Free Republic

"DEVELOPING: A major new front is opening in the political espionage scandal. In summer 2016, Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated intel assets" As we reported in March, Nunes and the House Intelligence Committee was investigating the Obama State Department under John Kerry for its involvement in the dissemination of the unverified "Steele Dossier," along with a second anti-Trump dossier written by Clinton confidant Cody Shearer. Nunes referred to this as "Phase 2" of his committee's probe...

The Department of Justice lost its latest battle... when it allowed House Intelligence Committee members to view classified documents about a top-secret intelligence source that was part of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Even without official confirmation of that source’s name, the news so far holds some stunning implications... Among them is that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation outright hid critical information from a congressional investigation... The bureau already has some explaining to do. Thanks to the... leakers, we know Mr. Nunes’s request deals with a “top secret intelligence source”... who is a U.S. citizen...

Top officials on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rebuffed requests from a lower level volunteer seeking meetings between the then-real estate mogul and Russian government, according to email exchanges leaked to The Washington Post. According to The Post, George Papadopoulos, an energy consultant, sent a half-dozen emails to Trump campaign officials suggesting and requesting meetings between Trump and members of the Russian government, including Vladimir Putin. The campaign emails, which were read to The Post by an unidentified source, reveal a previously-undisclosed connection between a member of the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Papadopoulos indicated in some of the emails...

As the discourse rolls on regarding former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick‘s decision to take a knee during the national anthem–and the movement his protest ignited–support for the blacklisted athlete-cum-activist is sprouting up across the country. Yesterday afternoon, on Twitter, some of that support came from U.S. Army Infantry Officer and U.S. Military Academy at West Point alumnus, Spenser Rapone. Rapone posts under the handle @punkproletarian and is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Under the hashtag #VeteransForKaepernick, he tweeted an image of himself raising the left clenched-fist of solidarity, support and resistance as well as the message, “Communism...

WASHINGTON — The Chinese government “systematically dismantled” CIA spying operations in China starting in late 2010 and killed or imprisoned at least a dozen CIA sources over the next two years, The New York Times reported Saturday. The newspaper cited 10 current and former U.S. officials, who described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. They spoke on condition of anonymity. The report said U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies scrambled to stem the damage, but were bitterly divided over the cause of the breach. Some investigators were convinced there was a mole within the CIA, while...

Whose name is next to be added to the notorious list of government leakers? The CIA is trying to answer that question right now. A day after WikiLeaks released what it alleged to be the “entire hacking capacity of the CIA,” the focus Wednesday began shifting to just who gave the stunning surveillance information to the anti-secrecy website. “There is heavy s--- coming down,” said a veteran cyber contractor for the intelligence community who previously worked in the breached unit, the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence. The contractor told Fox News that CCI has long maintained an internal database of...

Obama's "echo chamber" lives on and the media are still buying... In an article on the Atlantic website, a former Obama White House staffer explains why she resigned from the Trump White House after only eight days. . . . Hers was the second story in less than a week in which a government official explained that they’d resigned because of Trump’s policies. Ned Price, a CIA analyst who worked at the Obama White House, authored a cri de coeur for the Washington Post to explain why his disagreements with Trump’s policies prompted him to leave government service. “To be...

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Wednesday that an alleged draft executive order titled “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants” “is not a White House document.” “I have no idea where it came from,” stressed Spicer. Various mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times (NYT) and the Washington Post (WaPo), published the contents of this document, suggesting it was a legitimate draft from White House officials.

Outgoing CIA Director John Brennan had some sharp criticism and warnings Sunday for Donald Trump, saying the incoming president doesn’t have a “full understanding” of Russia’s power and threat to the world. “I don’t think he has a full understanding of Russian capabilities and the actions they are taking on the world,” Brennan told “Fox News Sunday.” He also suggested that Trump lacks “full appreciation” of Russia’s aggression or about why President Obama imposed sanctions on the Kremlin for meddling in the 2016 presidential election. “Mr. Trump has to understand that absolving Russia is a road that he needs to...

Not much is known about Abedin’s life before Clinton Inc. She was born in 1978 in Kalamazoo, Mich., to an Indian father, Syed, and a Pakistani mother, Saleha. Both were academics and devout Muslims. When Huma was 2, the family moved to Saudi Arabia, but almost nothing is known of Huma’s childhood and teen years. She returned to the United States to attend George Washington University, majoring in journalism with a minor in political science. Her father co-founded the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, and after his death in 1993, her mother, whose writings subscribe to Sharia law, took over...

Anthony Weiner’s brother Jason intervened in an effort to silence Sydney Leathers which left her ‘scared and shaken,’ MailOnline can reveal. Weiner’s brother acted as his ‘wingman’ in a damage control exercise that backfired spectacularly sparking the scandal now engulfing the mayoral candidate. This new revelation comes on the same day that the current New York City mayoral candidate has admitted that he had virtual relationships with three women since he resigned from Congress in 2011, and up to seven others before that. Ms Leathers, who reportedly wants to sell her story for $100,000, gave an interview to Inside Edition...

Excerpt - NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) - A former White House official who took top secret documents from U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's office and gave them to opposition figures in the Philippines was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in prison. Philippine-born Leandro Aragoncillo, a U.S. citizen and former Marine, pleaded guilty last year to taking the documents that included details on threats against U.S. government interests and military personnel in the Philippines. Aragoncillo worked on the security detail assigned to the vice president from 1999 to 2002, where he held a top security clearance. He later took a...

Khizr Khan — father of deceased U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan — is closely connected to the secret email server Hillary Clinton used while serving as Secretary of State. Prior to opening his own shop, KM Kahn Law Office in New York, Khan spent nine years working for the global law firm Hogan & Hartson — now known as Hogan Lovells — in Washington, D.C. (RELATED: Khizr Khan Has Written Extensively On Sharia Law) According to Breitbart, a screenshot of the now-deleted website for Khan’s office describes his tenure at Hogan & Hartson as managing the firm’s “Litigation Technology Services...

Militant feminazi Liz Mair was forced to resign from the Scott Walker campaign Tuesday after Mair’s radical pro-amnesty, pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion views went viral… (SNIP) "She is very good at her job. She is also a friend of mine. I have known Liz for a number of years…I am very saddened to see an organized effort by conservatives to have Governor Walker fire Liz Mair…it is really appalling to see self-described Christians showing as little grace." (SNIP) Even after two autopsies, a toxicology report, surveillance footage, and additional witness testimony called into question his initial reading of events– Erickson refused...

Influence peddling on behalf a Medicare Fraud doctor, in return for donations.

National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has found the court of public opinion to be far more receptive than a court of law. He conducts the occasional interview with seemingly sympathetic journalists. NBC News aired one such interview with anchorman Brian Williams on Wednesday night. "Do you see yourself as a patriot?" Williams asked. "I do," answered Snowden, now 30. He was just trying to protect the country and the Constitution "from the encroachment of adversaries -- and those adversaries don't have to be foreign countries." Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, was having none of it. "In...

Imagine you were in the position of Snowden. As a contractor to the National Security Agency, you knew that your government was monitoring what seemed to be an indefensible amount of electronic communication, from emails, to phone calls, between ordinary Americans. What would you do? Perhaps you would: Resign in protest? Go to the Press with declassified information? Point the Press in the right direction, to ask the right questions? Go public? Other whistleblowers in modern American history, such as Daniel Ellsberg, are today hailed as heroes. Help to start a national conversation about fundamental privacy rights, and the Constitutional...

If there is a country Saudi Arabia and Iran despise more than Israel, it’s each other. When it comes to Syria, Iran’s most prominent ally, the prospect of removing Bashar al-Assad has a pavlovian effect on the Saudis. ... Putin beat Barack Obama and John Kerry like a couple of drums. While Obama saw an opportunity to spin a resounding defeat into an opportunity to back down under the guise of a diplomatic stalemate as the preferred option, there were consequences. One of those consequences involves Saudi Arabia’s anger with the U.S. for not dealing with Assad. Consequences aren’t necessarily...

In the short time as a Republican, Emmanuel "Manny" Roman has made more than a few enemies at the Miami-Dade Republican Party. And now that Roman is running for vice-president of the county party, he's feeling the backlash....

Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter SH: So are you saying that, for PR purposes, that they should give in to Obama on the tax rate? AC: Not exactly, I--Well, yeah, I guess I am. SH: You're saying capitulate to Obama? We don't have a revenue problem, Ann. AC: We lost the election, Sean. Hannity seems genuinely flummoxed by Coulter's capitulatory attitude, but does she have a point? Recent polling has been gruesome for Republicans. Not only does an overall double-digit plurality favor raising taxes on "the rich," support for extending all current tax rates has plummeted by nearly 30 percentage...