Free Republic

WASHINGTON — A Senate vote to end President Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings without calling witnesses should be considered “half a trial,” the president’s former chief of staff John Kelly said Friday. “In my view, they kind of leave themselves open to a lot of criticism,” Kelly said in an interview with NJ Advance Media in advance of his Feb. 12 appearance at Drew University’s Drew Forum speaker series at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown. “It seems it was half a trial,” Kelly said. Kelly said he believed former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s assertion that Trump withheld congressionally...

Washington -- Dare we call it the Trump Revolution? We call the presidency of Ronald Reagan the Reagan Revolution. Well, consider what President Donald Trump has achieved in but three years. He has revived the economy with ample growth, historically low levels of unemployment and efficiencies in the economy thanks to the removal of unnecessary stultifying regulations. He promises more if reelected. He has assured international peace and stability. Becoming a prominent terrorist is no longer a smart career choice. Longevity can be problematic. And the president has assured a judicial system stocked with men and women who really believe...

There is absolutely no way they will call witnesses. The Swamp is totally corrupt. It has become worse than ever. (Read Peter Schweitzer’s new book.) They see nothing wrong with enriching themselves and their families by selling their influence. The Senate, both Democrats and Republicans, is the most corrupt of all. They are unbelievably slick and sophisticated at it. All of the senators are doing, in some form, what Joe Biden did. Isn’t it revealing that *no* senator — even Lindsay Graham, Marsha Blackburn, Rand Paul, or Bernie Sanders — has said they think Biden did anything wrong? Likewise, they...

A federal court has ruled Arizona Republicans’ ban on mail-in ballots is illegal and unconstitutional, calling it intentionally discriminatory toward people of color, who already face increased barriers to voting. The ruling is a major victory for the Democratic party, which filed the suit, and will likely make it easier for minorities to get their ballots counted in the largely red state.

Sharyl: Do you feel like you’ve fallen into the system? This was something you strongly objected to and criticized when we last spoke, now it sounds like you’re operating quite well inside the system. Rep. Ken Buck: Yeah, I still object to it. Larry Klayman is also a former federal prosecutor and longtime swamp-watcher. He head up Freedom Watch, a public interest group that investigates government corruption. Sharyl: What would you tell the public, is the state of what we may think of as the Washington DC swamp, today? Larry Klayman: It’s a club, it’s like the National Football League....

Fox News host Laura Ingraham revealed on her show Wednesday night that last May, the New York Times quashed a story about a White House meeting that took place in January 2016 between Obama administration officials, Ukrainian officials, and the alleged whistleblower, which addressed Hunter Biden's position on the board of Burisma Holdings.

Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic frontrunner, accepted challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders’ apology late Monday over a blistering op-ed written by an unofficial campaign surrogate who blasted the former vice president as a weak candidate with a serious corruption problem. Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham Law professor, wrote the column for the Guardian that could be used as a roadmap for President Trump's re-election team in the general election. She described a candidate happy to be called "Middle-Class Joe," but whose political career is a bit murkier. She wrote he has a long history of supporting "finance over working-class Americans." Teachout, who...

The House impeachment hearings ended a month ago, but congressional Democrats aren’t done inviting bureaucrats to share their negative opinions of President Donald Trump. Now it’s the turn of the Government Accountability Office. Traditionally GAO does its best to serve its congressional bosses. This is not a swipe at these particular swamp dwellers. Yes, the current head of GAO was nominated by President Barack Obama after a congressional commission presented a list of candidates. But the Supreme Court has explicitly found that GAO is subservient to the legislative branch. The 1986 decision is called Bowsher v. Synar. GAO staff try...

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has stunned court-watchers by selecting David Kris -- a former Obama administration lawyer who has appeared on "The Rachel Maddow Show" and written extensively in support of the FBI's surveillance practices on the left-wing blog Lawfare -- to oversee the FBI's implementation of reforms in the wake of a damning Department of Justice Inspector general report last year. The development on Friday, first reported by independent journalist Mike Cernovich, has roiled Republicans who have demanded accountability at the FBI. House Intelligence Commitee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told The Daily Caller that Kris' appointment...

(snips) In the second half of Devin Nunes interview with Maria Bartiromo today he was asked his thoughts about the FISA Court selecting David Kris as an FBI surveillance and compliance monitor. The issue is quite important because the FBI FISA reforms and promises are essentially meaningless without some form of structural review process. However, the new 2020 FISC Presiding Judge James Boasberg selecting David Kris has been noted by several people as a rather weak effort on behalf of the court. As an outcome of our former FISA-702 reviews CTH has an entirely different reason for questioning the selection...

Was President Donald Trump’s short term campaign foreign policy volunteer Carter Page set up by an FBI informant or the informant’s handler at the FBI? On the The Sara Carter Show, Page discussed the recent revelations in Department of Justice’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report and his interview in The Federalist where questions surfaced regarding his first meeting with Stefan Halper, one of the FBI’s spies in the Trump campaign. Questions Linger Questions still loom regarding Halper’s and his FBI handler. It appears that Horowitz’s report raises more answers than questions, said Page, who was not given the opportunity to...

Spy Court Picks FISA Abuse Denier To Tackle FISA Abuse The appointment of a former official who served as an apologist for the FBI signals that the court isn't particularly concerned about the civil liberty violations catalogued by Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Mollie HemingwayBy Mollie Hemingway JANUARY 12, 2020 The nation’s top spy court appointed an Obama-era Justice Department official who has denied and downplayed FBI surveillance abuse to assess the FBI’s response to a scathing new report cataloguing problems with how the agency secured authority to spy on a Donald Trump campaign affiliate.

A private investigator who worked on Casey Anthony's murder case claims he has obtained Hunter Biden's bank account records and submitted them to court as part of Biden's paternity case with his Arkansas baby mama. Dominic Casey filed papers to Independence County on Friday, claiming he had provided Lunden Roberts with 'electronic access' to Biden's bank account records which are 'subject of known felonies including fraud and counterfeiting.'

President Donald Trump was elected on the pledge that he would “drain the swamp.” The swamp, as has been painfully obvious since day 1, has been fighting back. But not all of the swamp that thrives in Washington, DC, is in the intelligence community or actively working against the president. Much of it is institutional, bureaucratic, and more interested in scamming taxpayers out of as much money as possible. This part of the swamp, likely the largest part, operates under the radar, in offices with titles you’ve never heard of, overseen by the staffs of deputy assistant under secretaries of...

Moving federal agencies to the heartland would get struggling states hooked on big government

Must be nice to ‘run’ an investigation in such a way where you can try and remove a sitting president while protecting your own backside. Adam Schiff has definitely been very ‘careful’ about what he does and does not release to the public, and while we all know there has to be some very specific reason why … it’s hard to say for sure. Until now. Paul Sperry sent this tweet about Schiff withholding the transcript of ICIG Michael Atkinson from October 4 behind closed doors which lasted for eight hours. EIGHT HOURS. Gosh, that seems like a rather large...

by Mark Finkelstein January 3, 2006 - 07:58 Katie Couric's just-completed interview with NY Times Reporter James Risen, who broke the NSA surveillance story and is now publishing his book on the matter, 'State of War,' offered a treasure-trove of insights into the matter. And give Katie a gentlelady's 'C' for her questioning. Couric earned the bulk of her credit by posing this seminal line of questioning: "Did [the leakers] have any sympathy or understanding about this new climate this country finds itself in and the criticism the Bush administration took prior to 9/11 for not putting the pieces together...

It was evident several weeks ago that U.S. chargé d’affaires to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, is one of the current participants in the coup effort. It was Taylor who engaged in carefully planned text messages with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland to set-up a narrative helpful to Adam Schiff’s political coup effort. Bill Taylor was formerly U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (’06-’09) and later helped the Obama administration to design the laundry operation providing taxpayer financing to Ukraine in exchange for back-channel payments to U.S. politicians and their families. Today Rudy Giuliani has released a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham outlining how Bill...

President Donald Trump employs several of his family members to work within his White House administration and help him run his business. His daughter Ivanka Trump serves as an advisor, and her husband, Jared Kushner, serves as assistant to the president and senior advisor. Trump’s older sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are executive vice presidents of The Trump Organization. The Trump administration also employs the son of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney. The White House pays him nearly six figures to serve as a sports liaison.

BALTIMORE — An 11-count federal indictment against former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was made public Wednesday morning. Pugh, 69, is federally charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, seven counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and two counts of tax evasion. Pugh was charged on Nov. 14 and the charges were made public Wednesday.