Free Republic

Several journalists erroneously tweeted that Stephen K. Bannon was found guilty of contempt of Congress in federal court in Washington, DC, on Thursday afternoon — before closing arguments in the trial. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell tweeted: “BANNON GUILTY.” His colleague Chris Hayes tweeted “Bannon found guilty,” citing a tweet by CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane, who was covering a different case. Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace warned others that they were getting the facts wrong: So, too, did Bannon biographer Joshua Green: O’Donnell apologized for spreading the misinformation about the verdict, as did Hayes, taking down their mistaken tweets: Others also apologized:...

Mark Zaid, the activist attorney representing the so-called whistleblower at the center of the impeachment movement targeting President Donald Trump, says he is representing a second so-called whistleblower who spoke to the Intelligence Community’s inspector general about Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president. Missing from the avalanche of news media coverage about Zaid’s two anonymous clients rocking the nation’s capital is that at the beginning of Trump’s presidency Zaid co-founded Whistleblower Aid, a small nonprofit that blasted advertisements around D.C. actively seeking whistleblowers during the Trump administration. Whistleblower Aid is heavily tied to far-left activist organizations and Democratic politics....

Led by British gadfly Louise Mensch (269,000 followers on Twitter currently) and going by a handful of names and hashtags — including #TeamPatriot — this coterie largely avoided any kind of original reportage, instead opting to try piece together open-source information that they believed journalists elsewhere had overlooked. In the early days of the Trump administration, they were, as BuzzFeed’s Charlie Warzel wrote, a “mooring force” for the anti-Trump “Resistance.” With Mensch’s 2017 op-ed in the New York Times on Russian hacking, this group — which Warzel termed the “Blue Detectives” — appeared ascendant. A year on, though, the group...

A few years back, my father and I voluntarily submitted ourselves to an episode of Question Time, a long-running program on the BBC on which sundry British politicians try to sound as indignant as possible while expressing nothing whatsoever beyond the day’s conventional wisdom. On the panel that evening was one Louise Bagshawe, a Tory MP from London who had a gig on the side as a writer of teen-girl books. “That woman,” my dad said to me about half-way through the show, “is one of the dullest people I’ve ever seen. Even for Question Time.” So much for plus...

Former Conservative MP, Louise Mensch has claimed on Twitter that her "sources" have told her that senior White House adviser, Steve Bannon, is facing the "death penalty for espionage" and the same may be the case for US President Donald Trump. Mensch is prolific on the social media platform, constantly tweeting conspiracy theories around investigations into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. She was even thought to be the source of unsubstantiated claims by Donald Trump himself that he was "tapped" by President Obama's officials. The former MP who is also a novelist, was roundly mocked on social media after...

According to sources with links to the Justice Department and intelligence community, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was ordered by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to write two separate memos regarding Director Comey; one that argued for Comey’s strengths as FBI Director and the second, which Sessions used in his obstruction of justice to fire Director Comey. This means that it is Jeff Sessions may be directly responsible for obstructing justice by misusing Rosenstein’s pro and con Comey memos, and not Donald Trump. The Deputy Attorney General made a point of saying that even in his ‘negative’ memo, he would not...

Sources familiar with James Comey’s thinking say that his testimony was planned in advance as part of the counterintelligence operation against Russia’s attack on the United States. James Comey knew in advance he was going to be fired, these sources say, when Trump threatened him. At that point, the Director set in place countermeasures to protect the FBI”s investigation from Trump’s interference. These included discussions with future key players at the Department of Justice and the FBI, these sources say, including Acting Director McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. It was further anticipated by Director Comey, these sources say, that...

A prominent #NeverTrump conspiracy theorist said to “make no assumptions” about the London terror attack Saturday and then proceeded to blame the attack on Vladimir Putin.“Make no assumptions as to who caused [the terror attack],” tweeted Louise Mensch, an independent journalist, on Saturday night. Less than half an hour later, she said “We know [Putin] funds ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Assad. We hold him responsible.”Mensch defended Muslims on Twitter Saturday evening, appearing to attribute the blame to Putin rather than Islam.“It kills [Putin] that we do not care to ostraci[z]e our Muslim compatriots,” tweeted the journalist. “I am so sorry my dear Muslim...

Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey uses conspiracy theory-laden blogs as sources for information on alleged Trump-Russia connections, according to a top aide in his office. “In fact, subpoenas have now been issued in Northern Virginia in regard to General Flynn and General Flynn’s associates. A grand jury has been empaneled up in New York,” the Massachusetts Democrat said in a Wednesday CNN interview. One of Markey’s top aides told The Daily Caller that his sources were Louise Mensch’s blog and a left-wing blog called the Palmer Report. Markey did not mention these sources in his television appearance.

Since her short-lived political career, Louise Mensch has developed a reputation among Clinton partisans as a constant purveyor of Russian election interference allegations and conspiracy theories. Like several Clinton partisans, her Twitter feed is completely focused on the anti-Russia narrative.On November 2016, the pro-Brexit former Conservative member of Parliament managed to transmogrify a tweet about the passing of Leonard Cohen—who is Canadian—into a pro-America, anti-Russia attack. In January 2017, she claimed without any evidence that a terrorist attack at a nightclub in Istanbul was a false-flag Russian operation. On March 20, Mensch retweeted a tweet claiming, “We are at war with Russia.” Mensch has previously called for all out war on Russia, with “precision bombing raids. Bank...

The blogger behind incredible claims that the FBI had a warrant to examine the Trump campaign's communications is facing serious questions about her legitimacy after making a series of conspiracy-theory claims about elaborate Russian plots that appear to have little basis in reality. Louise Mensch is a British politician turned New York blogger who reported on the website Heat Street that the FBI was granted a FISA court warrant to access communications made by Trump's team during the presidential campaign.

Christopher Steele is the former British spy who compiled the “garbage” dossier on Trump-Russia ties, as Bob Woodward put it. That garbage dossier was cravenly and opaquely hyped by the American press until BuzzFeed released it, at which point the public could see its transparently ludicrous and uncorroborated contents. The release of the dossier exposed the vague, heavy-breathing allusions to it by CNN and the “intelligence community” as nothing more than an idiotic smear against Trump. Steele had been zealously working to blow up Trump’s candidacy. Such was his anti-Trump fervor that he furnished his late-hit services to the Democrats...

Two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counter-intelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia. Contrary to earlier reporting in the New York Times, which cited FBI sources as saying that the agency did not believe that the private server in Donald Trump’s Trump Tower which was connected to a Russian bank had any nefarious purpose, the FBI’s counter-intelligence arm, sources say, re-drew an earlier FISA court request around possible...

A former British legislator is at the heart of the Trump administration’s explosive allegation that President Barack Obama was spying on him during the 2016 campaign. But who exactly is Louise Mensch? For starters, the politician-turned-journalist is the writer behind an article published on the eve of the election titled: “EXCLUSIVE: FBI ‘Granted FISA Warrant’ Covering Trump Camp’s Ties To Russia.” The article, published on the right-leaning, libertarian website Heat Street, did not create much of a stir at the time. But it has come under the spotlight after Trump, in a tweetstorm over the weekend, accused Obama of wiretapping...

Ouch. This one hurts, personally. Our circle of right-leaning bloggers is a tight-knit group and we rely on each other for help, both with stories and with spreading the word. That trust was recently violated by one of our own. Former British Conservative MP and co-founder of the conservative website Heat Street, Louise Mensch, was revealed by the WikiLeaks hack as a secret supporter of Hillary Clinton. In an email to Clinton crony Michael Kives (which was then forwarded to Clinton’s right-hand man John Podesta), Mensch advises the Clinton team on how to better portray their candidate to the nation.

Former British Conservative Party Member of Parliament and “right wing” blogger Louise Mensch privately tried to assist the Hillary Clinton campaign, emails published by Wikileaks reveal. Mrs. Mensch runs the Rupert Murdoch-backed blog Heat Street, which claims to stand against identity politics and what it labels “social justice warriors” under the slogan “no safe spaces.” However, its editor in chief, Mrs. Mensch, was caught writing a campaign advertisement script for the Democratic candidate – a woman who has traded off identity politics and social justice warrior politics. The ad appears to be based on the idea that Mrs. Clinton should...

Breaking: A new disclosure just dropped. It has long been my contention -- you may have noticed -- that most of the NeverTrump movement, which claims to be against both Hillary and Trump "equally," is in fact full-on pro-Hillary. I did not know who Louise Mensch was until the night of the Chelsea Bombing in New York City. That night, I got to know exactly who she was. Over the course of the evening, she ridiculed "Trumpkin bed-wetters" (or words to that close effect) for making a big deal about a bombing that she said barely fussed anyone at all....

Louise Mensch, the MP whose children were threatened by an internet troll says social networking sites must identify the internet bullies who 'cower behind anonymity.' Last week Frank Zimmerman, 60, narrowly escaped jail for sending the Corby MP an email branding her the 'slut of Twitter' and threatening that she faced a "Sophie's Choice"—a reference to a novel in which heroine Sophie has to choose between the life of her son or daughter at a Nazi concentration camp. Zimmerman was found guilty earlier this week and given a suspended jail sentence. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mensch said: "I felt...

It has taken several weeks for Piers Morgan to become entangled in the phone hacking net, but it now looks probable that he’ll receive an invitation from John Whittingdale MP to appear before the Culture, Media and Sport select committee. That is an extremely perilous position for the ex-editor of the News of the World and the Daily Mirror to find himself in. Morgan’s eventual summons was probably inevitable, but he has not helped his cause by allowing himself to be drawn into spats with Louise Mensch MP and Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes. His name first surfaced in connection...