Free Republic

In The Wall Street Journal’s latest poll of swing states, 74% of respondents said inflation has moved in the wrong direction in the past year. This assessment, which holds across all seven states, is startling, sobering—and simply not true. I’m not stating an opinion. This isn’t something on which reasonable people can disagree. If hard economic data count for anything, we can say unambiguously that inflation has moved in the right direction in the past year. In the 12 months through February, inflation, according to the century-old consumer-price index, was 3.2%, compared with 6% a year earlier. Use a slightly...

Last week the Wall Street Journal published an unsigned op-ed unworthy of one of the best teams of commentators in the country. The subject was some comments Donald Trump made on Truth Social that, by surprise, displayed his trademark turbo-charged hyperbole. The Journal is usually a reliable source of sober, judicious, and fact-based analysis, but this editorial is a troubling portent that Republican Trump-Derangement Syndrome hysteria may have a negative impact on next year’s election. Trump’s heinous sin, according to the editors, is saying “that Gen. Mark Milley, the nation’s highest military officer, deserves execution—as in death. He said NBC...

Huff Post’s Ryan Reilly recently had problems telling the difference between earplugs and rubber bullets. He also has long struggled with telling the difference between fact and fiction. Reilly was recently arrested covering the mob violence in Ferguson, Missouri. He described the loss of his cell phone and communication devices incident to his arrest as “dehumanizing,” which gives you a sense of his priorities I suppose. But Reilly’s clownish debut on the national stage isn’t news to anyone who has followed his checkered history as a “reporter.” Reilly formerly worked for a privately owned website that served as a Department...

WASHINGTON — A Trump supporter who stormed the Capitol wearing a “Make Space Great Again” hat had two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition in his van when he was arrested Thursday near former President Barack Obama’s home, federal authorities said Friday. A federal prosecutor said in court Friday that Taylor Taranto, a 37-year-old man first identified by online sleuths in August 2021, also had a machete in the van he appeared to be living in. Taranto's van has been parked near the D.C. jail in recent weeks and he has appeared at protests in support of other Jan. 6...

What did Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey know about Russia-collusion — and when did they know it? John Durham dropped a bombshell in his testimony today at House Oversight, which will go on for at least a couple of hours or more, but this part wasn’t the bombshell. In his special-counsel report, Durham had already revealed that CIA Director John Brennan briefed these four in August 2016 that Hillary Clinton planned to paint Donald Trump as linked to Russian intelligence, presumably to shift attention away from her own e-mail scandal.That briefing resulted in a “referral memorandum,”...

The depositions given by former British spy Christopher Steele and a longtime associate of John McCain must be unsealed, a federal judge said Thursday. U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro overruled the objections of both Steele and David Kramer to make the depositions public. The pair gave testimony in a lawsuit brought against BuzzFeed in December 2018 by a Russian Internet entrepreneur. The businessman, Aleksej Gubarev, was referenced in the infamous dossier compiled by Steele about President Trump’s alleged connections to Russia. Gubarev objected to BuzzFeed’s publishing of the dossier in January 2017, which accused him of using his companies...

The trial of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann is coming to an end [ZH: has now ended with Sussman’s acquittal] but rather than provide definitive answers to the origins of the Russiagate hoax, the trial has thrown up many new mysteries and unanswered questions.Special Counsel John Durham arrives at federal court in Washington on May 16, 2022. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)Durham’s overarching trial narrative was that the FBI was duped by Sussmann when he presented them with data purportedly tying Trump to the Kremlin via the Russian Alfa Bank. It may have been Durham’s only viable strategy given the fact he...

Day 2 of the Michael Sussmann trial started with some housekeeping. Here are the rulings of note: Robby Mook, who has a scheduled vacation in Spain, will testify on Friday. He’s a defense witness. Evidence of Steele’s meetings with Sussmann and Fusion GPS in July 2016, and his tasking to conduct research on Alfa Bank, according to the judge, “can come in.” The judge observed they are “relevant to Mr. Sussmann’s activities for the campaign and his attorney-client relationship, as far as it went, with the campaign as it relates to Alfa-Bank.” Onto the witnesses. We start with the short...

Defeated generals are sent home in disgrace, but it is most unusual to dismiss victorious ones. Kosovo: NATO’s war against Serbia ended in victory. Gen. Wesley K. Clark, was very much the victorious general of that war. So why was Clark fired? Officially, he wasn’t fired, but merely asked to step aside early. Clark was caught. The entire structure of the U.S. armed forces is built on: classic war, fought by Army infantry, Marines storming ashore, armored forces, artillery, attack helicopters, fighter-bombers that dive low to attack the enemy, as well as strike aircraft and bombers that operate more safely...

In a coordinated legal action between a number of Hillary Clinton operatives and associates, almost two dozen separate documents were simultaneously filed on April 19 in special counsel John Durham’s case against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. This sudden flurry of mass filings included responses from former Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook, Clinton campaign lead lawyer Marc Elias, contractors Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign itself, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The trigger for the flurry of filings was a request by Durham to unseal a number of emails involving the parties. The emails are...

Bill Still #2785 on Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson. (Deep state, FISA abuse, illegal NSA access, allegedly whistle blower form changer after the fact).

Back in May, we reported on the fight brewing in a DC federal court, where Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson were trying to keep secret their internal correspondence and records relating to their role in pushing the Alfa Bank/Trump hoax. New court filings indicate Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson improperly failed to disclose some of their most damning e-mails. OverviewFor background, the fight arises out of a lawsuit – Fridman, et al. (Alfa Bank) v. Bean LLC a/k/a Fusion GPS, and Glenn Simpson, where the owners of Alfa Bank have sued Fusion GPS and Simpson for falsely accusing “the Plaintiffs—and...

A review of the data pertaining to the accusations in the phony Steele dossier about a Trump-Russia Bank connection discovered the sources used is most likely the same source the FBI used to obtain a FISA warrant to investigate the Trump-Alfa Bank connection. This person also just happens to be a radical Hillary Clinton supporter! It’s been more than two years since the 2016 election and Americans still don’t really know the sources for the phony Steele dossier used by the FBI and DOJ to obtain FISA warrants to spy on candidate and then President Trump. This nightmare for President...

Cybersecurity experts who held lucrative Pentagon and homeland security contracts and high-level security clearances are under investigation for potentially abusing their government privileges to aid a 2016 Clinton campaign plot to falsely link Donald Trump to Russia and trigger an FBI investigation of him and his campaign, according to several sources familiar with the work of Special Counsel John Durham. Durham is investigating whether they were involved in a scheme to misuse sensitive, nonpublic Internet data, which they had access to through their government contracts, to dredge up derogatory information on Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign in 2016...

Armed Services panel secretly fought court battle this summer to quash subpoena seeking records of contacts with ex-FBI official Daniel Jones and liberal-funded The Democracy Integrity Project nonprofit. ================================================================================= The efforts to disseminate a now-discredited theory that the Trump campaign had secret computer communications with the Kremlin extended beyond the FBI, CIA, and State Department to the U.S. Senate. Under the late Sen. John McCain, the Armed Services Committee engaged a former FBI official and his progressive-funded nonprofit to produce a report on the matter, according to court records obtained by Just the News. The Senate committee, now under Democrats'...

Fusion GPS attorneys have been accused of violating ethics rules in the case they’re defending against Alfa Bank. What do they want to keep hidden? Background.. In 2017, the owners of Alfa Bank (we’ll call them Alfa Bank for the purposes of this article) sued Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson for their publication of false statements accusing Alfa Bank of “bribery, extortion, and interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.” As a reminder, it was Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson who, along with others, created and spread bogus Trump/Russia dossiers to government officials and the media. This was then used...

Daniel Jones, lead author of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s interrogation program, founded the Democracy Integrity Project in January 2017. Tax records show he funded Steele, Fusion, and others involved with Russia-related inquiries, keeping a web of groups working and donor money flowing to the tune of millions. The new filings contend that “the purpose of the Democracy Integrity Project is to promote democracy in the United States and around the world.” Tax records from the Democracy Integrity Project filed in November 2020 and made public in April show the Jones organization sent $1,222,714 in 2019 for...

Court rules Steele's firm violated Britain's data privacy law by failing to aggressively check allegations in his dossier ================================================================================ British judge ruled Wednesday that Christopher Steele violated a data privacy law by failing to check the accuracy of information in his infamous dossier, ordering the former spy’s firm to pay damages to two businessmen he wrongly accused of making illicit payments in Russia. Justice Mark Warby of the High Court of England and Wales ordered Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, to pay a modest 18,000 English pounds – about $22,596 in American currency – each to Petr Aven and Mikhail...

...Just 10 days before the February 2017 meeting, Jones had incorporated a nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project (known internally as TDIP) after huddling with Simpson. The goal of their ongoing project is to “prove” the allegations in the dossier, while digging up new dirt on Trump and feeding it to media outlets, congressional investigators and the FBI to derail his presidency. The work of such opposition research outfits has become a mainstay of Washington journalism. In their book, “Crime in Progress,” Simpson and Fritsch detail their access to top journalists at The New York Times and other influential publications....

On March 17 and 18, Christopher Steele testified in a British court where he revealed both 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice knew about his anti-Trump dossier research. According to a transcript obtained by Just the News, Steele told a British court he was hired by Fusion GPS through the Democratic National Committee (DNC) linked law firm Perkins Coie to work for the Clinton campaign. Steele said Fusion GPS owner Glenn Simpson tipped him to the DNC’s role in the anti-Trump dossier. “I presumed it was the Clinton campaign, and Glenn Simpson had...