Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders have reached an agreement on sweeping sanctions legislation to punish Russia for its election meddling and aggression toward its neighbors, they said Saturday, defying the White House’s argument that President Trump needs flexibility to adjust the sanctions to fit his diplomatic initiatives with Moscow.The new legislation sharply limits the president’s ability to suspend or terminate the sanctions — a remarkable handcuffing by a Republican-led Congress six months into Mr. Trump’s tenure. It is also the latest Russia-tinged turn for a presidency consumed by investigations into the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian officials last year.Mr. Trump could...

Penn State climate scientist, Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann commits contempt of court in the ‘climate science trial of the century.’ Prominent alarmist shockingly defies judge and refuses to surrender data for open court examination. Only possible outcome: Mann’s humiliation, defeat and likely criminal investigation in the U.S. The defendant in the libel trial, the 79-year-old Canadian climatologist, Dr Tim Ball (above, right) is expected to instruct his British Columbia attorneys to trigger mandatory punitive court sanctions, including a ruling that Mann did act with criminal intent when using public funds to commit climate data fraud. Mann’s imminent defeat is set...

arly last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides. Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

Reflections on the Trump Administration's changes to our Cuba policy: In 1959, following six years of organized Marxist-Leninist rebellion, mostly run by Fidel and Raul Castro and their partner Che Guevera, the Battista government of Cuba was overthrown and Fidel Castro claimed dictatorial powers, which he eventually turned over to his brother Raul, in 2008. The Castros spent their sixty years not only oppressing their people – robbing, raping, beating, imprisoning, torturing, and killing, as all communist governments do – but they also spent those years, particularly the years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, spreading violent revolution across...

Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday said that if the United States continues to place sanctions on Russia, Russia will respond "to make matters mutual" and place sanctions on the US. The US sanctions on Russia were enacted in response to Russia's occupation of Crimea, which began in 2014. "The sanctions which were applied in the past few years show that the guiding principle is mutuality. There's no reason to say it, even," Peskov said. "A long list of possible sanctions is currently being prepared by our expert staff." Despite the threat, Peskov did not say Russia would refuse...

Germany on Friday lashed out at Washington over new sanctions against Russia that target the planned Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe. The new penalties, approved by the US Senate on Thursday, include a paragraph that threatens to penalize European companies that push ahead with energy export programs with Russia. Those include the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would pump Russian gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany. “It is strange that in the sanctioning of Russia’s behavior, with regards to the US elections for instance, that the European economy should become a target of American sanctions. That...

Two high-level Iranian government backers, including a former Islamic Republic official and another accused of lobbying on Tehran’s behalf, were hosted at the Obama White House for more than 30 meetings with top officials at key junctures in the former administration’s contested diplomacy with Iran, according to White House visitor logs that provide a window into the former administration’s outreach to leading pro-Iran advocates. Seyed Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat and head of its national security council, was hosted at the White House at least three times, while Trita Parsi, a pro-Iran advocate long accused of hiding his ties to...

Doha, Qatar (CNN)Qatar's leader is expected to address his nation Tuesday, one day after the country was thrust into the center of an unprecedented diplomatic crisis that threatens to disrupt everyday life and leave the oil-rich nation isolated from key allies. The last flights operated by Emirates and other major regional airlines left the capital Doha early Tuesday after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and the Maldives said Monday they are indefinitely severing ties with Qatar --- a country of 2.4 million people, mostly foreign workers. Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani had been due to...

The sexual-harassment lawsuit filed last year by former Fox News personality Andrea Tantaros against the network’s executives has morphed into a lawsuit about the lawsuit, with Fox News now filing its own counterclaim. Tantaros, former host of “The Five” and co-host of “Outnumbered,” filed suit in August 2016, alleging retaliation after she had taken exception to inappropriate remarks directed to her by former Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes. Ailes died earlier this month. “Fox News masquerades as a defender of traditional family values, but behind the scenes, it operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency, and...

Election machines in three states were not hacked to give Donald Trump the election. There was never a serious post-election movement of electors to defy their constitutional duties and vote for Hillary Clinton. Nor, once Trump was elected, did transgendered people begin killing themselves in alarming numbers. Nor were there mass resignations at the State Department upon his inauguration. Nor did Donald Trump seek an order to “ban all Muslims” from entering the U.S. Instead, he temporarily sought a suspension in visas for everyone, regardless of religion, from seven Middle Eastern states that the Obama administration had earlier identified as...

Congress is expected to level fresh economic sanctions on North Korea this week as the threat of the hermit nation's capability to strike the U.S. with a nuclear missile continues to escalate, according to conversations with members of the congressional leadership who told the Washington Free Bacon that the Kim Jong Un regime could have a nuclear weapon capable of striking the United States in "only a few years." House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) confirmed that he has scheduled a vote in the House on new sanctions that will target North Korea's slave labor trade and its shipping...

The United States will not lift sanctions on Russia until President Vladimir Putin hands Crimea back to Ukraine, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said late Sunday. During a phone call with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Tillerson said the sanctions—which have crippled Russia’s economy and pushed down the value of the ruble—will “ remain in place until Russia returns control of the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine.” He also said that Moscow must honor the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine that was outlined in the Minsk agreements, according to a State Department official.

The U.S. Treasury announced on Monday that it is putting into place 271 new sanctions in Syria following a chemical weapons attack on April 4 that killed dozens of people, including many children. Treasury said in a press release that the sanctions are “in response to the attack on innocent civilians in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, by the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,” calling the move one of the largest blocks of sanctions in the history of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

The Trump administration is leveling new economic sanctions against senior Iranian officials and its prison system for widespread human rights abuses, including the systematic torture of those being held in these facilities, according to White House officials familiar with the matter. The latest sanctions target the Tehran Prisons Organization and Sohrab Suleimani, a senior official in the prison system and the brother of Qassem Soleimani, a senior Iranian military figure responsible for operating Iran's rogue activities in Syria and elsewhere.

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is asking whether a suspected former Russian intelligence officer-turned U.S. lobbyist and the firm behind the unsubstantiated anti-Trump dossier should have registered as foreign agents for their efforts to bring down a U.S. law on behalf of the Kremlin. According to a complaint filed with the Justice Department, Fusion GPS, which was also involved in the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, was involved in the pro-Russia campaign to kill the Global Magnitsky Act around the same time. In 2012, President Obama signed into...

Democrat super-lobbyist Tony Podesta was paid $170,000 over a six-month period last year to represent Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, seeking to end one of the Obama administration’s economic sanctions against that country, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned. Podesta, founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, is listed as a key lobbyist on behalf of Sberbank, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. His firm received more than $24 million in fees in 2016, much of it coming from foreign governments, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

“The New York office of Sberbank CIB indeed hired Podesta Group. Engagement of external consultants is part of standard business practices for us,” Sberbank told TASS on Thursday. The Podesta Group charged Sberbank 20,000 dollars per month, plus expenses, from March through Sept. 2016 in their bid to end U.S. sanctions. The efforts were allegedly just part of a larger under-the-radar effort to remove sanctions on both Sberbank and Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB Capital.

U.S. Signed Secret Document to Lift U.N. Sanctions on Iranian Banks Administration backed measures on the same day Tehran released four American citizens from prison By Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee Sept. 29, 2016 8:02 p.m. ET 0 COMMENTS WASHINGTON—The Obama administration agreed to back the lifting of United Nations sanctions on two Iranian state banks blacklisted for financing Iran’s ballistic-missile program on the same day in January that Tehran released four American citizens from prison, according to U.S. officials and congressional staff briefed on the deliberations. The U.N. sanctions on the two banks weren’t initially to be lifted...

President Trump and Iran are inches apart, nose to nose, in a massive staring contest, and Iran just blinked. After Trump put the terror nation on warning telling them they were “playing with fire,” Iran has seemingly done a complete turnaround from the bravado one its generals displayed earlier in the week. Reuters is now reporting that Iran is now complying with the terms of the deal it struck with Obama last year and only has roughly half of the stockpile of uranium it is entitled to have. The terror nation’s heavy water storage is also below its allotted levels,...

Less than a month into his presidency, Donald Trump's enemies are already scenting blood. They hope they have got him on the run over the resignation of Michael Flynn as his National Security Adviser. Flynn was forced to stand down for secretly discussing sanctions against Russia with the country's ambassador to America in the weeks before Trump took office – and then trying to cover up his foolish and possibly illegal behaviour. It is being suggested that Flynn's goose was cooked by the FBI and CIA, who had tapped these phone-calls, and gleefully leaked transcripts of them. Was this pay-back...