Free Republic

Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders announced he will release 10 years of his tax returns and revealed he is a millionaire thanks to his best-selling book 'Our Revolution.' 'I wrote a best-selling book,' he told The New York Times. 'If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.' Sanders said he would release his returns by Tax Day on Monday and said he hoped President Donald Trump would do the same. 'On the day in the very immediate future, certainly before April 15, we release ours, I hope that Donald Trump will do exactly the same. We...

Of the $54 million believed to have been invested in Mantria, $17 million was returned to early investors to perpetuate the Ponzi scheme and make later investors believe huge profits could be had. By the time the Securities Exchange Commission shut down Mantria in 2009, just $790,000 remained from the other $37 million. In addition to the sheer size of the scam, the reach that Wragg and Knorr achieved in a few short years out of college remains hard to fathom. Former President Bill Clinton personally honored their now disgraced work in a ceremony for the Clinton Global Initiative in...

EXCLUSIVE -- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has been hit with another Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint, this one alleging she and her campaign manager operated a “subsidy scheme” that ran afoul of campaign finance laws. The crux of the complaint, which was given exclusively to Fox News in advance of its filing Wednesday, accused Ocasio-Cortez and her campaign manager, Saikat Chakrabarti, of overseeing a "shadowy web" of political action committees (PACs) that allowed them to raise more cash than they could have legally.

Longtime Colombo under-boss John “Sonny” Franzese is the living embodiment of the ultimate mob rule — bragging in an interview about refusing to rat despite it making him the oldest federal prisoner at the age of 100. Wheelchair-bound Franzese, now 102 and living in a nursing home, told Newsday about his life of crime — and how he stuck to the “Goodfellas” adage of “Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut” despite facing 50 years behind bars.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A chief strategist of Venezuela's government-backed cryptocurrency is a former U.S. congressional intern who once organized protests against the same socialist administration he's now helping to circumvent U.S. financial sanctions.Gabriel Jimenez, 27, was catapulted to something of tech stardom in Venezuela last month when he stood alongside President Nicolas Maduro and two Russian businessmen on national TV signing a contract to position the petro, as the fledgling currency is known, among international investors."It's a company founded and led by young Venezuelan geniuses, boys and girls of Venezuela, who have one of the most technologically advanced blockchain...

Another scandal for the "scandal-free" Obama administration. Not all ICE targets work construction or smuggle drugs. Some are key figures in the Dem machine. But the era of Obama corruption is over. There's a new sheriff in town. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this week arrested two millionaire fugitives from Ecuador whose family donated heavily to American political campaigns. Roberto and William Isaías, 74 and 75, were detained Wednesday in Miami and taken to a detention facility for undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation, The New York Times reported Friday. ICE told the Times that the brothers were “unlawfully present” in...

Five day spas were targeted as a part of the investigation: Cove Day Spa and Therapy Spa in Stuart, Bridge Day Spa and Sequoia Apple Day Spa in Hobe Sound, and Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. “They were cooking on the back steps of the business. These women were sleeping in massage parlors, on the massage tables and had no access to transportation,” said [Sherriff] Synder, who noted the victims were averaging eight clients a day. “If you do the math, that is about 1,500 men a year, with no days off.” Ruimei Li, 49, (of Jupiter)...

Tuesday evening the Committee to Defend the President (CDP) filed a motion in a D.C. federal court seeking to supplement the complaint it had filed against the Federal Election Committee (FEC) in April 2018. In its original complaint, the CDP alleged that the agency responsible for enforcing campaign-finance law failed to act on an administrative complaint the CDP had filed with the FEC. That complaint charged that, during the 2016 presidential election, Democrats illegally funneled approximately $84 million through the Hillary Victory Fund to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which then illegally coordinated with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Clinton, the...

A charismatic Barack Obama peddled the idea of 5 million new green jobs as he ran for the presidency in 2008. Actually, the number was Hillary Clinton’s idea, but when she lost, Obama appropriated it. I wrote an article in 2010 in the Washington Post busting Obama’s myth, and the green industry rewarded me by keeping me unemployed ever since. Obama invested billions in the clean energy sector. Flameout after flameout like the solar company, Solyndra, resulted. There was hardly any accrual in new green jobs. That was the myth of the clean-energy industry — that the technology and business...

A source with knowledge of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged Russian election meddling pushed back Tuesday on a new report claiming Mueller called on Deutsche Bank to submit data pertaining to its client relationship with President Trump. But the source tells Fox News there has been no subpoena from Mueller’s office to Deutsche Bank about the president’s finances.

Former GOP Rep. Ryan Costello (Pa.) is signing on to work for a group pushing a business-backed proposal to fight climate change with a carbon tax. Costello, less than a week out of the House, announced Monday in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that he’s the new managing director of Americans for Carbon Dividends. The group is the advocacy affiliate of the Climate Leadership Council, pushing a plan by former GOP Secretaries of State James Baker and George Shultz to tax carbon dioxide emissions and return the money to individuals and families on a quarterly basis. “I understand the...

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming to Washington, DC, on May 16 loaded for bear.  He has an ambitious agenda and apparently feels he can achieve it all because he holds “trump” cards against the President of the United States. Erdogan and his proxies have publicly said they want to convince the United States to jettison its budding alliance with the Syrian Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that has become the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS in Syria. On this point, they will encounter resistance...

German police raided Deutsche Bank offices on Thursday, seeking evidence in a money laundering investigation into the practice of hiding money offshore to elude tax collectors and government regulators. "Police officers and tax inspectors entered Deutsche Bank's headquarters in Frankfurt early Thursday morning and seized documents," NPR's Esme Nicholson reports from Berlin. "Prosecutors are investigating two employees of the bank who allegedly assisted customers in setting up offshore firms to avoid anti-money laundering safeguards when transferring money to accounts at Deutsche Bank." Nicholson adds, "According to investigators, in 2016 alone, more than 900 Deutsche Bank customers were served by a...

Earlier this week, the newly-elected Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropped by Rep. Nancy Pelosi's Capitol Hill office. She was not there to say hello to her new colleague but to show support for a group of environmentalists hosting a sit-in in the potential Speaker of the House's workspace. The move rankled party leadership and consultants. But what exactly was Representative-elect Ocasio-Cortez showing support for? It was the "Green New Deal", a massive overhaul spending plan of the United States' economy in an effort to supposedly combat climate change. According to Politico, Ocasio-Cortez met with members from the Sunrise Movement, a nationwide...

Need a career change? NJ Transit is hiring — and the job comes with big bucks. The nation’s second-busiest rail system has been struggling to keep its trains running on time, sometimes canceling as many as two dozen a day. Officials blame this commuting nightmare in part on a lack of engineers — the people who operate the trains. The shortage is exacerbated whenever a slew of engineers call out sick. The agency has been scrambling to fill training classes with recruits. Prospective job applicants might jump at the opportunity when they find out just how much the job pays....

A former Massachusetts state senator awaiting trial on federal corruption charges was found dead in his home Thursday.. The body of former state Sen. Brian A. Joyce, 56, was found by his wife, the Bristol County District Attorney's office said in a statement. The DA’s office said “foul play” was ruled out .. ... The Democrat, who served as assistant majority leader, was first elected in 1998. Joyce left the Senate after not seeking re-election in 2016 amid the federal probe. ... In December 2017, Joyce was named in a 113-count indictment charging him with racketeering, extortion, wire fraud and...

A multi-million kroner money laundering case at Danske Bank’s Estonian branch could be investigated by US authorities. The Justice Department, Treasury Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are each examining Danske Bank over the allegations of money laundering flows, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The investigations are the result of a complaint made by a confidential whistleblower to US authorities more than two years ago, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by the WSJ, the newspaper writes. In early August, the Danish state prosecutor’s office for serious economic and international crime...

The press continues to feed the dying Russia collusion conspiracy theory, spending Friday’s news cycle regurgitating Democrat talking points from the just-filed Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act lawsuit against the Trump campaign, WikiLeaks, and Russia. Yet the mainstream media took no notice of last week’s federal court filing that exposes an $84 million money-laundering conspiracy the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign executed during the 2016 presidential election in violation of federal campaign-finance law. That lawsuit, filed last week in a DC district court, summarizes the DNC-Clinton conspiracy and provides detailed evidence from Federal Election Commission (FEC)...

Fired FBI agent Peter Strzok on Tuesday thanked his supporters, writing on Twitter that he is “stunned and humbled” as a GoFundMe page has raised more than $250,000 for him in less than 24 hours. Strzok’s tweet did not directly address the fundraising campaign, but it came as the account had exceeded its original goal of $150,000 by more than $100,000 in just 23 hours. Its new goal is $350,000. “Stunned and humbled by the extraordinary outpouring of support already received from thousands of fellow everyday citizens taking time to fight for our country and our shared American ideals,” he...

Dogged by accusations of political money laundering, Los Angeles school board member Ref Rodriguez pleaded guilty Monday to a felony count of conspiracy and resigned from office as part of an agreement with prosecutors. In the deal, Rodriguez, 47, who had no previous criminal record, will avoid jail time. Instead, he will get three years’ probation and 60 days of community service. His resignation was effective immediately.