Free Republic

MOSCOW, September 7. /TASS/. Russia plans to develop its relations with North Korea regardless of what other countries might think, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "We have our own relations with Pyongyang. We value these relations as North Korea is our neighbor, and we will of course continue to develop relations with them regardless of the opinion of other countries," he said. Peskov was commenting on a recent allegation by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan about the DPRK's plans to supply arms to Russia. Peskov again declined to say whether DPRK leader Kim Jong Un is expected to...

Explosions have rocked targets around Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don. The Russian military claims it has shot down several Ukrainian drones, but damage on the ground is reported.

CNN — Mar-a-Lago IT worker Yuscil Taveras has struck a cooperation agreement with the special counsel’s office in the federal case over former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, Taveras’ former defense attorney said in a new court filing. Taveras struck the deal with prosecutors after he was threatened with prosecution, defense attorney Stanley Woodward wrote in the filing dated Tuesday. Taveras is referred to in the filing and in the superseding indictment as “Trump Employee 4,” and CNN has identified him as that employee. According to the terms of the deal explained in the filing, Taveras agreed to...

For one of the biggest moments of his life, Eric Bochene wore a faded white t-shirt and sat in an empty, green-walled conference room, straining to hear the volume from the computer. He grimaced as the virtual conference technology glitched. And he frequently voiced his frustration with his situation. Bochene pleaded guilty in late August to a federal criminal charge for his role in the U.S. Capitol attack. But he didn't stand in a courtroom. His lawyer wasn't standing next to Bochene. Instead the attorney was on a separate virtual conference connection. And Bochene wasn't permitted to choose his own...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A one-time leader in the Proud Boys far-right extremist group was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, tying the record for the longest sentence in the attack. Ethan Nordean was one of five members convicted of spearheading an attack on the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 presidential election. “He is the undisputed leader on the ground on Jan 6,” said prosecutor Jason McCullough. The Seattle-area chapter president was one...

A federal judge on Wednesday issued a default judgment against former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and imposed sanctions on him in a civil conspiracy lawsuit filed by two Georgia election workers he had claimed mishandled ballots in the 2020 presidential contest. Judge Beryl Howell sanctioned Giuliani for failing to comply with demands for documents and other evidence sought in the case by lawyers for the election workers, Rudy Freeman and Wandrea' ArShaye Moss. Howell also ordered attorneys for Giuliani and the two women to propose three possible dates for trial in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on the question...

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office has repeatedly grilled witnesses about Rudy Giuliani’s drinking on and after election day, investigating whether Donald Trump was knowingly relying on an inebriated attorney while trying to overturn a presidential election. In their questioning of multiple witnesses, Smith’s team of federal investigators have asked questions about how seemingly intoxicated Giuliani was during the weeks he was giving Trump advice on how to cling to power, according to a source who’s been in the room with Smith’s team, one witness’s attorney, and a third person familiar with the matter. The special counsel’s team has also asked...

Former President Trump is opposing an effort to move the trial for his election interference case in Georgia up to October, asking to sever his case from that of a co-defendant who asked for a speedy trial. The notice from Trump came after co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro filed a motion for a speedy trial and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) suggested an Oct. 23 trial date for all 19 defendants in the case. “President Trump also alerts the Court that he will be filing a timely motion to sever his case from that of co-defendant Chesebro, who has filed...

Wagner Group commander Dmitry Utkin was reportedly among the 10 people killed in a plane crash north of Moscow that also is believed to have claimed the life of Yevgeny Prigozhin. Utkin, a former Russian military intelligence officer, has Nazi tattoos on his body. He helped co-found the militant group and came up with the name “Wagner,” which derived from Adolf Hilter’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner. According to reports, Utkin and Prigozhin were just two of Wagner's top men who were listed as passengers on the flight.

The judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified documents case should hold a hearing to discuss potential conflicts of interest among the lawyers involved in the proceedings, after a Mar-a-Lago employee flipped on the former president, a legal expert has said. Legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance was reacting to news that Yuscil Taveras, an IT director at Trump's Florida resort, has retracted "his prior false testimony" and now says the former president and two others charged in the classified documents case, Trump aide Walt Nauta and maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira, did take steps to delete security camera footage...

Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Monday night to complain about the $200,000 bond that’s been negotiated for his release after he surrenders in Georgia later this week over his alleged plot to overturn the 2020 election. And while it was completely expected that the former president would complain about needing to post bond, he also ventured into truly bizarre territory, explaining a hypothetical scenario where he would apparently flee to Russia. “I assume, therefore, that she thought I was a ‘flight’ risk - I’d fly far away, maybe to Russia, Russia, Russia, share a...

A rebellious campaign within the California Republican Party to break away from its historic opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage is dividing the party weeks before planned appearances by former President Trump and other GOP White House hopefuls. A proposed platform overhaul, which could be voted on at the state GOP’s fall convention in Anaheim, is a remarkable break from conservative dogma in the state that nurtured Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. “It’s a seismic shift but it’s a shift born out of practical necessity. Look at what’s happening not just in California but in much more conservative states,...

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said Sunday he thinks former President Trump should drop out of the 2024 presidential race. “I think so,” Cassidy said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” when asked whether Trump should drop out. “But obviously, that’s up to him. I mean, you’re just asking me my opinion, but he will lose to Joe Biden if you look at the current polls.” “I’m a Republican. I think any Republican on that stage in Milwaukee will do a better job than Joe Biden. And so I want one of them to win,” Cassidy continued. “If former President Trump...

Mayes confirmed a Washington Post report last month that her office was investigating the 11 phony Trump electors in Arizona. PHOENIX — Prosecutors in Georgia and Michigan have filed criminal charges over the alleged schemes to keep President Donald Trump in office after his 2020 election defeat. Is Arizona next? "We are taking this investigation very seriously, very solemnly," Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes said Wednesday, in her first public comments about her office's investigation of the attempts in Arizona to overturn Joe Biden's 11,000-vote victory over Trump. "We will not move forward unless we believe we will be successful."...

Aug 17 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he had canceled a press conference scheduled for next week to release a report into the 2020 election in Georgia, saying his attorneys would put his arguments in court filings instead. Trump said earlier this week that he would hold the press conference on Monday to release a detailed, 100-page report into what he described as "election fraud" in the state of Georgia during the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has decided to keep U.S. Space Command headquarters in Colorado, overturning a last-ditch decision by the Trump administration to move it to Alabama. The choice ended months of thorny deliberations, but an Alabama lawmaker vowed to fight on. U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Monday that Biden was convinced by the head of Space Command, Gen. James Dickinson, who argued that moving his headquarters now would jeopardize military readiness. Dickinson’s view, however, was in contrast to Air Force leadership, who studied the issue at length and determined that relocating to Huntsville, Alabama, was...

Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) rebuked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a rival for the GOP presidential nomination, on Thursday over new state standards on how Black history is taught in Florida schools, saying “there is no silver lining” in slavery. The social studies standards, which DeSantis has defended, include teaching middle-schoolers that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Scott, the only Black Republican member of the U.S. Senate, strongly pushed back on that idea while speaking to reporters on the campaign trail in Ankeny, Iowa.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that Ukraine has already retaken about 50 percent of the territory that Russia initially seized, stressing that Kyiv’s counteroffensive is still in its “relatively early days.” “In terms of what Russia sought to achieve, what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin sought to achieve, they’ve already failed. They’ve already lost. The objective was to erase Ukraine from the map, to eliminate its independence, its sovereignty, to subsume it into Russia. That failed a long time ago,” Blinken told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview on “GPS.”

Just weeks before a grand jury in Georgia may consider charges against Donald Trump, the former president asked a pair of courts to step in and bar a report that may form the underpinnings of a potential case against him. Attorneys for Trump appealed to the Superior Court of Fulton County and Georgia's Supreme Court in filings on Thursday and Friday, demanding that the report, made by a special purpose grand jury, be quashed. The report concluded an investigation into alleged efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election results, and included recommendations for potential charges.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott is getting the attention of Republican primary voters. He gets support from just 3% of Republicans as their first choice in the GOP presidential primary, according to the latest national NBC News poll. But that's just part of the picture: The number of GOP voters who see Scott as their second-choice candidate has risen sharply — more than any other Republican candidate polled by NBC News from April to June. In June, 12% of those polled said the same, a 9-point increase over the 3% who said so in April.