Free Republic

James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released audio Wednesday of a purported conference call in October in which CNN president Jeff Zucker appears to tell editors to spike the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop. On October 14, the New York Post published emails found on a laptop apparently belonging to Hunter Biden, suggesting that his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, had met in 2015 with one of Hunter’s business associates from the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. That directly contradicted Joe Biden’s claims on the campaign trail never to have done so: “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or...

<p>"There's some cross-information about what happened and where," an intelligence official with expertise in cyber operations told Just the News. "Verified reports about one incident probably got conflated with speculation about another."</p><p>The "verified reports" involve a July raid on a German server that hosted sensitive, hacked files from U.S. law enforcement agencies, authorities said. The files reportedly were accessed over the summer, in the course of a Houston data breach.</p>

A Jewish American man jailed in 1985 for spying for Israel was released from strict parole conditions Friday, allowing his move to Israel, the US Justice Department said. Jonathan Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst, served 30 years for giving classified US documents and had been confined by parole terms to the United States since his release in 2015, despite Israeli pressure to allow him to leave. US officials said Pollard, over a series of months and for a salary, provided 1,500 intelligence summaries and 800 classified documents to Israel in the mid-80s.

Earlier this week, the bitcoin community was shocked when a digital wallet containing roughly $1 billion in bitcoin...was emptied by an unknown individual. The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it had seized the wallet’s contents as part of a civil forfeiture case targeting the Silk Road. The government said it retrieved the roughly 70,000 bitcoins with the help of an unnamed hacker, whose identity is known to the government but who is simply referred to as “Individual X” in court documents. “Individual X” allegedly hacked the Silk Road’s payments system some time in 2012 or 2013. The government...

Robert Levinson, a former FBI special agent who disappeared while traveling on Iran’s Kush Island in 2007, has “died while in Iranian custody,” his family announced Wednesday. ---SNIP--- “Those who are responsible for what happened to Bob Levinson, including those in the U.S. government who for many years repeatedly left him behind, will ultimately receive justice for what they have done,” the announcement said. That’s a reference to President Barack Obama’s administration, which did not secure Levinson’s release despite years of negotiating with Tehran in the lead-up to the implementation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Everyone remembers when Joe Biden bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired… but now thanks to Hunter’s emails, we know that the Obama White House hosted a call that concerned the 2015 trip. Although social media is doing its best to suppress evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption and criminal activity while in office, new emails show that the Obama White House was also involved. The former administration hosted a call with a democratic public relations company, Burisma, and others, and the conversation concerned Joe Biden’s upcoming trip to the country… the same trip where he later boasted about his extortion...

On Thursday, in his continued effort to get his case dismissed, Michael Flynn filed a third brief supporting the original dismissal claim. This made waves because it included texts between FBI analysts in which they admitted that they knew the investigation against Michael Flynn was unfounded and driven by partisan animus. The text messages might have revealed more than that: One texter confessed that those involved bought professional liability insurance after becoming afraid that news might leak about their conduct. They might have committed insurance fraud if they didn’t let the insurance companies know they had already committed wrongful acts....

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday signaled his intention to establish a Russian military air base in neighboring Belarus—a move sure to unnerve Poland and the Baltic nations. Belarus has made clear it would not welcome a Russian base, but the former Soviet republic remains dependent on Moscow for credit and energy. […] Belarus is a desirable location for Russia because it borders Ukraine and three members of the European Union and NATO: Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. …

Dr. Fiona Hill told the impeachment inquiry Thursday that she was concerned that a hold on aid might endanger Ukraine’s security. But in a 2015 Washington Post op-ed, Hill argued against giving Ukraine any lethal weapons. Hill was testifying in the seventh public hearing in the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry. As she had in her closed-door deposition last month, Hill said she was concerned about Ukraine’s security and stability as it defended itself against Russia. In that context, she — and others — were worried about a hold on security.But Hill also had to admit that she co-authored an op-ed in 2015, when...

...The Rhosus left for its last journey from Batumi, Georgia, in September 2013. Its cargo was destined for Mozambique, but the captain was ordered to make an unscheduled stop in Beirut to take on additional freight. Captain Prokoshev said they needed to make extra cash to pay for their passage through the Suez Canal. Lawyers for the ship’s creditors said the additional cargo was supposed to be transported to Jordan. ...The Rhosus was left abandoned, and Lebanese authorities transferred its cargo to a warehouse in the port. In 2015, the ship was moved 1,000 feet up the pier where it...

Back in 2015, President Trump condemned his ex-pal Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island as a “cesspool” — and he invited reporters to grill Prince Andrew about the place, according to newly resurfaced footage. “That island was an absolute cesspool, there’s no question about it,” Trump told reporters, according to a clip posted by the Sun newspaper. Just ask Prince Andrew,” Trump dished, flashing a slightly mischievous smile before adding, “He’ll tell you about it. The island was an absolute cesspool.” Trump linked the Duke of York to Epstein’s so-called “Pedophile Island” while talking to reporters about President Clinton’s own links...

Voters in Parma, Missouri voted in their first African-American female mayor. Tyus Byrd will be sworn in as mayor on Tuesday evening, April 14, at the Parma Community Building. According to Mayor Randall Ramsey, five out of six police officers resigned this week, effectively immediately. Mayor Ramsey said the clerk and the waste water treatment plant supervisor also turned in resignation letters citing “safety concerns.” …

It has become apparent that many in the media, and the progressive socialists in the Democrat Party have kneeled at the altar of Black Lives Matter. Corporations throughout the country have thrown money by the boatload to BLM. Sadly, corporations feel they must virtue signal what many of them don't believe, debasing any reasonable discussion about the steps that need to be taken to move forward. An organization such as BLM has occupied the streets and targeted police forces who have accused white law enforcement of killing blacks on a random basis, challenging the social culture of our country. These...

China refuses to take back thousands of Chinese citizens stranded in the U.S. illegally, many of whom have committed violent crimes, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday. As many as tens of thousands of Chinese nationals are currently stuck in the U.S. because China refuses to repatriate them. In 2015, U.S. immigration authorities estimated that 38,000 Chinese citizens were awaiting deportation, 900 people among them classified as violent offenders. While many of the people awaiting deportation to China have committed serious crimes, others are guilty of lesser infractions, such as overstaying their visas or breaking traffic laws, according...

Obama likes Suleimani, and admires his work. As the president reportedly told a group of Arab officials in May, the Arabs “need to learn from Iran’s example.”

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said in a newly surfaced video from 2015 that she and her fellow organizers are “trained Marxists” – making clear their movement’s ideological foundation, according to a report. Cullors, 36, was the protégé of Eric Mann, former agitator of the Weather Underground domestic terror organization, and spent years absorbing the Marxist-Leninist ideology that shaped her worldview, Breitbart News reported. “The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers,” she said, referring to BLM co-founder Alicia Garza. “We are trained Marxists. We...

(Snip) Klein says she "spent six years wandering through the wreckage caused by the carbon in the air and the economic system that put it there." Clearly, it is her goal to shatter the free-market system. The climate? It's just a vehicle, a pretext for uprooting the only economic system in history that has brought prosperity and good health. Klein's statement is perfectly in line with Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of United Nation's Framework Convention on Climate Change, and in fact is almost an echo. Figueres acknowledged earlier this year that the environmental activists' goal is not to spare the...

The Radical Left is exploiting the legitimate outrage of many Americans over the brutal killing of George Floyd on May 25th by Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who has been charged with murder. George Floyd’s murder was shocking enough to millions of Americans to become the spark leftist revolutionaries were looking for to mobilize the masses. As Trevor Loudon, who has researched the radical left for more than 30 years, wrote on June 10th: The killing of George Floyd was a gift to the communists. It was so egregious and so public that it was bound to provoke outrage. The...

excerpt: "Cities are vital partners in international efforts to build social cohesion and resilience to violent extremism. Local communities and authorities are the most credible and persuasive voices to challenge violent extremism in all of its forms and manifestations in their local contexts. While many cities and local authorities are developing innovative responses to address this challenge, no systematic efforts are in place to share experiences, pool resources and build a community of cities to inspire local action on a global scale. “The Strong Cities Network will serve as a vital tool to strengthen capacity-building and improve collaboration,” said Attorney...

Obama Used National Security to Spy on Americans Opposed to Islamic Terrorists Obamagate redefined opposition to Islamic terrorism as a national security threat. Mon Jun 8, 2020 Daniel Greenfield 55 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. We know when Obamagate ended, but we don’t know when the policy of spying on Americans began. The tangled roots of the domestic surveillance of political opponents by the NSA predate the alarmism about Russia. Tracing them back into the fetid swamp takes us not toward...