Free Republic

The FBI on Wednesday released nearly 400 pages of records from an investigation it conducted on Donald Trump’s family real estate company in the early 1970s. The documents consist of interview notes, handwritten statements and FBI reports compiled during the bureau’s investigation, which occurred between 1972 and 1974. The FBI’s investigation centered on allegations that the Trump Management Company, which was owned by Trump’s father, Fred, discriminated against applicants for apartment rentals based on their race. The federal lawsuit was widely reported during the presidential campaign with Democrats using the case to argue that Trump, an executive with the company...

Wednesday afternoon Breitbart released a report in which a William Binney, a former highly placed NSA official turned whistleblower, confirmed that the NSA is spying of President Trump. Binney was a key component to building the NSA’s surveillance program before resigning from the agency in 2001 after over 30 years of service.

The Defense Department might propose that the US send conventional ground combat forces into northern Syria for the first time to speed up the fight against ISIS, CNN has learned. "It's possible that you may see conventional forces hit the ground in Syria for some period of time," one defense official told CNN.

Omarosa Manigault, a top adviser to President Trump, said she has a recording of a recent contentious exchange with a White House reporter. April Ryan, a veteran White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks (AURN) told The Washington Post she was “physically intimidated” by Manigault after an exchange last week. "She stood right in my face like she was going to hit me,” Ryan told the newspaper. “I said, 'You better back up.' " Now, Manigault says she has a recording of the dispute that was also shared with some other reporters, according to the Post. Ryan said she...

Andrew Newman always pays his taxes, even if he hates what the government is doing with them. But not this year. For him, Donald Trump is the dealbreaker. He’ll pay his city and state taxes but will refuse to pay federal income tax as a cry of civil disobedience against the president and his new administration. Newman is not alone. A nascent movement has been detected to revive the popularity of tax resistance – last seen en masse in America during the Vietnam war but which has been, sporadically, a tradition in the US and beyond going back many centuries.

Hispanic voters support President Trump's new focus on deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records and punishing some 300 cities that grant "sanctuary" to undocumented criminals, according to a new poll. The survey for Secure America Now found that 56 percent of Hispanic voters approve of deporting criminal illegals. Some 31 percent don't.

The tax agency has stopped requiring individual filers to indicate whether they maintained health coverage or paid the mandate penalty as required under the law How much difference does a single line on a tax form make? For Obamacare's individual mandate, the answer might be quite a lot. Following President Donald Trump's executive order instructing agencies to provide relief from the health law, the Internal Revenue Service appears to be taking a more lax approach to the coverage requirement. The health law's individual mandate requires everyone to either maintain qualifying health coverage or pay a tax penalty, known as a...

A defense lawyer Tuesday morning raised concerns about the jury consultant hired by federal prosecutors, moments before jury selection began in the trial of four remaining defendaants charged in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Andrew Kohlmetz, who represents defendant Jason Patrick, said he had multiple conversations in November with an employee of Tsongas Litigation Consulting Inc., the same firm that prosecutors have hired to help them in picking a jury for the current trial. Kohlmetz said he talked to the consultant several times about potential jurors that the defense team might seek and the need for a...

MONTGOMERY, ALA. The Alabama House of Representatives voted Tuesday to block state funds to colleges and universities that declare themselves so-called sanctuary campuses for immigrants in the country illegally. House members voted 72-28 for the bill to authorize the attorney general to block state funds to colleges that do not follow state and federal immigration law. The measure now moves to the Alabama Senate. Rep. Phil Williams, the bill's sponsor, acknowledged no Alabama college has announced intent to flout immigration laws but argued that one might do so in the future. He said the state should be proactive instead of...

As if on cue. I swear we didn’t know this was going to be in the Swamp Media Newsletter when we earlier wrote about Trump’s anticipated budget battle with the UniParty…Apparently the GOPe has had enough of this hiding behind the guise of supporting Trump. We know this specifically because the Corinthian Chair sitting GOPe “Decepticons” never trot out Thad Cochran unless -and until- Mitch McConnell pulls him out of the closet for a purpose.For those who don’t know, Senator Thad Cochran is, well, to put it nicely, cognitively impaired. As such, McConnell keeps him tucked away, and hidden...

<p>Tucker Carlson: "In the past couple of months I’ve seen a lot of stories including some from you accusing people of basically carrying water for the Russian government and the Russian government is in the news today so I thought I’d ask you something I’ve wondered for a long time which is the Washington Post for years, for many years, has literally carried paid propaganda from the Russian government, a section called ‘Russia behind the headlines.’ It looks like news but it’s designed to fool readers into thinking it’s real. And it’s pure propaganda paid for, distributed by the Russian government… Why have you never written about that? How can you attack others when your own paper takes money from the Russian government".</p>

As The White House tries to put the Flynn disappointment behind them, The New York Times appears to be resurrecting an old story with a new angle to keep the 'blame the Russians' narrative alive. Following FISA court approval (to spy on Trump's campaign), intercepted calls reportedly show "repeated contact" between Trump advisor Paul Manafort and senior Russian intelligence officials... but reveal no collusion.

The Political Assassination of Michael FlynnLINK ONLY

Kentucky U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie says his bill that would abolish the federal Department of Education should be taken seriously because the interest it has generated means the measure could ultimately end up on President Donald Trump’s desk. “I think the reason people have to take this bill seriously now, is because, for the first time since Ronald Reagan, we have a president in the White House who would conceivably sign this bill,” he explains in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News. Massie, who introduced his bill to abolish the federal education department on February 7, says he and many...

First Lady Melania Trump announced on Tuesday that the White House would re-open for public tours beginning on March 7. The White House had been closed to tours for the past seven weeks, which is an "unusually long" spell between administrations. In the past, the White House has re-opened to the public within days after the inauguration. .@FLOTUS Melania Trump is pleased to announce the White House Visitors Office will resume public tours on March 7th https://t.co/FhJUf1UP1m— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 14, 2017 “I am excited to reopen the White House to the hundreds of thousands of visitors...

A senior White House official declared on Tuesday night that the United States would no longer insist on a “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian Authority (PA) conflict. . . They are in line with a report on Channel 10 News on Monday, which said that Trump will not use the term “two states” during his meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu this Wednesday. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/224925

The United States is much better off without Michael Flynn serving as national security adviser. But no one should be cheering the way he was brought down. The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America's democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn's ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn't the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function. Unelected intelligence analysts work for the president, not the other way around. Far too many Trump critics appear not...

At least one judge on the Ninth Circuit has requested reconsideration in the matter of State of Washington and Minnesota v. President Trump. The Ninth Circuit chief judge issued an order Friday stating that an unnamed judge among the 29 active members of the circuit court has requested an en banc hearing — meaning that eleven judges or possibly the entire panel would hear the case, rather than the select three-judge panel that issued the 3-0 ruling against Trump’s executive order. Procedurally, any judge on the circuit court may sua sponte — on the judge’s own initiative without a...

Ebell says just half of the government agency needed to provide core mission on air, water Myron Ebell, who headed President Donald Trump’s transition team at the Environmental Protection Agency, said if it were up to him, the president would reduce agency funding by half and employees by two-thirds. But which half? And which two-thirds? What would remain of the EPA if the president enacted Ebell’s plan or something similar to it? Scott Slesinger, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, is worried that much of what we have come to rely on the EPA to do would be undone.

The Trump administration is filing paper work for an en banc hearing of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that initially voted unanimously to keep the temporary restraining order on the president’s executive order on immigration in place.