Free Republic

Ben Rhodes: John Brennan was the point person for the Obama White House on the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. He knows a lot more about defending our nation than someone who uses security clearances to punish his political adversaries. Robert J. Oneill: Actually, 23 conservatives went after UBL. No offense, in case you were wondering.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) acknowledged that his conversations with President Trump about race have been "painful" and "uncomfortable," but insisted that the president has kept an open mind on the issue. "They're hard, they're painful, they're uncomfortable to sit in the Oval Office and have a conversation with the president about things that you strongly disagree about," Scott told CNN's Van Jones. "He didn't change his perspective, I certainly can't change my perspective." But Scott also said that he was "hopeful" after the conversations. "The way it closed I thought gave me reasons to be hopeful," Scott recalled. "It closed...

Full Title: FBI: Hundreds of Bureau Agents Took Bribes from CNN, NY Times, NBC News and More; Wray Looks the Other Way to Protect Media Partners Access to the FBI is for sale. Concert tickets. Expensive private dinners. NFL tickets. Parties on booze cruises. Discounts on travel. FBI insiders said more than 60 agents in D.C. alone have been nailed for taking gifts from the news media. Inspector General Michael Horowitz said earlier this week about 50 FBI agents took 300 free gifts from news media. However, Horowitz failed to stipulate that number is ONLY in Washington D.C. which covers...

An internal memo from the chief scientist of the U.S. Census Bureau warned Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross against adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 census. John Abowd, the agency’s chief scientist and associate director for research and methodology, wrote in the January memo that adding a citizenship question would be "very costly, harms the quality of the census count, and would use substantially less accurate citizenship status data than are available from administrative sources." The document also states that adding the questions would create "major potential quality and cost disruptions" for the 2020 census. The memo does say...

The Department of Justice reportedly seized a New York Times reporter's phone and email records this year in an effort to probe the leaking of classified information, the first known instance of the DOJ going after a journalist's data under President Trump. The Times reported Thursday that the DOJ seized years' worth of records from journalist Ali Watkins's time as a reporter at BuzzFeed News and Politico before she joined The Times in 2017 as a federal law enforcement reporter, according to the report Thursday. Watkins was alerted by a prosecutor in February that the DOJ had years of records...

Jim Wolfe, a longtime former director of security at the Senate Intelligence Committee, was indicted and arrested Thursday night for giving false statements to F.B.I. agents during their investigation into leaks of classified information to the media. This is a developing story.

In mid-February of 2014, two 17-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas students assaulted a 14-year-old baseball player near the high school stadium. They kicked the boy, a police report said, held him to the ground and simulated a sexual assault through the teen's clothing with a baseball bat. One of the assailants was Broward Sheriff Scott Israel's son, Brett Israel, according to the incident report. When the attack was reported to authorities, Brett Israel and the other 17-year-old, Anthony Broderick, were not arrested. They were suspended from the Parkland high school for three days based on the school's conclusion that they had...

Sources tell The Daily Caller disgruntled FBI agents are too afraid of retaliation to speak out about the Bureau’s many troubles. The sources say agents don’t trust Congress to protect them from the consequences of testifying and claim whistleblower protection laws are ineffective. The FBI rarely punishes those who retaliate against whistleblowers, according to the agency itself. Even as a new Rasmussen poll shows a majority of voters believe senior law enforcement officials broke the law to stop Donald Trump from beating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, rank-and-file FBI agents who want to testify against their superiors to Congress...

Senate confirms new director for spy agency, cyber command WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate confirmed on Tuesday President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency, Army Lieutenant General Paul Nakasone. Nakasone has an extensive background in cyber issues, having held positions including serving as chief of the U.S. Army’s cyber command since late 2016. Nakasone, 54, replaces Admiral Mike Rogers, who is retiring after nearly four years in the “dual-hat” position leading the NSA, the country’s largest spy agency, and the military’s cyber warfare division. During his confirmation hearing, Nakasone said he did...

The Justice Department announced Wednesday it would hand over documents related to the Obama-era Fast and Furious gun scandal to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Former President Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder had previously refused to produce documents requested by Oversight, documents which former Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz at the time called “critical” to pursuing the investigation. The Justice Department announced Wednesday it would hand over documents related to the Obama-era Fast and Furious gun scandal to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Former President Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder had...

Shortened title. Full title: Undercover FBI agent who urged jihadis to “tear up Texas” claims he didn’t know they were going to do so This is the first time that the FBI has offered any explanation at all of some extremely strange facts: an undercover agent was in contact with the jihad terrorists who were targeting our AFDI/Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas on May 3, 2015. He told them to “tear up Texas.” He was in the car right behind them as they entered the parking lot of the event. They got out of...

For more than two months, the FBI has failed to abide by a judge’s order to turn over all of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s text messages, emails and SMS phone messages to a government watchdog group that has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a former senior FBI special agent. The communications in question are related to McCabe’s wife’s unsuccessful run for Virginia State senate and might also contain invaluable information on McCabe’s role in the Bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server used to send classified information, several former FBI sources and a government official told...

Former President Barack Obama is in advanced negotiations with Netflix to produce a series of high-profile shows that will provide him a global platform after his departure from the White House, according to people familiar with the discussions. Under terms of a proposed deal, which is not yet final, Netflix would pay Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, for exclusive content that would be available only on the streaming service, which has nearly 118 million subscribers around the world. The number of episodes and the formats for the shows have not been decided.

Baker possesses 47 hard disks containing data on a massive surveillance operation overseen by John Brennan and James Clapper which allegedly spied on Trump Tower and now-President Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower. “I provided to the FBI seventeen businesses of Donald Trump, including the Trump Tower, the Trump leasing programs, all of these different programs, and including Trump himself and the various family members that had been wiretapped under these programs,” (Dennis) Montgomery said in the interview. “There has been a wiretap on Trump for years.” Montgomery provided the proof of the surveillance program to Judge Royce Lamberth in...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions stepped into the Bundy prosecution after Wednesday’s mistrial, ordering a third-party examination of the case in light of the latest government snafu. “The attorney general takes this issue very seriously and has personally directed that an expert in the [Justice Department’s] discovery obligations be deployed to examine the case and advise as to the next steps,” said Ian D. Prior, the department’s principal deputy director of public affairs, in a late Wednesday statement. The decision to intervene came after Chief U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial over the government’s “willful failure to disclose...

The Clintons and their associates, whether it's Sandy Berger or Cheryl Mills, certainly have a gift for making paperwork disappear. Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton’s former National Security Adviser, stole classified documents about the terror failures of the Clinton administration, hid documents under a construction trailer, lied about taking them and destroyed some of them. Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond...

Former IRS senior executive Lois G. Lerner told a federal court last week that there’s “no legitimate” reason why the public should see her testimony about her role in tea party targeting, pleading with a judge to keep her deposition permanently sealed. Ms. Lerner and her former chief lieutenant, Holly Paz, have said they faced death threats in the past, and say they fear any more attention to their behavior would spur a new round of harassment. They said there’s “exceedingly low” public interest in having their depositions released, and they said tea party groups are pushing for disclosure out...

ix Thanksgivings ago, as a junior White House speechwriter, I wrote a video script for President Obama. While not exactly destined for the history books, I thought it was a warm, generous celebration of the holiday. I was proud of my work. That is, until Fox News got ahold of it. It turned out I had forgotten to include a reference to God in the remarks. “President Obama has caused outrage with his Thanksgiving speech,” declared Fox Nation, not mentioning that George W. Bush also frequently omitted the almighty from Thanksgiving. Not to be outdone, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro tweeted...

Good news for college men: You’re welcome again on campus. On Friday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ripped up the Obama administration’s one-sided rules on how colleges and universities handle accusations of sexual assault and misconduct. The rules, imposed in 2011, were so stacked against the accused — usually young men — that dozens of innocent male students were branded as rapists, kicked out of school and robbed of future job opportunities. Those with sufficient money and fortitude managed to get their names cleared in real courts of law — where rules of evidence, due process and reasonable standards of proof...

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...