Free Republic

If what you already know about the FBI’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia has you wondering what can come next, “make sure you are sitting down because it’s about to get worse,” said Patrick Byrne, the philanthropist and CEO of the mega online retail chain Overstock.com. Byrne revealed never published details about his intimate relationship with the Russian gun right’s activist and libertarian, Maria Butina, who is now serving out her sentence after pleading guilty in 2018 to working as a foreign agent in the U.S. without registering. In an interview several weeks ago, Byrne recanted first...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch and The Daily Caller News Foundation today released 84 pages of documents, including a September 2016 email exchange between then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer, a close associate of dossier author Christopher Steele, discussing a “face-to-face” meeting on a “Russian matter.” (In June 2016 Nuland permitted a meeting between Steele and the FBI’s legal attaché in Rome. Nuland told CBS News that the State Department knew about the Steele dossier by July 2016.) According to an op-ed Winer wrote for The Washington Post in 2018, also in September...

Former British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson claimed to have concerns about the safety and security of one of the sources for the dossier, but outed him anyway by talking to journalists. Steele told a State Department official in October 2016 that “source protection” was a focus in his investigation of President Donald Trump, according to notes from the meeting released earlier this month. That purported concern was also shared by Simpson, who hired Steele on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. He told Justice Department official Bruce Ohr on Jan. 20,...

Senior Republican chairmen submitted a letter Thursday to Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr revealing new texts from former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok to his paramour FBI Attorney Lisa Page showing the pair had discussed attempts to recruit sources within the White House to allegedly spy on the Trump administration. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson revealed the information in a three page letter. The texts had been obtained by SaraACarter.com Tuesday and information regarding the possible attempt to recruit White House sources had been divulged by several sources to...

Revelations that an FBI informant insinuated himself into the Trump campaign have led some congressional investigators to rethink their theories on how and why former President Barack Obama's Justice Department began investigating the 2016 Trump presidential effort. Most reporting has focused on the July 31, 2016, creation of a document formally marking the beginning of the FBI counterintelligence probe targeting the Trump campaign. The document, known as the electronic communication, or EC, is said to have focused on the case of George Papadopoulos, the peripheral Trump adviser who has pleaded guilty to lying to special counsel Robert Mueller about his...

In response to media inquiry and FOIA demands, the government of Australia formally admitted today to the role of High Commissioner Alexander Downer and his engagements with George Papadopoulos in 2016. The timing coincides with the Mueller Report (released today), which states it was information about this engagement from Alexander Downer that opened the FBI counterintelligence investigation in July 2016. The Australian government cited the conclusion of the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation as the background for their willingness to comply with an 15-month-old FOIA request from Buzzfeed News.

Special counsel Robert Mueller focused a portion of his final report on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange making false statements about slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich and the theft of emails from Democratic officials. Rich was killed in Washington, D.C., on July 10, 2016, in what police have described as a botched robbery. But Rich's death quickly became the subject of conspiracy theories claiming he was killed in a politically motivated hit job for leaking stolen emails to WikiLeaks. The redacted Mueller report, released Thursday, said WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, "made several public statements apparently...

DEVELOPING: Chelsea Manning, who has been serving a 35-year prison sentence for her role in leaking U.S. government secrets, was being treated in a prison hospital Wednesday after she tried to hang herself, according to media reports. ADVERTISEMENT The transgender soldier, formerly known as Bradley Manning, was convicted in 2013 of espionage and other offenses for sending WikiLeaks more than 700,000 digital files including battlefield logs, diplomatic cables and video clips. Both CNN and TMZ reported that the incident occurred at Fort Leavenworth, an all-male facility in Kansas. Few other details about the reported incident were immediately known. TMZ, citing...

Mohamud is appealing his 2013 conviction on grounds that he was entrapped by undercover federal agents posing as al-Qaida members and the warrantless surveillance of his foreign communications violated his constitutional rights. It marks the first time a federal appeals court is considering whether the National Security Agency’s foreign surveillance programs — the same ones that came under scrutiny after the Edward Snowden leaks a few years ago — violate the Fourth Amendment rights of criminal defendants. Stephen Sady, Mohamud’s public defender, and another attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union urged the court for a new trial on grounds...

DOJ Records Show Numerous Bruce Ohr Communications with Clinton-linked Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele Judicial Watch Sues DOJ for Records on Effort to Rollback Trump Decision to Declassify Russia Probe Documents Obama Holdover Fires Journalists Over Report Critical of Soros DOJ Records Show Numerous Bruce Ohr Communications with Clinton-linked Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele Big news. We just uncovered 339 pages of heavily redacted records from the Justice Department which reveal that former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr remained in regular contact with former British spy and Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele after Steele was terminated by the...

Michael Schmidt, the New York Times “journalist” behind the alleged “Trump-Comey Memo”, told fake news anchor, Brian Williams, that he has NOT seen the memo Comey allegedly wrote. Schmidt stumbled over his words as he commented to Williams, “Someone that had seen [the memo] had recounted details to me.”

Shortened title. Full title: Judicial Watch: Docs Reveal FBI Cover Up of ‘Chart’ of Potential Violations of Law by Hillary Clinton ‘I’ll make sure Andy tells Mike to keep these in his pocket’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 186 pages of records from the Department of Justice that include emails documenting an evident cover up of a chart of potential violations of law by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Judicial Watch obtained the records through a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed respond to a December 4, 2017...

Prosecutors on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating alleged “collusion” between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia knew all along that the anti-Trump “dossier” compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele that fueled their probe was biased and likely phony. Yet instead of investigating those individuals at the FBI and Justice Department who actively participated in the dossier fraud – as he should have done – Mueller hired several of them to investigate Trump. Newly confirmed congressional testimony of former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr shows that he warned both the FBI and the Justice Department that Steele was...

Transcripts of two closed-door testimonies by Lisa Page, the former assistant general counsel at the FBI, have provided new insights into the actions of the FBI, DOJ, and others—including CIA Director John Brennan—regarding their investigation into Donald Trump. Included in the transcripts provided to us is information suggesting Brennan was aware of the so-called Steele dossier in early August 2016, and that he included information regarding the dossier in a briefing given to then-Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Other key points in Page’s testimony before Congress: The FBI appears to have considered investigating President Trump for obstruction of justice both before...

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/289290-jeff-bezos-neil-degrasse-tyson-join-pentagon-innovation-board July 26, 2016 - 02:15 PM EDT Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jeff Bezos join DOD innovation board By Rebecca Kheel Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson were among the big names Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced Tuesday as joining the Pentagon’s recently formed Defense Innovation Advisory Board. “I've given them the very specific task of identifying innovative private sector best practices that could be of use to DOD [the Department of Defense] — not unlike our recent Hack the Pentagon pilot program, which invited hackers to help find vulnerabilities in our networks," Carter said during an...

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming to Washington, DC, on May 16 loaded for bear.  He has an ambitious agenda and apparently feels he can achieve it all because he holds “trump” cards against the President of the United States. Erdogan and his proxies have publicly said they want to convince the United States to jettison its budding alliance with the Syrian Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that has become the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS in Syria. On this point, they will encounter resistance...

James Comey made the surprise revelation in his congressional testimony on Friday that the FBI opened investigations into four Trump associates in late July 2016. It was previously known that four Trump advisers were the focus of the FBI probe, but it was not known that they were targeted at the outset of the investigation. It was previously believed that former Trump aide George Papadopoulos was the catalyst for the investigation, which was dubbed Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI opened counterintelligence investigations into four Trump campaign associates in late July 2016, earlier than previously known, former FBI Director James Comey told...

A whirlwind week in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russian meddling probe is set for a dramatic triple-threaded conclusion Friday, as fired FBI Director James Comey prepares to testify before House Republicans and prosecutors ready pivotal sentencing documents on former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort. With multiple reports and other indications suggesting the long-running Russia probe that began in May 2017 is nearing its conclusion, Mueller faces court-imposed Friday deadlines to explain how Manafort allegedly broke his cooperation agreement with the government, as well as how Cohen should be punished for lying to Congress in 2017...

The Erdogan regime continues to play with fire renewing accusations that the United States spearheaded a complex conspiracy to overthrow the Turkish government. A Turkish prosecutor claims that the CIA and FBI provided training to followers of US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara initially called the “mastermind” of the failed attempt to overthrow the Erdogan regime on July 15 that left hundreds dead and thousands more wounded. An indictment, prepared by the Edirne Public Prosecutor’s office and submitted to the local Second Heavy Penal Court, seeks the harshest possible punishment for 43 suspected coup plotters. In the indictment, the...

Conservative author and commentator Jerome Corsi says special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators accused him of lying under oath only after he "couldn’t give them what they wanted.” Corsi spoke with Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tuesday night, one day after he announced he would reject a plea deal that would have required him to plead guilty to perjury. "I refused to plead to a lie," Corsi told Carlson. Mueller sent Corsi a draft plea agreement earlier this month stipulating that the special counsel would allow Corsi to request a sentence of probation if he agreed to plead guilty to one count...