Free Republic

Several Democrats expressed outrage on Monday after letters surfaced that they said suggested the White House tried to prevent former acting Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying before a House Intelligence Committee in its probe of connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. "It sounds like an effort to try and muzzle persons who have information and the ability to shed light on this investigation," Rep. Jackie Speier, D-California, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC. [Dem Rep found out intel meetings cancelled through 'media reports'] White House officials and House Intelligence chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Califonia...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Friday cast doubt on the notion that the Obama administration spied on associates of President Trump, saying there is no evidence to support the claim and that such surveillance would be difficult to authorize. "There certainly doesn't seem to be any evidence of that at this point," Christie said during an appearance on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice pushed back Wednesday against President Donald Trump’s claim that he was wiretapped by the Obama administration during the 2016 election. “Nothing of the sort occurred,” Rice told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff, in her first interview since stepping down as national security adviser when President Barack Obama left office. Rice also took aim at the Trump White House in a Washington Post op-ed Wednesday. “False statements from the White House are part of a disturbing pattern of behavior that poses real and potentially profound dangers to U.S. national security,” Rice wrote. In the PBS NewsHour...

On January 20, the New York Times published a story on wiretapping of Trump insiders. In the print version, the headline was "Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides," although you're going to have to squint to read the acknowledgment of the print headline at the bottom of the page.Still, if you look through the actual article, you'll find this paragraph: The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of...

President Trump’s former campaign chairman on Monday denied any ties to or contact with the Russian government after the FBI confirmed it is investigating Trump allies’ alleged links to Moscow. Paul Manafort said he “had no involvement” in Russia’s intervention in the 2016 presidential elections, including its email hacking of prominent Democratic groups and figures, and never spoke to Russian officials who claimed to be involved. “The suggestion that I ever worked in concert with anyone to release hacked emails or sought to undermine the interests of the United States is false,” he said in a statement. The former top...

Unnamed security official, possibly fearing retribution from unnamed American security experts, put his entire reputation on the line to declare publicly (albeit anonymously) and unequivocally the absurdity of such allegations According to a New York Times columnist, Max Fisher, the deep state is not real, and there would be real consequences for blaming the Trump’s administrative problems on the deep state if it does not exist. (What Happens When You Fight a ‘Deep State’ That Doesn’t Exist? – March 10, 2017). Unfortunately, there has recently been too much written about shadowy alternative government operatives of a “Deep State” within the...

There’s nothing like a little violence to focus the mind. I am the Middlebury College professor who ended up with whiplash and a concussion for having the audacity to engage with the ideas of Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Though he is someone with whom I disagree, I welcomed the opportunity to moderate a talk with him on campus on March 2 because several of my students asked me to do so. They know I am a Democrat, but the college courses I teach are nonpartisan. As I wrote on Facebook immediately after the incident, this...

Robert Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, said Wednesday that ABC News has been “extremely fair” in its coverage of the 2016 election and the Trump administration and that complaints of left-wing political bias on ESPN are “completely exaggerated.”

Having thrown the Justice Department under the bus yesterday, it appears the FBI Director has not managed to pass the hot potato of blame/responsibility for Trump's wiretap accusations. As The Hill reports, a White House spokeswoman on Monday said she "doesn't think" Trump accepts Comey's denial of the president's claims. As a reminder, a New York Times report Sunday said  Comey asked the Justice Department to publicly reject the president's claims. Senior U.S. officials told the Times that Comey has said the president's wiretapping allegations are false and asked the Justice Department on Saturday to publicly correct the record. The FBI and DOJ declined to...

You can be a guy with a vagina that bleeds for a week every month. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are beautiful. We asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about their periods, and we heard from a lot of trans and nonbinary people who want you to know they menstruate too. 1. “But you’re a guy…guys don’t get periods?” Whenever my period comes, all my friends will hear about it. I always complain to my mother and sister, too, but that’s the extent of talking about it with family for me.

In an interview broadcast Sunday night , former Putin adviser Sergey Karaganov said that, to the best of his knowledge, “there were no serious connections, fortunately, or unfortunately” between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the government of Russia. Karaganov was the chief foreign policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin from 2001 to 2013 and is now dean of World Economy and International Affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “Do you think that there are any connections that Trump has with Russia that we should know of? What do you make of those reports?” CNN host Fareed...

White House press secretary Sean Spicer forcefully denied on Friday that the Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up illegal immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border. 'That is 100 per cent not true. It is false. It is irresponsible to be saying this,' Spicer told reporters aboard the Marine One helicopter. 'There is no effort at all to round up, to utilize the National Guard to round up illegal immigrants.'

WASHINGTON A Russian venture capitalist and tech expert whose name and company are mentioned in the now-notorious document alleging connections between the Donald Trump campaign and Russian hackers says no intelligence officers have ever contacted him about the accusations, which he says are false. A report compiled by a former Western intelligence official as opposition research against Trump was made public Tuesday when BuzzFeed posted its 35 pages. The document included unsubstantiated claims of collusion between the Trump campaign team and the Kremlin. It also alleged that global tech firm XBT Holding, with operations in Dallas, was instrumental in the...

resident Obama mentioned in his farewell speech that no foreign terrorist organization has planned and executed an attack on the homeland. Because of the extraordinary courage of our men and women in uniform, and the intelligence officers, law enforcement, and diplomats who support them, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland these past eight years The president has been laying it on thick over the past week with this claim. On January 4, at Fort Myer in Arlington, President Obama addressed members of the military in a farewell ceremony, where he reiterated the...

At the Democratic National Convention speakers are repeating the claim, amplified ad nauseam by the left and establishment GOP opponents over the past year, that Donald Trump mocked the disability of New York Times reporter, Serge Kovaleski. This accusation has served as a very convenient tool to both smear Trump’s character and to avoid having to confront him on substantive political issues. But is it true? Here is the story the media is not telling you.

On your long road to acceptance, you're getting awfully annoying Shut up! Your liberal whining and complaining are divisive and sickening A psychologist reminded me on my radio show that the first three levels of grief are denial, anger and finally acceptance. The Democrats, flaming liberals, regular liberals and college snowflakes haven’t gotten past denial and anger combined. That’s the only explanation for irrational attempts to de-legitimize Trump’s presidency.

Spicer told 'Fox & Friends' hosts that last week's cyber security memo from the FBI and Homeland Security Department is a 'how-to manual for the DNC' to 'improve their IT security' 'I think it's unfair if they don't know. And I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be someone else,' Trump said at his oceanside Mar-a-Lago resort club in Florida. 'And I also know things that other people don't know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.' Asked what his secret knowledge consists of, Trump said: 'You'll...

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has clarified that he is not an atheist, ending years of speculation about his religious beliefs. The revelation came in a comment underneath a post Zuckerberg originally posted on Christmas Day, wishing his followers a merry Christmas and a happy Hanukkah. Someone asked: “But aren’t you atheist [sic]?” prompting Zuckerberg to say he was not and that he believes religion to be “very important”. Zuckerberg, who was raised Jewish, has cultivated an interest in Buddhism through his wife and met the Pope last summer, did not elaborate on his beliefs and did not explicitly say if...

Former President and one-time would-be “First Man” Bill Clinton placed the blame for his wife Hillary’s loss in the recent US presidential election squarely on FBI Director James Comey - and “angry, white men.” According to Politico, Bill Clinton, responding at a spontaneous question-and-answer session at a New York bookstore to the question of whether President-elect Trump was smart, replied that “he doesn’t know much.” However, “one thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him.” Analysis of election results has shown that blue-collar and middle class white men voted for Trump in large...

As news organizations around the country proclaimed Cathy McMorris Rodgers a sure bet to be the next interior secretary and politicians in her Eastern Washington district quickly announced campaigns for her congressional seat, the person most in the dark was McMorris Rodgers herself. In her first extended remarks on the events of the last few weeks, the congresswoman said she never got a call from President-elect Donald Trump or his transition team saying she was going to be offered the Cabinet position before or after reports from unnamed sources said she was the likely pick. She also never got a...