Free Republic

It was the escalator ride that would change history. Four years ago on Sunday, Donald Trump descended through the pink marble and brass atrium of Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president , the first step on a journey few believed would take him all the way to the White House. It turns out the 2015 event might not have happened, at least not on June 16. And the over-the-top staging that featured a crowd including paid actors could have been even more theatrical if one early idea hadn't been scrapped. (Trump nixed suggestions to feature a live elephant....

... In a general election matchup, Clinton...leads other top Republicans - 50 to 32 percent over Trump.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post, our hometown newspaper here in the nation's capital, published an op-ed by former FBI Director Jim Comey. In the piece, Comey explains that whatever surveillance the Obama Justice Department conducted on the 2016 Trump campaign was entirely justified and within bounds -- nothing weird about it at all. Yes, American citizens were monitored electronically without their knowledge, but it wasn't spying. Of course, it wasn't "spying." It was "investigating." It was done for your own good. And if you don't like it, you're unpatriotic and possibly, mentally ill. That's Comey's position. What the op-ed did...

New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet spoke candidly last weekend about how the media "did not quite understand the Trump phenomenon" during the 2016 election. In an interview conducted by the International News Media Association, Baquet was asked about a letter to readers that he and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. wrote days after the historic election of Donald Trump. "After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters? What forces and strains in America drove this divisive election and...

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said on Wednesday he is certain that someone on foreign soil was "running operations" against the Trump campaign. The House Intelligence Committee ranking member was invited onto Fox News to discuss a letter he sent to President Trump with a list of questions to ask British Prime Minister Theresa May about the Steele dossier when he visits the United Kingdom next month. Host Sean Hannity asked Nunes about the possibility that members of the U.S. intelligence community in the Obama administration "outsourced what would be illegal intelligence gathering" to allies such as the United Kingdom.

President Trump was “thrilled” that his campaign acquired Northern Virginia office space at “bargain basement” rates, a campaign official told the Washington Examiner in an interview in the plush 14th floor offices overlooking the Potomac River from Arlington, Va. But campaign finance specialists say the "steal" could violate election law, which views below-market rates for rent as an illegal in-kind campaign donation. The deal was presented as a story of real estate prowess that was a fitting reflection of the man who authored The Art of the Deal. Campaign manager Brad Parscale took advantage of a long-term lease inked in...

In his first pair of interviews since being sworn in, Attorney General Barr told Fox News and WSJ that he was pursuing the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe – an investigation he has tasked John Durham, the US Attorney from Connecticut, with leading – because Americans need to know whether the government “put a thumb on the scale” to try and undermine President Trump both during the campaign and during the first two years of his term, just like “we need to ensure that foreign actors don’t influence the outcome of our elections.” Separately, he told WSJ...

My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!

At a contentious hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General William Barr dropped a big hint about his investigation into the conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation. "Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant and a FISA warrant," Barr said. "I would like to find out whether that is in fact true. It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort designed to stop the threat as it is being represented." Here is what he meant. There has been a lot of discussion on the...

The admissions within the New York Times story today -outlining how President Obama’s intelligence apparatus ran simultaneous intelligence operations against the Trump campaign- are starting to merge the FBI and CIA operations. CTH anticipated this. With new information about the “U.K. operation” using Stefan Halper (CIA asset and FBI informant); and the details of the contacts by U.S. intelligence operative Azra Turk; we can overlay the timeline and see a clear picture.

The former president went from being confident that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump to seeing it as a 'personal insult' that she lost. Obama could not believe the American people had 'turned on him' for a man he had written off as a 'cartoon'. As the dust settled Obama told his family that 'this hurts' and blamed Clinton who 'brought many of her troubles on herself' and ran a 'scripted, soulless campaign'. The eye-popping details are in the new edition of 'Obama: The Call Of History' by New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker.

The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia? The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry

Attorney General Bill Barr sparred with Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Wednesday over the AG’s use of the word “spying” to describe the actions the FBI took against the Trump campaign.Barr alleged during his testimony to the House Appropriations Committee in April that “spying did occur” against the Trump campaign as the FBI investigated alleged ties to Russia.Whitehouse grilled Barr about his use of the term “spying” in relation to those efforts, suggesting that the term was not accurate because the activities of the DOJ were “authorized.” “I’m not going to abjure the use of the word ‘spying,'” Barr said....

Shortened title. Full title: President Trump Tweets McCarthy Article: “There is no doubt that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign” President Trump draws attention today to an article written by Andrew McCarthy. NY Post […] “As night follows day, we were treated to the same Beltway hysteria we got this week: Silly semantic carping over the word “spying” — which, regardless of whether a judge authorizes it, is merely the covert gathering of intelligence about a suspected wrongdoer, organization or foreign power. There is no doubt that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign. As Barr made...

Former Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski and Trump Adviser David Bossie joined Lou Dobbs on Wednesday to discuss the recent remarks by Attorney General Bill Barr that the Trump administration was spied on. On Wednesday Attorney General Bill Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Obama administration was spying on the Trump Campaign in 2016. Democrat Senator Shaheen almost fell off her chair. BOOM! Corey Lewandowski: Trump Knows Barack Obama Authorized Spying. “He Knew About This. He Authorized It.” (VIDEO) Jim Hoft by Jim Hoft April 10, 2019 225 Comments 611Share 224Tweet Email Former Trump Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski...

[Big Snip] Democrats push back on Barr's allegation of "spying" Some Democrats criticized Barr's assertion that there was "spying" on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. "Mr. Barr knows how counter-intel investigations work. He knows there was ample evidence of Russian attempts to infiltrate the Trump campaign and that the FBI took lawful action to stop it. Giving a wink and a nod to this long-debunked "spying" conspiracy theory is irresponsible," Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Mark Warner wrote on Twitter. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said that Barr's words were motivated by political bias. "This type of...

President Trump said in an interview Thursday that he wasn’t surprised Barbara Bush is quoted dissing him in a new book — because he campaigned so harshly against the former first lady’s children. “I have heard that she was nasty to me, but she should be,” he told the Washington Times in an interview. “Look what I did to her sons,” he added. Trump was responding to a question about a new biography of Barbara Bush, published after she died, that reveals the former first lady was extremely critical of him going back to the 1990s. The biography, “The Matriarch:...

(VIDEO AT SOURCE) On Saturday, one-time Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina talked about what it was like running against now-president Donald Trump during the last presidential primary. “You memorably had some unpleasant exchanges with then-candidate Donald Trump,” CNN’s S.E. Cupp asked Fiorina who was there to talk about her new book. “You know he can be nasty. He can be tough. What’s your advice to any of the Democratic candidates — men and women — when it comes to running against him?” “Let me just say in fairness — and yes I did face nastiness from Donald Trump — but...

Donald J. Trump was burning through cash. It was early 2016, and he was lending tens of millions of dollars to his presidential campaign and had been spending large sums to expand the Trump Organization’s roster of high-end properties. To finance his business’s growth, Mr. Trump turned to a longtime ally, Deutsche Bank, one of the few banks still willing to lend money to the man who has called himself “The King of Debt.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has expressed interest in the Trump campaign's relationship with the National Rifle Association during the 2016 campaign. "When I was interviewed by the special counsel's office, I was asked about the Trump campaign and our dealings with the NRA," Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide, told CNN. The special counsel's team was curious to learn more about how Donald Trump and his operatives first formed a relationship with the NRA and how Trump wound up speaking at the group's annual meeting in 2015, just months before announcing his presidential bid, Nunberg said. Nunberg's interview...