Free Republic

Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week’s revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents. Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. Blinken and Morell...

Andrew P. Bakaj is the lawyer representing the whistleblower who came forward with information about President Donald Trump and his conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about an investigation into 2020 democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The whistleblower’s intel, which has now been turned over to Congress confidentially, pushed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to announce a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump on September 24, 2019. Lead counsel on this high-profile case is the 36-year-old Bakaj, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, who now works as the founding & managing partner of Compass Rose Legal...

Claims by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) that he had no contact with the intelligence community whistleblower at the center of the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump are disputed in a new book. In Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump, authors Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian reveal a meeting between the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj, and lawyers working for the House Select Committee on Intelligence. This occurred in the run-up to the fall 2019 launch of an impeachment inquiry into Trump over allegations he demanded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to initiate corruption investigations into now-President...

Mark S. Zaid, the activist attorney representing the so-called whistleblower at the center of the impeachment movement targeting President Donald Trump, advocated for Robert S. Mueller III to become an anti-Trump whistleblower. On April 25, 2018, while Mueller’s Office of the Special Counsel was investigating ultimately collapsed claims of collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign, Zaid co-authored an oped in the New York Times calling for Mueller and his staff to become “lawful whistle-blowers.” The scheme outlined by Zaid was an option to be implemented if Trump had moved to fire Mueller and dismantle the Special Counsel’s office. Zaid...

Democrat and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley is warning that the Biden transition team has taken an "ominous turn" after former Vice President Joe Biden hired a number of anti-free speech zealots. "For those of us who have been critical of the growing anti-free speech movement in the Democratic Party, the Biden transition team just took an ominous turn. The New York Post reports that Biden tapped Richard Stengel to take the “team lead” position on the US Agency for Global Media, including Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty," Turley writes...

Richard Stengel, new ‘team lead‘ for Joe Biden’s agency for global media, wrote an op-ed last year arguing for free speech restrictions. Stengel, a former MSNBC political analyst until he was named to Biden’s transition team, argued that the First Amendment needed redefining and that “hate speech” should be a crime. “All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails,” he wrote. “I’m all for protecting ‘thought that we hate,’ but not speech that incites hate.” ‘Speech that incites hate’ was defined in Stengel’s op-ed by two examples – Burning the Quran,...

GRyan re-nominated for Nobel Peace Prize Thursday, January 29, 2004 By The Leader-Champaign/Urbana Bureau CHAMPAIGN -- Last week, former Governor George Ryan was re-nominated for Nobel Peace Prize by Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Illinois. "During the past year George Ryan has attempted to generate a wave of opposition to the death penalty all over the world. George Ryan has done more effective work against the death penalty than all of us American Abolitionists put together," Boyle said this week. "For these reasons I believe that George Ryan has, in the words...

Are the ‘Whistleblower’ and the West Wing Spy the Same Person? When Paul Sperry put a name to the “whistleblower” last week, it was already quite well known in Washington circles who that person was. And a lot was known about his connections to the DNC, John Brennan, Joe Biden and the top tier of FBI officials who had targeted Trump and his campaign.Nevertheless, one of the attorneys for this person, Mark Zaid of Whistleblower Aid, put out a statement saying that the release of Eric Ciaramella’s name “is at the pinnacle of irresponsibility and is intentionally reckless.” That’s right,...

A second whistleblower has come forward in the escalating Ukraine scandal that has led to an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, ABC News reported Sunday. The whistleblower, an intelligence official, is represented by the same attorney who's representing the first whistleblower who filed a complaint in August related to Trump's dealings with Ukraine that was released in late September and has sent shockwaves through Washington. The complaint centered on a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump urged Zelensky to investigate former Vice President and his son, Joe Biden. Mark Zaid, the...

The lead defense attorney for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl said he wants him to receive the Prisoner of War medal. His civilian lawyer, Eugene Fidell, on Friday said his client should be recognized for the five years he spent in Taliban captivity after deserting his post in Afghanistan, according to an article by USA Today. "We have long felt he was entitled to the POW medal," Fidell said, the newspaper reported. It wasn't immediately clear whether Bergdahl's defense team plans to push for the award as part of the process to appeal his dishonorable discharge.

Once part of one of the most brutal dictator's army in the Middle East, over 100 former members of Saddam Hussein's military and intelligence officers are now part of ISIS. Now they make up the complex network of ISIS's leadership, helping to build the military strategies which have led the brutal jihadi group to their military gains in Syria and Iraq. The officers gave ISIS the organization and discipline it needed to weld together jihadi fighters drawn from across the globe, integrating terror tactics like suicide bombings with military operation

Anbar, Asharq Al-Awsat—Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters have now taken control of large parts of the strategic Anbar town of Al-Baghdadi—55 miles west of the provincial capital Ramadi—amid fears that the jihadist group is seeking to overrun the nearby Ain Al-Assad airbase where US troops are training local forces. Fierce fighting between local tribal forces and ISIS broke out in the western Iraqi town over the past 48 hours, with ISIS quickly overrunning a number of Al-Baghdadi districts. ISIS simultaneously attacked the nearby Ain Al-Assad airbase. Around 25 ISIS militants carried out the attack, led by several...

Imagine this: You take command of an Army platoon stationed near a "Taliban-influenced" village in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. The area has been described as a "hotbed of enemy activity," and unfortunately, your platoon has lost 10 percent of its men (including the former platoon leader) within the last couple months to insurgent attacks. You are familiar with intelligence that suggests motorcycles--specifically red motorcycles-- have been used in the area as enemy getaway vehicles, as well as being a vehicle of choice to implant IEDs. They are also used by suicide bombers who choose to ram themselves into groups of innocent...

A major Iraq War crimes case was upended Wednesday when the military's highest court tossed the conviction of a former Camp Pendleton Marine accused of murdering an unarmed man in Hamdaniya, Iraq in 2006. Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III, the former squad leader of the "Pendleton 8" as supporters in San Diego called them, was convicted in 2007 and is serving an 11-year sentence in the brig at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. The military accused Hutchins of being the ringleader in a plot to capture and kill a suspected insurgent at the height of the war. When they couldn’t find...

April 20, 2012 SECNAV Boots Two Sergeants for Lying At Haditha Court-Martial Neal Puckett Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has ordered administrative separation processing of two squad members who testified against SSgt Wuterich in January and admitted lying to NCIS and on the stand about the November 2005 shooting deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha.  During the January 2012 court-martial of the squad leader, SSgt Wuterich, Sgt’s Humberto M. Mendoza and Sanick P. Dela Cruz testified on the stand that they lied to NCIS during the investigation, the Article 32 investigations and withheld information.  Their motivation to do so was...

MILITARY: Frank Wuterich no longer in the Marine Corps Mark Walker February 20, 2012 [EXCERPTED] The Camp Pendleton Marine at the center of two dozen Iraqi civilian killings in 2005 has left the service. Former Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich's last day in the Marine Corps was Friday, said a base spokesman, Lt. Col. Joseph Kloppel. Wuterich pleaded guilty Jan. 23 to one count of negligent dereliction of duty for his role in the killings. That ended his high-profile court-martial at Camp Pendleton, where he was being tried on manslaughter and related charges in the deaths that took place in the...

MILITARY: Website of Wuterich's lawyers hacked Mark Walker February 3, 2012 A hacker group known as Anonymous took responsibility Friday for defacing a website and stealing files and emails from attorneys who represented Camp Pendleton's Frank Wuterich in a case involving the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians. Wuterich's lead attorney, Neal Puckett, confirmed the intrusion and apparent theft from him and his partner, Haytham Faraj. ....Snip.... Puckett said he has filed a complaint with the FBI over the hacking. The group that got into his website says it plans to release information it found about the Haditha case. Puckett said...

The Haditha incident is finally over for our family. It has been a grueling 6+ years for all of us and time for us to start over. The decision our son made at his court martial was the right one for him and his three girls. A decision that made all of us proud. Proud of his courage, proud of his outstanding ability to take responsibility for the actions of his squad, proud of the life he has made for his girls. Although some of you may disagree with his decision, it was the best one for him and his...

Six years ago, in Haditha, Iraq, in the wake of a deadly insurgent attack on their convoy, a Marine quick reaction force raided several houses from which they were taking fire. At the conclusion of the action it became clear that a number of Iraqi civilians had been killed, which was duly reported up the Marine Corps chain of command. The command determined that while the deaths were unfortunate, the engaged Marines had not violated the laws of war. Then, early in 2006, a reporter from Time Magazine got wind of the incident, and all hell broke loose. An...

For years, the Marine Corps knew its chances of winning a homicide conviction against Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich in the slayings of two dozen Iraqi civilians were dicey. Wuterich, 31, agreed Monday to plead guilty to dereliction of duty in the 2005 incident that sparked worldwide outrage. And that outcome was all the Marine Corps was ever likely to get, the service was told more than four years ago. That opinion came from Lt. Col. Paul Ware, an experienced Marine Corps prosecutor and judge who presided as the investigative officer over hearings for Wuterich and two members of his Camp...