Free Republic

A law enforcement sensitive document written by senior Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr, is raising serious concerns amongst congressional investigators regarding testimony provided to Congress on the involvement of FBI special agents in the probe into the Trump campaign and its alleged Russian ties. Nov. 21, 2016, the handwritten document lists former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, his paramour FBI Attorney Lisa Page and Special Agent Joe Pientka (who along with Strzok interviewed former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn). Strzok, who was the lead investigator in the FBI’s investigation into Trump, was removed last August from Special Counsel...

Volkoff began wrestling in 1967 and embarked on a career that lasted nearly 40 years. He spent the bulk of his time in the WWF and World Wide Wrestling Federation, Vince McMahon Sr.'s precursor to the WWF. He also spent time with the American Wrestling Association in the 1970s. Volkoff and The Sheik were one of the premier heel tag teams of the 1980s under the management of Classy Freddie Blassie. The pair won the WWF Tag Team Championship once before breaking up. Volkoff later teamed with Boris Zukhov as part of The Bolsheviks for the remainder of the 1980s before leaving the company in 1990....

Judge orders Fusion GPS to disclose details of its dossier work. The opposition firm has avoided deposition in a dossier-related lawsuit against BuzzFeed. Lawyer for plaintiff says ruling “gave us everything that we had hoped for.” Representatives of Fusion GPS must answer a broad array of questions about the opposition research firm’s role in creating, investigating and disseminating the infamous Steele dossier, a federal judge ruled. U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro issued the decision Tuesday in a defamation lawsuit a Russian tech executive filed against BuzzFeed News, which published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017. The trial is scheduled...

A 29-year-old Russian woman accused of working as a covert spy while in the U.S. on a student visa remains behind bars.photoButina is a suspected covert Russian spy. She is a Russian national who was in the U.S. on a student visa, enrolled at American University in Washington, D.C. She received her graduate degree from the university in May.She's known for her pro-gun activism and founded a Russian gun rights group in Moscow.The 29-year-old grew up in a modest apartment building in the Siberian city of Barnaul, closer to the Mongolian and Kazakh borders than Moscow.She developed an interest in...

A missing Russian Imperial Navy cruiser said to contain 200 tons of gold bullion worth an estimated $133 billion has been discovered after being lost at sea for 113 years. The wreck of the Dmitrii Donskoi, a 6,200-ton warship that went down during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, was discovered on July 15 about 0.8 miles (1.3 km) from the shores of Ulleungdo, a South Korean island located 75 miles (120 km) east of the Korean Peninsula, the Telegraph reports. The ship was found under 1,400 feet of water (430 meters) by an international consortium led by a South Korean...

It is thought that the battle ship, which was discovered off the island of Ulleungdo, was sunken during the Russo-Japanese War and could have had the gold of an entire flotilla on board. The Dmitrii Donskoi was an armoured cruiser in the Russian Imperial Navy’s Baltic fleet which was deployed to the Pacific in the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War. The warship would have taken part in the Battle of Tsushima which saw Russia defeated by Japanese warships.

French celebrations over the national football team’s World Cup victory on Sunday quickly turned to violence, with street clashes, vandalism, attacks on police, and scenes of looting in cities across the country. As many as a million people had been enjoying the “good-natured atmosphere” at an event on the Champs-Élysées in Paris following France’s 4-2 win against Croatia, which ministers had hoped would bring a “great moment” of “national unity”. But by 11 pm the jubilant mood had turned to chaos, with what local media describes as “bands of thugs” launching projectiles including bottles at police, who responded by firing...

It what may be an early onslaught of Kremlin-linked Twitter attacks ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, Russia bots appear to be fueling a wave of criticism against Democrats in part over a lack of “civility” and intimidation in political confrontations, according to bot trackers. Attacks with the hashtag #WalkAway purport to be from a “grassroots” wave of one-time Democrats who have left the party in part because they say they are so incensed by the hateful and divisive behavior of party members. The message is to “walk away” from ugly confrontations, “intolerance” and hate — and from the Democratic...

President Donald Trump will meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin next month in Helsinki, the White House confirmed on Thursday. ​”​President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation will meet on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland​,” the statement said. “The two leaders will discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues.​”​

It started with money, as it so often does in New York. A crisp $100 bill slipped across the smooth surface of the mid-century-inspired concierge desk at 11 Howard, the sleek new boutique hotel in Soho. Looking up, Neffatari Davis, the 25-year-old concierge, who goes by “Neff,” was surprised to see the cash had come from a young woman who seemed to be around her age. She had a heart-shaped face and pouty lips surrounded by a wild tangle of red hair, her eyes framed by incongruously chunky black glasses that Neff, an aspiring cinematographer with an eye for detail,...

A Dutch-led international criminal investigation has concluded that the Buk missile that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014 came from Russia's 53rd Antiaircraft Missile Brigade. The Joint Investigative Team (JIT), comprising authorities from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Ukraine, made the announcement at a press conference on May 24 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. MH17 was shot down over the conflict zone in Ukraine's Donetsk region on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board. The JIT "has come to the conclusion that the Buk-TELAR that shot down MH17 came from the 53rd Antiaircraft Missile...

Friday is the deadline for the FBI and Justice Department to give the Senate Judiciary Committee key documents in the Michael Flynn case.It won't happen, because that's not how the current FBI and Justice Department deal with congressional demands involving the Trump-Russia affair. But sooner or later, Judiciary Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is likely to get his way.In a May 11 letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, Grassley noted that more than a year ago, on Feb. 15, 2017, the Judiciary Committee requested a copy of the transcript of a Dec. 2016 phone...

While the media obsess over an alleged Russian conspiracy to collude with Donald Trump to affect America’s 2016 presidential election, what about Obama’s interference in the elections of other countries? Most Americans have no idea that President Obama meddled in elections all over the world. And apparently, the media decided there’s no reason for Americans to know about this illegal activity. Indeed, in 2016, the Los Angeles Times did a story on how America has interfered with other nation’s elections in the past, but they stopped short of mentioning the various foreign elections Obama tried to influence. But the same...

Germany's intelligence service BND had in the 1990s obtained from a Russian informer a sample of the poison used against ex-double agent Sergei Skripal, German media reported Thursday, drawing a link to Moscow as the origin of the toxin. Britain has accused Russia of carrying out the nerve agent attack against Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March, but Moscow has denied the claims and argued that the country never had any programmes to develop the chemical weapon, known as Novichok. But German newspapers Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit as well as regional public broadcasters NDR and WDR said their...

yrian and Russian forces have launched a large-scale attack on a Palestinian refugee camp under the control of Islamic State, as the regime closed in on the last rebel-held territory in the Syrian capital. Pro-government troops fired a barrage of air strikes and surface-to-surface missiles into Yarmouk camp in southeast Damascus on Wednesday morning, as they looked to rid the areas of holdout jihadists. Rebels with the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) agreed to an evacuation deal after the government launched its offensive on April 19, however Isil militants refused to give up their fight. Air strikes have levelled...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin traveled to his inauguration on Monday for a new six-year term in a Russian-made limousine, ditching his old stretch Mercedes to send a patriotic message of self-sufficiency amid increased tensions with the West.Putin, in power since 2000, wants Russia to reduce its dependence on imported goods and technology, a drive that has gathered pace since Russia was hit by Western sanctions. Some guests broke into applause at the sight of the car conveying Putin the short distance from his office to the Kremlin hall for the inauguration, Russian news agencies said.“It’s cooler than (U.S....

Old Believers, the strictest adherents of ancient Christian traditions, are finally returning from 100-year exile in the West to RussiaThis fascinating news story offers an update about the Old Believer communities that have been steadily returning to Russia from an almost 100-year exile in Alaska, Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina and setting up communities in Russia's Far East. Old Believers are Russian Christians who did not accept the reforms of the Official Russian Church in the 1600s. Since then, they have retained strict staunch loyalty to old traditions. They live in communities, farming the land, have traditional large families, don't...

The Russian military presented the evidence of the successful operation of Syrian air defense systems during the missile strike by the United States and its allies. Journalists were shown fragments of intercepted cruise missiles and told about the missiles that failed to hit the targets because of "malfunctions". And although Washington is confident that the strike was a complete success, the Defense Ministry reports that only 22 out of the 105 "smart missiles," as they were called by the US president, hit their targets. Alexei Baranov saw and touched the evidence. There were no burn marks, and the serial numbers...

"This is an adult and, moreover, a man who for many years has organised beauty contests. He socialised with the most beautiful women in the world. I can hardly imagine he rushed to the hotel to meet our girls of lower social responsibility -even though they are the best in the world, of course."

The substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab, the Russian foreign minister said. The toxin was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states. Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with an incapacitating toxin known as 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, citing the results of the examination conducted by a Swiss chemical lab that worked with the samples that London handed over to the Organisation for the Prohibition of the Chemical...