’s failure to report Russian violations of a 1987 nuclear missile accord.“It is clear from my subcommittee’s oversight that the administration did not fully disclose what it knew about Russian arms control violations when it was trying to get the New START treaty ratified,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces.“Its all-consuming drive to protect its Russia reset...