Free Republic

Special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into claims made by Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone that he met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. WikiLeaks released thousands of documents during the 2016 campaign that U.S. intelligence agencies believe came from Russian operatives and were aimed to hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. In an email to fellow former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg dated Aug. 4, 2016, Stone claims that he "dined with Julian Assange last night," according to the Journal. Nunberg told The Washington Post earlier this month that investigators working for Mueller asked him to...

A top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday that the memo his party released this weekend regarding alleged abuses in the federal government’s Russia investigation proves the so-called Steele dossier was only part of the evidence used to get a critical, court-approved surveillance warrant, disputing Republicans’ argument about the importance of the document. The memo released Saturday is essentially a rebuttal to the one by Republicans on the GOP-controlled committee that argues the FBI and Justice Department relied on the loosely-vetted dossier to get the warrant on onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance...

According to the indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Russian trolls, operating out of St. Petersburg, took American identities on social media and became players in our 2016 election. On divisive racial and religious issues, the trolls took both sides. In the presidential election, the trolls favored Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein and Donald Trump, and almost never Hillary Clinton. One imaginative Russian troll urged Trumpsters to dress up a female volunteer in an orange prison jump suit, put her in a cage on a flatbed truck, then append the slogan, "Lock Her Up!" How grave a matter is this? This...

McCarthyism describes an event in American history where a Senator claimed to have in his briefcase evidence that high-ranking government officials were colluding with Russia. Lives were destroyed based solely on the accusation. Finally, when people had had enough, the attorney representing the U.S. Army turned to the Senator and said, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” That ended it. The present Russian investigation hit its “have you no sense of decency” moment last week when Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians for defrauding America. By all appearances, they are the sort of unsophisticated internet trolls who,...

To recap, the House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines last night to make public a classified memorandum, written by Republicans and drawn from US intelligence, pertaining to some element or elements of the overall Russia matter.  The specific subject matter of the document remains unclear, although the surveillance of former Trump aide Carter Page appears to be at least somewhat relevant. Democrats have objected vociferously to publishing the memo, claiming that it paints an inaccurate picture of reality, based on incomplete information.  They've drafted their own private memo, which the committee voted unanimously to make available to all House...

Yes, some were a bit frustrated that we posted about The New York TimesÂ’ late Thursday night story about President Donald Trump wanting to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller last June. The fact of the matter is it never happened, but it would certainly rehash the Russian collusion hysteria that has gripped the news media since Trump won the 2016 election. CBS: Allegations Tainted FBI Agents "Pulled Punches" During Clinton Email ProbeYet, Washington Free Beacon reporter Liz Harrington noted the odd timing of the leaked story, noting it came two hours after it was reported that FBI agent Peter Strzok...

Trumpers, who are most critical of Mueller’s investigation, normally (correctly, I’d say) see Trump as brilliant, playing 3D chess... Fast forward to the investigation. Mueller hires, supposedly, a bunch of biased lawyers (some of whom, it turns out, specialize in financial transactions—which was never, ever mentioned in the original “charges” against Trump). So in addition to the fact that Trump was told on multiple occasions he was not a target, it also appears that the types of lawyers Mueller hired were looking at something entirely different than “Russian collusion.” it had to look like Sessions was incompetent. Trump provided “Cheese...

The preceding Cold War generated a prolonged slurring and suppression of dissenting American voices, and it may be happening again. https://www.thenation.com/article/neo-mccarthyism-and-the-new-cold-war/

In May, Rep. Adam Schiff (second from left), a Democrat and House Intelligence Committee member, provides a summary of the FBI investigation into alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. election. http://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-new-mccarthyism-is-destroying-the-democratic-party/

Although the liberal media is purposely avoiding the fact that the Trump-Russia collusion investigation is, as CNN's Van Jones noted in a candid moment, a big "nothing burger" most of the public has already reached that conclusion. Thus far Bob Mueller and his team of Democrat-donating investigators have only come up with a quickie inconclusive 20 minute meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and a Russian lawyer. Hardly time for "collusion." This might explain why they are now on a fishing expedition for matters completely unrelated to Russia. Meanwhile the public appears to be fed up with the Russia investigation to nowhere...

The MSM is hating President Trump’s foreign trip. Why? Because it takes the spotlight off what they’d much rather be covering: the investigations back home into Russian involvement in the election. Yesterday, we witnessed a CNN host fretting that President Trump’s successful speech in Saudi Arabia might be “normalizing” him. Now it’s Mika Brzezinski’s turn to insist that she won’t let Morning Joe be distracted by the foreign trip. On today’s show, when HuffPo‘s Sam Stein said that despite the investigations, people are “going about our business,” Mika jumped on him. View the video here.

Joe Scarborough has suggested that—in order to change the headlines and “blow up” the House investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russians—the White House “shoved” House intel committee chairman Devin Nunes in front of the cameras to reveal that communications of President Trump and associates may have been intercepted after the election by intelligence agencies conducting surveillance of foreign targets. Said Scarborough on today’s Morning Joe: “it just looked like, and sounded like from some reporting I did yesterday, that you had the White House desperate to do anything to change headlines this morning, because, again, from the...