Free Republic

Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, in testimony to House lawmakers about the whistleblower complaint on President Trump's controversial phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, could not explain what accounted for the 18-day window between the July 25 call and the Aug. 12 complaint filing — or when exactly the whistleblower contacted a key Democrat's staff, sources familiar with the testimony told Fox News. The whistleblower's contact with Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff's staff before filing the complaint in mid-August has prompted renewed scrutiny of Schiff. The top Democrat previously said “we have not spoken directly to the whistleblower,”...

Andrew P. Bakaj is the lawyer representing the whistleblower who came forward with information about President Donald Trump and his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about an investigation into 2020 democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The whistleblower’s intel, which has now been turned over to Congress confidentially, pushed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to announce a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump on September 24, 2019. Lead counsel on this high-profile case is the 36-year-old Bakaj, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, who now works as the founding & managing partner of Compass Rose Legal...

A staffer for Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence took a trip to Ukraine last month sponsored and organized by the Atlantic Council think tank. The Atlantic Council is funded by and routinely works in partnership with Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The Schiff staffer, Thomas Eager, is also currently one of 19 fellows at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Congressional Fellowship, a bipartisan program that says it “educates congressional staff on current events in the Eurasia region.” Eager’s trip to Ukraine last month was...

The intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings, raising questions about the intelligence community’s behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting. The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed...

Lots of buzz about this in political media this afternoon. But then, there were also many “bombshells” during the course of the Mueller investigation that caused a stir in political media and you know how those turned out.Speculation about the troubling “promise” Trump may or may not have made to a foreign leader has naturally focused on Putin and Kim Jong Un. Did he promise Putin he’d make some startling international concession, like exiting NATO, in exchange for God knows what? Did he tell Kim that he’d withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea if Kim did X,Y, and Z?...

Former White House counsel Gregory Craig will go to trial in August to face charges of lying to investigators who were working for special counsel Robert Mueller, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., said Friday.Craig, who worked under former President Obama from 2009-2010, is scheduled to begin his trial at 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 12, according to court filings first reported by The New York Times. He is accused of lying and withholding information about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's lobbying work in Ukraine from investigators working for Mueller's now-shuttered probe. Craig pleaded not guilty to the charges earlier...