Free Republic

The resignation of Italy’s prime minister Monday marked the abrupt downfall of the third key European partner of President Obama this year, as the president becomes increasingly powerless to confront a populist wave sweeping both sides of the Atlantic and challenging traditional U.S. alliances.Matteo Renzi’s surrender in Italy came just seven weeks after Mr. Obama toasted the 41-year-old prime minister at a gilded State Dinner at the White House for possessing “the vision and the values that can carry Italy, and Europe, forward.” Mr. Renzi submitted his resignation after Italian voters resoundingly rejected his proposals for political reform in...

Politico’s Glenn Thrush, who was exposed in WikiLeaks emails sending stories to Hillary Clinton staffers before publication, will be joining the New York Times to cover the White House, The Huffington Post reported Monday. “We’re thrilled that Glenn Thrush is joining The Times,” Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times’ Washington bureau chief, told The Huffington Post. “He’s a premier political journalist, a master of breaking news and long-form story telling and a stellar addition to our White House team.” While Bumiller described Thrush as a “premier political journalist,” in one email to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, Thrush chose...

On December 29, 2016, the Obama Administration – with three weeks remaining in its term – issued harsh sanctions against Russia over supposed election interference. Two compounds in the United States were closed and 35 Russian diplomats were ordered to leave the country. Russia responded by calling the actions “Cold War déjà vu.” In the two years that have elapsed since, it has been learned that the “intelligence” that formed the basis for the sanctions was beyond dubious. A single unverified “dossier” compiled by an ex-British spy with no discernable connections to Russia was shopped to FISA judges and the...

The White House is set to name Mike Dubke, the founder of Crossroads Media, as its communications director, sources told Fox News. Dubke was at the White House Thursday. He will replace Jason Miller, who stepped down soon after he was selected in December. Dubke has been involved in local, state and federal politics since 1988, according to his bio on Crossroads Media’s website. “His experience has brought him a unique understanding of the relationship between political strategy and public policy development,” the website read. Miller abruptly announced that he would not take the job– two days after the transition...

Prime minister says it's not up to him to determine who the Aga Khan invites to his residences Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he and former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry talked about the then-incoming Trump administration and the general state of the world when the two of them were on the Aga Khan's private island in late 2016. During an interview this week with The Canadian Press, Trudeau shed a bit more light on his direct interactions with Kerry, who happened to be at the spiritual leader's island in the Bahamas at the same time as the prime...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently told Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo that the Justice Department is investigating the ‘illegal leak’ of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s telephone calls. Breitbart News reports: Asked specifically by Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo if his office was investigating the leak, he responded: “That is a violation of the law, to leak classified documents, and it is being investigated.” Those comments were overshadowed by his remarks that alleged FBI abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were being investigated. Sessions later said it was actually the Justice Department Inspector General investigating that matter, not...

Michael Flynn spoke with Russian Ambassador Kislyak on December 29, 2016. You will remember that the conversation Michael Flynn had with Kislyak was leaked to WaPo last January 12 : According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about “disputes” with the United States. Was...

Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards plans to resign from her position after overseeing more than 3 million unborn babies’ abortion deaths, liberal news outlets reported Wednesday. The abortion chain has not confirmed Richards’ resignation yet; however, two separate, anonymous sources told BuzzFeed about her plans to resign. “Cecile plans to discuss 2018 and the next steps for Planned Parenthood’s future at the upcoming board meeting,” a spokesperson for the abortion chain said Wednesday. The CEO since 2006, Richards drew in huge salary by leading the “non-profit.” During her tenure, Planned Parenthood saw huge drops in patient numbers and actual health...

Investigators in both House and Senate were stunned late Friday when, receiving a batch of newly-released texts between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, they also received notice from the bureau that the FBI "failed to preserve" Strzok-Page messages from December 14, 2016 through May 17, 2017. Given the amount of texting that went on between Strzok and Page, who were having an extramarital affair, that probably meant thousands of missing documents. A number of critical events in the Trump-Russia affair occurred between December 2016 and May 2017, including: Conversations between Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian...

"But, according to the letter, the FBI told the department that its system for retaining text messages sent and received on bureau phones had failed to preserve communications between Strzok and Page over a five-month period between Dec. 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017. May 17 was the date that Mueller was appointed as special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation."

On the eve of the 2016 Presidential election, Issue #464 of Revolution announced in its headline, “In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. . .Rise Up. . .Get Into The Streets. . .Unite With People Everywhere to Build Up Resistance in Every Way You Can. . .Don’t Stop: Don’t Conciliate. . .Don’t Accommodate. . .Don’t Collaborate”.Revolution is an online newspaper published by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a Maoist group descended from splinters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1969, RCP founder Bob Avakian and fellow Maoist H. Bruce Franklin had cofounded the...

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in what started as a probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and any potential collusion with the Trump campaign, is reportedly investigating former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn for an alleged plan to “forcibly remove” a Muslim cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania and send him back to Turkey.

That represents nearly 80 percent of the commutations the president has given since August. Commutations are a form of clemency, which reduces the sentences of federal prisoners. President Obama has given more commutations then the past 11 presidents combined, and The New York Times reports he plans to give more before his final day in office. Many of these cocaine dealers who have received clemency from Obama were not low-level criminals. Darryl Reed was sentenced to 35 years in 1990 and will now be released from federal prison on Dec. 28, 2016. Reed used to be known as the “crack...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida -- More than 26 tons of cocaine worth at least $715 million was brought ashore Thursday in Florida following multiple recent seizures by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Royal Canadian Navy in the eastern Pacific. Coast Guard officers said at a news conference Thursday that the drugs brought to Fort Lauderdale came from 27 separate vessel interdictions and five bale recovery operations off Central and South America over the past three months.

What do you call a system of government that cannot tolerate a transition of power without corrupt machinations by those unwilling to cede control? Banana Republic is a term that comes to mind. The Special Counsel was appointed to determine whether Russia colluded with Trump to steal the election. Michael Flynn was indicted for a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador on December 28, 2016, seven weeks after the election.

It has been revealed that the lead FBI agent supervising the Hillary Clinton email scandal and the alleged Trump-Russia connection has been removed from the Mueller team for sending anti-Trump messages: A top FBI agent at the center of both the Clinton email and Trump-Russia investigations was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team for exchanging derogatory text messages about the president with a colleague. Peter Strzok, a veteran FBI investigator, was shuffled off to the FBI’s human resources department by Mueller after the Justice Department’s inspector general opened an investigation into the texts, The New York Times reported on Saturday. And according...

Moments ago, the special counsel released Michael Flynn’s “Statement of the Offense.” This document lays out Flynn’s crimes in far greater detail than the short “information” released earlier today. It’s important to state this clearly as possible — the statement contains no evidence of collusion with Russia to influence the presidential election. Instead, it amplifies the fact that Flynn apparently lied about contacts that were lawful and appropriate.First, the statement says that the day after President Obama announced sanctions in response to Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election, Flynn called a “senior official of the Presidential Transition Team...

The Security Council looks decidedly stupid and increasingly irrelevant Twelve of the fifteen members of the United Nations Security Council have apparently had a major rethink on the terms of Resolution 2334 which they approved 14-0 on 23 December 2016 with only America abstaining. They were among those who issued the Joint Declaration following the Paris Conference held on 15 January—attended by delegations from 70 countries, the United Nations, the European Commission, the European Union, the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334 was the first prong of outgoing US President Barack Obama’s lame duck campaign against Israel. Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Wednesday was the second. On January 15, stage 3 will commence in Paris. At France’s lame duck President Francois Hollande’s international conference, the foreign ministers of some fifty states are expected to adopt as their own the anti-Israel principles Kerry set forth in his speech. The next day it will be Obama’s turn. Obama can be expected to use the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day to present the Palestinian war to...

The United States could have killed a key United Nations resolution that condemned Israel for its West Bank settlements by voting against it rather than abstaining, former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said Friday night, but he thinks President Barack Obama took the action to "box the incoming Trump administration in." "This was a stab in the back against the Israelis," Bolton told Fox News' "Hannity" show Friday night. "It was entirely predictable. I would say this for people in the pro-Israel community in the United States who defended Obama's Middle East policy over these last eight years: You should have...