Free Republic

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, has been forced to spend half a million dollars defending himself in court for having stood up to former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The only way to spare himself from the defamation lawsuit he has been fighting, he and his lawyer say, would be to lie.The lawsuit centers on a 2020 video that purported to show election fraud in Georgia. The video, which was presented to state lawmakers, showed security footage of election workers tabulating ballots in Atlanta. Multiple news media outlets and the secretary of state’s office...

Two senior US officials have told Politico that Iran has decided against conducting a direct attack on Israel in retaliation for the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh last week in Tehran. According to the Wednesday report, Tehran is now convinced that Haniyeh was killed when someone activated a remot-controlled bomb in the room where he was staying, and not in a direct military operation. Washington stressed to Tehran that such an action, so long as no Iranian citizens were killed, does not justify a direct military operation against Israel. The source also told Politico that Iran intends to respond...

Chelsea Clinton has eyes on an ambassadorship if Kamala Harris becomes president, according to sources. “Chelsea really wants to be the ambassador to the UK,” said a Clinton source. “There’s a reason why Bill and Hillary came out in the first five minutes to support Kamala’s presidential bid — they were currying favor.” The source said the Clintons have been “working on this idea for a long time.” The former first daughter, who is vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, would also love a gig in France, the source said.

Nearly twenty years ago, long before she was in office, a current Democratic U.S. senator wanted to buy a vacation home. She used an online mortgage broker based in North Carolina. On her loan application, she listed her own estimate of what her primary residence was worth. She got the loan and ultimately paid it back early. Fast forward to today. Would it be wrong for the Department of Justice to start examining that loan application with an eye toward civil action against her? What about the North Carolina attorney general? Does the answer change if the attorney general ran...

Mike Davis, legal adviser to Donald Trump, will send a letter Tuesday to every House Republican calling on them to do everything they can to fight back against President Joe Biden’s “lawfare” against the former president, according to a letter and memo first obtained by the Daily Caller. In the letter, Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project, mentions six bullet points he believes House Republicans need to utilize in order to properly defend Trump against the ongoing “lawfare” brought forward by Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), and Democrat state and local prosecutors. He argues these steps are...

Trial watchers, sociologists and even FX’s show “People v OJ Simpson” have argued that the jurors in O.J. Simpson’s murder case acquitted him as payback for the Rodney King beating. And in ESPN’s new event series, “O.J.: Made in America,” one juror finally comes out and says it. (snip)Interviewer: That was payback. Bess: Uh-huh. Interviewer: Do you think that’s right?At that question, she holds up her hands.

WASHINGTON — Biden administration officials are concerned that Iran may be planning to hit targets inside Israel in retaliation for the Israeli airstrikes in Syria this week that killed several senior Iranian officials, according to two U.S. officials. The officials said any retaliation inside of Israel is expected to focus on military or intelligence targets, rather than civilians. They also said the administration has begun considering options for how to respond to various possible retaliatory moves by Iran. Iran has threatened to retaliate, saying the building destroyed was a consular building and therefore was an attack on Iran itself.

Three judges on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals were ousted by candidates endorsed by Attorney General Ken Paxton, who targeted the court after it ruled against him in a 2021 case. Former Dallas appeals court justice David Schenck, Waco attorney Gina Parker and Richardson attorney Lee Finley were projected to defeat incumbents for the Presiding Judge, Place 7 and Place 8 seats on the state’s highest criminal court, according to the Associated Press. This year’s primary presented the first opportunity for Paxton to attempt to oust some of the eight judges who ruled in 2021 the attorney general cannot...

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk region, wrote on Telegram that the city of Donetsk was subjected to heavy strikes on New Year's Eve, while a statement from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the assault on the city a "terrorist act" and alleged Kyiv's forces had targeted civilian infrastructure. Meanwhile, Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko reported in a Telegram post that members of the Russian "elite" based in occupied Donetsk were attending a New Year's dinner with guests from Moscow at the time of the attack... Pro-Ukrainian X user (((Tendar))) wrote that "accurate readings on what the casualties...

At least one Ukrainian missile struck the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea navy in the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Friday, causing a fire, local governor Mikhail Razvozhayev wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Razvozhayev said another strike was possible and urged locals to avoid the city center where the building is located. Firefighters were at the site, he said.

Explosions and flames wreathed Sevastopol harbor early on Wednesday morning as Kyiv scored another success against Russia's beleaguered Black Sea Fleet, its cruise missiles and drones striking at the heart of Moscow's regional power center. Russia's Defense Ministry said ten cruise missiles and three naval drones attacked Sevastopol, with all three UAVs destroyed and seven missiles shot down. Photos and video from the scene showed Sevastopol's drydock area engulfed in flames, with the Minsk Ropucha-class large landing ship and Rostov-on-Don Kilo-class attack submarine believed to have been damaged. -snip- ighteen months of war have been punctuated with multiple humiliations for...

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said that he prevented a Ukrainian attack on a Russian Navy base last year by declining Kyiv's request to activate internet access in the Black Sea near Moscow-annexed Crimea. Satellite internet service Starlink, operated by Musk-owned company SpaceX, has been deployed in Ukraine since shortly after it was invaded by Russia in February 2022. "There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor," Musk posted Thursday on X, formerly named Twitter. "If I had agreed...

A powerful explosion rocked a building just 150 feet from a military situation room frequently used by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Rostov-on-Don Thursday. The blast, which the Kremlin said was from shooting down an airstrike, tore apart facades, smashed windows in three buildings and damaged several parked cars next to the headquarters of the Russian Southern Military District, according to the Independent, citing the state-owned RIA news agency. One person was injured, according to regional Governor Vasily Golubev. Video footage of the early morning attack showed a massive fireball rising into the sky in a developed area of the...

Ukrainian forces killed 49 elite Russian paratroopers in a single day in an operation to prevent them from being deployed to a key section of the war’s southern front line. The members of the 7th Guards Mountain Airborne Division were embroiled in a brutal fight after Ukrainian fighters pinned them down near the village of Staromaiorske in the eastern Donetsk region, Russian military bloggers reported. Troops from the 247th VDV regiment were sent in to retrieve the soldiers’ bodies after Russian commanders refused to oversee their recovery, one report said, citing an audio recording of a Russian soldier. Ukrainian counter-offensive...

The Kremlin has claimed it has downed two Ukrainian missiles aimed at Russia's Kerch Bridge to Crimea - as video shows smoke billowing over the crucial link to the annexed peninsula. The 12-mile crossing carries heavy significance for Moscow, both logistically and psychologically, as a key artery for military and civilian supplies and as an assertion of Kremlin control of the peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014. Russia's foreign ministry vowed retaliation for what it called a 'terrorist attack' on the bridge in Crimea.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Sunday that "war" was coming to Russia after three Ukrainian drones were downed over Moscow.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis almost quadrupled his net worth in a year, thanks to a seven-figure payday from his bestselling memoir, "The Courage to be Free." The 2024 candidate's net worth as of December 31, 2022, was $1,174,331, according to documents he filed to the Florida Commission on Ethics ahead of a July 1 deadline. A year earlier, DeSantis' net worth was nearly $319,000. The lift in salary was largely thanks to a $1.25 million book advance DeSantis got from Broadside Books, the conservative arm of HarperCollins Publishing that is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Since filing his last...

Conservatives whose reaction to the banana republic shenanigans of a leftist DA in a leftist city using a ridiculous perversion of the law to take out an enemy of the leftists is anything less than a desire to deal the pain right back are worse than useless. They are a menace. Their channeling of Kevin Bacon in “Animal House” empowers our enemies to ruin our country – and us. If you love the rule of law, if you want to bring back our precious norms and hold to our precious principles, then it’s time to go Full Truman and nuke...

Democrats are jumping for joy at the prospect of Donald Trump finally getting hooked, like Al Capone, on some kind of — any kind of — criminal charge. But their own political idols — namely, the Clintons or Bidens — could one day be gored by a hyperpartisan district attorney in search of a crime, no matter how picayune. Democratic DA Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump is so convoluted that even The Washington Post thinks it’s a stretch — and one that sets an ominous precedent. It threatens to open a Pandora’s Box of political indictments against former presidents and...

Three Tennessee state lawmakers, all Democrats, were pulled from their committee assignments and could face expulsion from the legislature after they participated in storming the state Capitol during a protest against guns following last week's school shooting. Tennessee House Republicans voted Monday to strip committee assignments from state Reps. Justin Jones, Justin J. Pearson and Gloria Johnson, according to WPLN. A potential expulsion for the three lawmakers could come later this week. The lawmakers joined anti-gun protestors in storming the Capitol last week after a 28-year-old transgender person opened fire inside the Covenant School in Nashville, which killed six people,...