Free Republic

BREAKING: OIG first reports, “FBI did not comply with the AG guidelines and faces ongoing challenges in overseeing long-term CHSs”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department's watchdog is nearing the release of its report on the early stages of the FBI's Russia investigation, a document likely to revive debate about a politically charged probe that shadowed President Donald Trump's administration from the outset.

The Democratic-leaning issue committee is supporting Proposition CC, which seeks to eliminate state spending caps under TABOR. Turnout among Democrats for the 2019 election has been low. Coloradans for Prosperity, a deep-pocketed group working to pass Proposition CC on November’s ballot, has been sending people a voter “report card” in an effort to boost turnout. The report cards grade recipients on their recent voting record compared to their neighbors, urging them to cast their ballots. Some voters have been frustrated by the mailers, however, saying they incorrectly give them a poor mark on their turnout. “Public records indicate that you...

The long-awaited report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on potential surveillance abuses by intelligence officials during the 2016 Russia investigation is still in the declassification process, a DOJ official told Fox News on Wednesday. “The FBI and the DOJ are working together smoothly on the declassification process,” the official said. In comments to reporters at the White House on Thursday, President Trump -- he retains the authority to declassify and release as much of the report as he wants -- speculated that the final report could even implicate former President Barack Obama.

Natural gas developers in Pennsylvania are hoping a recent water quality report by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission could squelch plans for a fracking ban that’s currently being considered by the neighboring Delaware River Basin Commission. The SRBC’s Remote Water Quality Monitoring Network report, which was released last month, revealed that water quality scores at 14 of the 16 stations in the basin were in the “good” or “excellent” categories According to a fact sheet from the Susquehanna commission, the monitoring stations are located in areas where active drilling takes place, as well as areas free of development, in order...

As the Democratic Party feigns outrage over the recently declassified “whistleblower” complaint in which an unnamed intelligence official asserts numerous allegations against President Trump based entirely on third-party hearsay, a Twitter thread from former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz ripping the complaint to shreds has since gone viral. In the lengthy thread, Fleitz first points out that the whistleblower’s intent is clearly political based on the language in the given text and that he/she should never have had knowledge of the July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky.

More than two decades before Jeffrey Epstein took his own life, a woman went into a California police station and filed one of the earliest sex-crime complaints against him: that he groped her during what she thought was a modeling interview for the Victoria’s Secret catalog. Alicia Arden said she never heard back from investigators about her complaint. No charges ever came of it. And to this day she sees it as a glaring missed opportunity to bring the financier to justice long before he was accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls and women.

A subsea tunnel across the Strait of Belle Isle is back in conversation once again after a report was tabled this month in Ottawa. The federal government’s standing committee on transport, infrastructure, and communities is now calling on the federal government to work with the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec, as well, as the private sector, to build a fixed link across the Strait of Belle Isle and complete Route 138 along the Quebec Lower North Shore. The tunnel would link Point Amour in Labrador to Yankee Point on the Great Northern Peninsula in Newfoundland. The project would...

I'm keeping my "few words" to a few words this week. Affirmative Action, meaning hiring quotas at the expense of qualified applicants, has been the law since March 1961. More than 58 years. Now it's been elevated to a harshly enforced cult called "diversity". If welfare, equal opportunity and Affirmative Action wasn't enough, neither will be "diversity". Before NAFTA the U.S. held a trade surplus with Mexico of about $10 million, which was break-even or near enough. Since NAFTA we've constantly run deficits of tens of billions of dollars. What a deal. It's no surprise the news media doesn't mention...

The Justice Department released a second copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Monday evening, following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by BuzzFeed and the Electronic Privacy and Information Center. The lightly-redacted version of Mueller's report appears to be identical to the 448-page document that was released in April, except it sheds more light on the redactions by explaining why the blacked-out information is exempted from release under FOIA. **SNIP** Along with the report itself, the Justice Department included a letter from senior counsel Vanessa Brinkman addressed to BuzzFeed reporter Jason Leopold, who had filed a FOIA...

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 KJV Most of the political observers in the world suspected Mulehead was just another political hack and now we know. There was no objectivity or blind justice in his report it was nothing but a DNC report on why he hates Trump. It could have just as easily been written by CNN or MSDNC in its...

(CNN)The Mueller report -- the result of a 22-month investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election -- didn't end the debate over whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice or acted inappropriately while in office. But there's one thing it proved beyond any debate: The President lies with remarkable ease and cajoles those around him to do the same.

Given these assumptions: 1. Mueller and his team are smart enough to know there was never any collusion of Trump with Russia... 2. Mueller's fundamental purpose was to run a lengthy (but baseless) investigation which would provide fodder for news and commentary reporting on a continuous basis. A running source of (phony) material for Dems and Trump haters. 3. While there was never any expectation to find collusion with Russia, the powers inherent to the investigation team might lead to criminal charges in other unrelated matters, which would be politically useful for Dems, Progs, etc. So WHY did Mueller end...

OKAY, I WROTE THIS FOR USA TODAY right after the Barr press conference, but they don't want to run it because it doesn't incorporate the Mueller Report. Since I don't have time to read and digest the report this afternoon (I'm teaching two 2-hour classes back to back), I'm just posting it here. Enjoy!_____BILL BARR: ADULT IN THE ROOMGlenn Harlan ReynoldsBill Barr's press conference regarding the Mueller Report release was notable for both style and substance.On style, he reminded us that in an age of shrieking media hysteria and out-of-control twitter-pols, there is still a place for stolid, stodgy, rule-following...

House Democrats exploded in anger Wednesday over Attorney General William Barr’s plans to roll out special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, accusing the Justice Department of trying to spin the report’s contents and protect President Donald Trump. Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will hold a press conference at 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning to review the report, which may be heavily redacted. Reports that DOJ officials have already discussed Mueller’s findings with the White House only further inflamed tensions. “I’m deeply troubled by reports that the WH is being briefed on the Mueller report AHEAD of its release,” tweeted House...

Special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election is set to be sent to Congress on Thursday, but the fight to get the full, unredacted, or at least minimally redacted, report is already fiercely underway. Attorney General William Barr and his team have spent the last few weeks carving away at the nearly 400-page report and proclaiming varying degrees of exoneration for President Donald Trump. At the same time, Democrats and others have been making moves to ensure that Trump loyalists don't hide the potentially damaging parts for the president forever. But if all else fails,...

Fox Business Network reporter Charles Gasparino said Wednesday that former Vice President and potential 2020 candidate Joe Biden is “seething” behind the scenes at Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), whose campaign he believes is behind media scrutiny of him getting too close for comfort with myriad women.

WASHINGTON — The still-secret report on Russian interference in the 2016 election submitted by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, last week was more than 300 pages long, according to the Justice Department, a length that raises new questions about Attorney General William P. Barr’s four-page summary. Mr. Barr wrote to Congress on Sunday offering what he called the “principal conclusions” of the report — including that Mr. Mueller had not found that the Trump campaign had taken part in a conspiracy to undermine the election. But he had notably declined to publicly disclose its length.

While speaking to reporters on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called for the release of the Mueller report and stated that Attorney General William Barr “is appointed for a particular job, to make sure the president is above the law.” Pelosi said, “Right now, the message should be clearly, let us see this report. I have great respect for Special Counsel Mueller, but let us see the report. We don’t need an interpretation by the attorney general, who is appointed for a particular job, to make sure the president is above the law. We need to see the report.”

House Intel Chairman and chief Trump-Russia conspiracy theorist Adam Schiff (D-CA) went into overdrive on Friday after Mueller turned in his ‘Trump report’ to the Justice Department and announced no new indictments. Snip Schiff told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Friday evening that his Committee is willing to subpoena Robert Mueller and others to obtain a clearer picture of the contents of Mueller’s final report.