Free Republic

A review launched by Attorney General William Barr into the origins of the Russia investigation has expanded significantly amid concerns about whether the probe has any legal or factual basis, multiple current and former officials told NBC News. Durham has also requested to talk to CIA analysts involved in the intelligence assessment of Russia’s activities, prompting some of them to hire lawyers, according to three former CIA officials familiar with the matter. And there is tension between the CIA and the Justice Department over what classified documents Durham can examine, two people familiar with the matter said.

ummmm…maybe the Fainting Felon should turn her slanders on a more passive target. – This is the best thing you will see today, trust me. The Democrat/media smear machine is really afraid of Tulsi Gabbard, the representative from Hawaii who remains the only actual interesting person in the party’s presidential nominating race. As Gabbard herself pointed out in Wednesday night’s debate, the smear machine has been up and running at her for the past week: “Not only that, but, the New York Times and CNN have also smeared veterans like myself for calling for an end to this regime change...

Disturbance in The Force? President Trump May Be In Grave Danger Kelen McBreen | 10.17.2019 The reason the Dallas rally is being focused on is that during Tuesday’s Democratic debate, former Vice President Joe Biden said, “What I think is important is we focus on why it’s so important to remove this man from office…, before stuttering “on the 17th,” and changing the subject to George Washington.…Also, during a Tuesday press conference on the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi showed off a bracelet made out of “bullets in the color orange” before saying, “I told the president ‘we’re...

Things are more fluid than they seem. That’s my impression of Washington right now. There’s something quiet going on, a mood shift. Impeachment of course will happen. The House will support whatever charges are ultimately introduced because most Democrats think the president is not fully sane and at least somewhat criminal. Also they’re Democrats and he’s a Republican. The charges will involve some level of foreign-policy malfeasance. The ultimate outcome depends on the Senate. It takes 67 votes to convict. Republicans control the Senate 53-47, and it is unlikely 20 of them will agree to remove a president of their...

It’s been obvious from the start, hasn’t it? – It’s always been about the server, folks; it has never been about any “quid pro quo,” which President Trump manifestly did not engage in during his July call with Ukraine President Zelensky. That’s what the Campaign Update told you on September 25, about an hour after the transcript of the call had been made public: Here is the passage that really has the Democrats in their current panicked frenzy: “I would like for you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows...

Why yes, yes we do. – As he toured the spanking-new, 1,000-job Louis Vuiton factory in the tiny town of Alvarado, Texas on Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump (I still never tire of typing those three glorious words) really, truly did have this exact exchange with a French reporter: French reporter: “You have very low unemployment rate in the US and we have very high unemployment rate in France. How come? What the recipe for?” Trump: “Well maybe we have a better President than you do.” Somewhere, French President Emmanuel Macron, with his tiny 23% public approval rating, is sipping...

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said nothing wrong or incriminating during a widely criticized news conference, according to radio host Mark Levin. The former South Carolina Republican congressman's exchange with the White House press corps was just the latest example of the media defending Democrats in trying to push a Trump-Ukraine narrative, Levin claimed Thursday on "The Mark Levin Show" on Westwood One. "Of course the media and the Democrats are seizing on something he said," Levin said. "Every day, it's something else to prove there was a quid pro quo. It's so absurd." "Of course the...

CNN claimed Thursday that the White House “admits to quid pro quo with Ukraine.” That appeared to be the opposite, in fact, of what happened during a press conference with acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Mulvaney told reporters that there had been no quid pro quo, as described by those pursuing his impeachment — that President Donald Trump had not withheld aid from Ukraine until it agreed to investigate his potential 2020 presidential rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged that he held up $390 million in security aide for Ukraine in order to pressure the country into pursuing a 2016 election probe being demanded by President Trump. Trump and top administration officials have vigorously denied any 'quid pro quo' with Ukraine following a whistleblower's report that the White House was demanding a probe of the Bidens as well as Trump's conspiracy theory that the DNC server might be in Ukraine's possession. In a rare White House briefing, Mulvaney denied any knowledge of a company linked to Hunter Biden – but...

Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano directly quoted the Constitution to say why it’s wrong for President Donald Trump to host the G-7 at a resort he owns, calling it a “direct and profound” violation. “He has bought himself an enormous headache now with the choice of this. This is about as direct and profound a violation of the Emoluments Clause as one could create,” Napolitano told Neil Cavuto on Cavuto: Coast to Coast.

Most Americans have to work to earn a living. But the rich are different: They get most of their income not from labor but from what they own — companies, stocks, real estate and the like. These income-generating assets are what economists call capital. And because capital is heavily concentrated among the rich, the U.S. government taxed earnings derived from capital at a higher rate than earnings made through labor for the entirety of the 20th century. But that’s no longer the case, according to economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley. In their...

Remember those Republicans who supported Nancy Pelosi and betrayed the American voters with this vote. – I have very often been thoroughly disgusted with the behavior of spineless, disloyal Republicans in the U.S. Congress, but seldom as disgusted as I felt on Wednesday afternoon. That was when we got news that 129 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives joined with Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat caucus in a vote to condemn President Trump’s decision to pull U.S. military personnel out of harm’s way as the Turkish military invaded Northern Syria on Sunday. That decision involved about 50 U.S....

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Elijah Cummings died. – I have nothing nice to say about him, so I will say nothing at all. Here’s a link to the AP article about his death, which of course is a thoroughly one-sided, glowing review of his life. Somehow the Republic and Baltimore will survive. San Fran Nan is sick. – At least, according to President Donald Trump, who issued the tweet below after Pelosi blew up yet again in a White House meeting and staged a very theatrical walkout along with Chuck Schumer and Steny Hoyer: Donald J....

By Yi Whan-woo, Kim Yoo-chul As nuclear negotiations between North Korea and the United States remain in a stalemate after no "substantial outcome" from their recent encounter in Sweden, the lack of visible progress in the denuclearization dialogue is raising concerns that the North is "buying time" for its military and nuclear advancement. During an Asan Institute for Policy Studies security forum held in Seoul, Tuesday, Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the Washington-based RAND Corporation, claimed that despite North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's promise to end his nuclear program, Pyongyang has not taken any meaningful measures toward this....

This is the first segment of AFGE’s 5-part series: The Secret Memo : Inside Trump’s Plan to Destroy Unions.A leaked White House memo, as first reported by the New York Times and then obtained by POLITICO, outlines President Trump’s plans to destroy public and private-sector unions, get rid of worker protections, cripple workers’ ability to organize, and increase profits for corporate special interests.This explosive 19-page document was prepared in 2017 by Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy James Sherk, who was previously a research fellow at the regressive, anti-worker Heritage Foundation.The memo, laced with familiar half-truths and outright...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives work through an impeachment inquiry regarding alleged abuses of office by President Donald Trump, approval of Congress is now at 25%. That is up from 18% in September, prior to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announcing the impeachment inquiry following news of possible wrongdoing by the president in communications with Ukraine. The increase in approval of Congress over the past month is the result of a 15-percentage-point jump among Democrats (from 19% to 34%) as well as a smaller increase among independents (from 19% to 25%). Republicans' rating of Congress...

The White House is launching a new effort to slow the speeding Democratic impeachment push, but its noncooperation strategy is being constantly thwarted by a daily stream of explosive secrets being spilled behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. Current and former officials are painting an ever more damning picture of a wider than originally perceived scheme by President Donald Trump and his crew to pressure Ukraine that they warned could amount to a trampling of US law. Vice President Mike Pence launched a new effort Tuesday to bolster White House hopes of stalling the House inquiry long enough for Trump...

Today’s Campaign Update, Part II (Because The Campaign Never Ends) It’s all just another day’s work for our fake news media. – In my weekly Tuesday afternoon radio spot on News Talk 93.1 FM in Montgomery, Alabama, hilarious host Greg Budell brought up the new Project Veritas video expose’ of CNN. Those undercover videos, recorded by a whistleblower employee who was fired on Monday, reveal all sorts of news-faking machinations that take place at the fakest fakety-fake fake news outlet of them all. A video released late Monday contains various clips of CNN President Jeff Zucker exposing an obvious personal...

TodayÂ’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) I didnÂ’t watch last nightÂ’s Democrat debate, because IÂ’m sane and would prefer to stay that way. Besides, there was baseball on TV. But I did follow the festivities in real time on social media, and quickly realized I didnÂ’t miss anything that wasnÂ’t entirely predictable. For example, there was this lovely moment, when the two near-octogenarians in the race, perhaps surprised to see each other still alive and kicking, gave each other a big hug: Image may contain: 2 persons Awwww, isnÂ’t that cute? ItÂ’s like that big family reunion back...

I feel pretty safe in saying that most Americans can’t tell you off the top of their head who the Kurds are or what the U.S. relationship with them is — let alone how that factors into Iran, Russia, China, Turkey and Syria. Without explaining as much, the topic of President Trump’s “abandonment” of the Kurds and how it will surely put a resurgence of the Islamic extremist terrorist group ISIS on Trump’s shoulders, has dominated news coverage for much of the past week. Now comes word from ABC News that it has pulled down video that aired on its...