Free Republic

Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team are facing new complications in the final stretch of their investigation into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump campaign associates during the 2016 presidential election, as targets allegedly breach agreements and balk at plea deals. On Monday, the Mueller team claimed that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort violated his plea deal by lying to the FBI and Mueller’s office on a “variety of subject matters,” amid reports the cooperation agreement was not panning out how prosecutors had hoped. Conservative author Jerome Corsi also plans to reject a potential deal with Mueller...

Many media figures have swallowed whole, without evidence, a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump became president by treasonously colluding with Russia to steal the 2016 election from its rightful owner, Hillary Clinton. The information operation that pushed this story turned out to have been secretly developed and funded by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, a fact uncovered only through the tenacious digging of Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the face of major opposition from the media and Democrats on the committee. The information operation has been fed to an increasingly compliant and credulous...

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has informed a federal court that Paul Manafort violated his plea agreement by repeatedly lying to investigators. Prosecutors thus consider the agreement null and void and have asked the court to set a sentencing date immediately. The alleged breach was outlined in a brief submission to district judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, and reported by the New York Times Monday evening. The submission by Andrew Weissmann and other lawyers on Mueller’s team does not describe Manafort’s allegedly false statements, --snip-- Manafort and his lawyers are clearly preparing to argue that Manafort was honest but...

Embattled former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort says that he has never met privately with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and is threatening to sue the Guardian for reporting that he has. Citing a “well-placed source,” the Guardian reported Tuesday that Manafort met with Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2013, 2015, and again in the spring of 2016, soon after he became a senior member of the Trump campaign. The report further suggested that the alleged meeting will be of interest to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether any members of the Trump campaign helped to coordinate the...