Free Republic

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, an Obama administration appointee, is scheduled to deliver a report this week on DOJ and FBI abuses during the 2016 campaign cycle. Remember: His last investigation of FBI misconduct advised a criminal referral for fired former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who allegedly lied to federal investigators. McCabe and at least a half-dozen other FBI employees quit, retired, were fired or were reassigned as a result of fallout from the politicization of the FBI. Yet, as Barack Obama left office, his chief of staff, Denis McDonough, strangely boasted that the Obama administration "has...

FBI Attorney 2 was assigned to the Midyear investigation early in 2016. FBI Attorney 2 was not the lead FBI attorney assigned to Midyear and he told us he provided support to the investigation as needed. FBI Attorney 2 told us that he was also assigned to the investigation into Russian election interference and was the primary FBI attorney assigned to that investigation beginning in early 2017. FBI Attorney 2 told us that he was then assigned to the Special Counsel investigation once it began. FBI Attorney 2 left the Special Counsel’s investigation and returned to the FBI in late...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and against China on Thursday on a disputed aspect of their fraught trade relationship, throwing out a lower court ruling that had allowed two Chinese vitamin C makers to escape $148 million in damages for violating American antitrust law. In a case that brought the trade conflict between the world’s two largest economies before the top U.S. court, the justices ruled 9-0 that the lower court gave too much deference to Chinese government filings explaining China’s regulatory policy. The justices sent the case back for reconsideration by the New...

The FBI will make its employees undergo bias training, Director Christopher Wray promised Thursday, in one of a number of steps he said they’ll take to try to prevent a repeat of problems that plagued the bureau during the 2016 election. Mr. Wray made the promise in response to the new inspector general’s report detailing the stream of text messages from two top FBI employees during the campaign. In one newly released email Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok told a paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, that they would “stop” then-candidate Donald Trump from winning the presidency.

BREAKING: Newly disclosed text among FBI officials says ‘We’ll stop’ Trump from becoming president. The message is included in a forthcoming Justice Department inspector general report on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation.

The photos from the Singapore summit were meant to impress, but the substance was thin indeed — for a vague pledge to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula our president gave up U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises in a surprise move that whacked both South Korea and Japan. Maybe it will all work out. But to understand what President Donald Trump is really after, let me put this into perspective. Trump is a businessman, so let's think of him as a new CEO and his supporters as the shareholders. When new CEOs come in they work hard to...

The New York State attorney general’s office filed a scathingly worded lawsuit on Thursday taking aim at the Donald J. Trump Foundation, accusing the charity and the Trump family of sweeping violations of campaign finance laws, self-dealing and illegal coordination with the presidential campaign. The lawsuit, which seeks to dissolve the foundation and bar President Trump and three of his children from serving on nonprofit organizations, was an extraordinary rebuke of a sitting president. The attorney general also sent referral letters to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission for possible further action, adding to Mr. Trump’s extensive...

Seriously, the Democrat party should embrace this guy as their poster child candidate. ======================================= He believes in instituting a patriarchal system, with women under the authority of men; he supports abolishing age restrictions for marriage and laws against marital rape; he believes that white supremacy is a “system that works,” that Hitler was a “good thing for Germany,” and that incest should be legalized, at least in the context of marriage. And at one point in a conversation with The Post, he seemed to express admiration for the system run by the Taliban in Afghanistan, noting that the country’s birthrate...

Special counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday filed a request for 150 blank subpoenas in the Eastern District of Virginia, where former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort lives. The two-page filing reveals little, but says that that each subpoena recipient must appear in the Alexandria, Va., courthouse on July 25 to testify in the case.

President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may be taking hold not only among Republicans but Democrats and independents as well, according to a poll released Wednesday. The Politico/Morning Consult poll found Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s favorability among Democrats and independents took a slight dive over the last 11 months. Twenty-four percent of Democrats registered an unfavorable score for Mueller, while 33 percent of independents also viewed Mueller in a negative light. (snip) Overall, a record 53 percent of the poll’s respondents shared an unfavorable reaction to Mueller, a 26-point jump...

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will recommend that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence open an internal investigation of its Republican staffers following a damning new report from Fox News, a Department of Justice official said Tuesday. “[Rosenstein] will request that the House General counsel conduct an internal investigation of these Congressional staffers’ conduct,” the official told Fox News. The statement was included in a report alleging that Rosenstein threatened to subpoena Republican staffers on the House panel during a closed-door meeting in January

Two Norwegian lawmakers have nominated President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize after the Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Christian Tybring-Gjedde and Per-Willy Amundsen, lawmakers with the populist Progress Party, told Norwegian news agency NTB on Wednesday that Trump “had taken a huge and important step in the direction of the disarmament, peace and reconciliation between North and South Korea.”(continued)

The Federal Reserve hiked its benchmark short-term interest rate a quarter percentage point Wednesday and indicated that two more increases are likely in store ahead. The move pushes the funds rate target to 1.75 percent to 2 percent. The rate is closely tied to consumer debt, particularly credit cards, home equity lines of credit and other adjustable-rate instruments. In an unusually terse statement that ran just 320 words, the Federal Open Market Committee changed multiple phrases from its previous missives, pointing to a more optimistic view on economic growth and higher inflation expectations.

Donald Trump erased all doubts about who owns the Republican Party on Tuesday night as several Trump-backed candidates swept to victory in GOP primaries. Primaries were held in Maine, South Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, and North Dakota.  Po-Trump candidates win crucial races.  The most notable among Trump's victories occurred in South Carolina, where former governor and current GOP incumbent Congressman Mark Sanford, a bitter critic of the president, went down to defeat. CBS: In the most dramatic result in primaries across five states Tuesday, Sanford was the second incumbent House Republican to lose a primary this year – and the latest victim of...

German police have arrested a Tunisian man after discovering "toxic substances" at his flat in Cologne, officials said Wednesday, with prosecutors not ruling out a possible terror motive. The man and his wife, whose nationality was not released, were detained late Tuesday night after officers raided their flat and came across "unknown substances" that are now being analysed by specialists, Cologne police said in a statement.

China’s activities in the South China Sea have proven to be one of the most contentious geopolitical issues of the Trump Presidency. Leading up to a successful summit in Singapore between President Trump and North Korean leader Chairman Kim Jong Un, new data released by Israeli Private Intelligence Firm ImageSat shows that China removed anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles from Woody Island, in the South China Sea last week. Woody Island, also referred to as Yongxiang Island, is the largest of the Paracel Islands claimed by China in the South China Sea. In recent years, China has taken major steps to...

After frenzied late-night negotiations, Speaker Paul D. Ryan defused a moderate Republican rebellion on Tuesday with a promise to hold high-stakes votes on immigration next week, thrusting the divisive issue onto center stage during a difficult election season for Republicans. The move by Mr. Ryan, announced late Tuesday by his office, was something of a defeat for the rebellious immigration moderates, who fell two signatures short of the 218 needed to force the House to act this month on bipartisan measures aimed more directly at helping young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. Instead, the House is most...

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is suing the Justice Department, the department's inspector general and the FBI for materials related to his firing. Attorneys for McCabe filed a federal lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act on Tuesday for access to a variety of documents, including the Inspector General's Manual and other policy documents used by the Justice Department to justify his termination. "Defendants have deprived Plaintiff of the opportunity he should have had to protect and to advance the legal rights and interests of Mr. McCabe," David L. Snyder, a lawyer for McCabe, wrote in the lawsuit. McCabe...

COLUMBIA, SC 9:23 p.m. With 48 percent of the vote in, it's starting to look like Arrington could win the GOP nomination without a runoff. Arrington has 52 percent of the vote to incumbent Mark Sanford's 45 percent, according to the AP.

Yesterday ahead of President Trump's meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, NBC News reported the issue of human rights would not be discussed at the summit as an issue. U.S. won't bring up human rights at North Korea summit, two administration officials say. https://t.co/01Rkpik6Nb— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 11, 2018 But it turns out, the issue was discussed and will be again in the future."It was discussed.  It will be discussed more in the future -- human rights," Trump said. "It was discussed. It was discussed relatively briefly compared to denuclearization. Well, obviously, that’s where we started and...