Free Republic

When Obama administration officials manufactured U.S. intelligence tying Donald Trump to Moscow following his stunning 2016 victory, they had no idea Trump’s own political appointees would help them undermine Trump’s presidency – and his chances of reelection in 2020. RCI’s review of recently declassified documents and exclusive interviews with former Trump officials reveals for the first time how key members of Trump’s cabinet and other appointees during his first term shrouded the previous administration’s machinations and either deliberately or inadvertently misled the public into thinking the fake Russiagate intelligence was real. Former Special Counsel John Durham, former National Security Adviser...

Comey expected to work for 'President-elect Clinton,' knew top aide was talking to media: emails Emails referenced in a bombshell court filing by acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan in which the government rejected Comey's argument that he was being maliciously prosecuted for providing false statements and obstructing Congress about actions he took as FBI director. Federal prosecutors revealed Monday they have unearthed a trove of personal emails showing then-FBI Director James Comey openly talked in the days before the 2016 election that he expected to be working soon for President-elect Hillary Clinton and was being kept apprised by a top...

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT THE NBC PRESIDENTIAL FORUM WITH MATT LAUER DEMOCRAT HILLARY CLINTON’S BEHIND THE SCENES TIRADE AFTER NBC’s MATT LAUER ASKED CLINTON THE ONE QUESTION SHE HAD NOT PRE-APPROVED VETERAN NBC CAMERAMAN: ‘YOU REALLY HAD TO SEE THIS TO BELIEVE IT...SHE CAME APART – LITERALLY UNGLUED; SHE IS THE MOST FOUL-MOUTHED WOMAN I’VE EVER HEARD...AND THAT VOICE AT SCREECH LEVEL...AWFUL’ ”SHE LOOKED SO ENRAGED THAT WE ALL THOUGHT HER HEAD WOULD EXPLODE...IT WAS A FULL-ON MELT-DOWN AND THEN SHE SCREAMED SHE’D GET THAT F - - - ING LAUER FIRED FOR THIS. IT WENT ON FOR AT LEAST...

Nellie Ohr told lawmakers in October that one of Fusion GPS’s sources was a Ukrainian parliamentarian whose government has accused him of illegally meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. Ohr, a former Fusion GPS contractor, testified that Serhiy Leshchenko was a source for the Democrat-funded opposition research firm. Leshchenko was the leading force behind the release of the so-called “black ledger,” which accused Paul Manafort of receiving illicit payments from the Ukrainian government. The ledger led to Manafort’s firing from the Trump campaign, but its validity remains in dispute. A member of the Ukrainian parliament accused in his home country...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska was convicted Thursday on charges that he lied to federal authorities about an illegal $30,000 contribution to his campaign from a foreign billionaire at a 2016 Los Angeles fundraiser. A federal jury in LA deliberated about two hours before finding the nine-term Republican guilty of one count of falsifying and concealing material facts and two counts of making false statements. Fortenberry was charged after sitting for two interviews with FBI agents who were investigating the donor, Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian billionaire of Lebanese descent. Fortenberry showed no emotion as the...

Government watchdog Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation released new information Wednesday showing a senior State Department official worked with House Majority Leader (Minority Whip at the time) Steny Hoyer in 2016 on Russia documents provided by British spy Christopher Steele. "Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation today released 18 pages of documents revealing former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Special Coordinator for Libya Jonathan Winer coordinating with then-House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer’s (D-MD) national security advisor, Daniel Silverberg to work on Russia dossier materials provided by Christopher Steele," Judicial Watch released. The documents...

The whistleblower reportedly worked for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee for over ten years, and reported Schiff's alleged behavior to the FBI in 2017. According to the report, the intelligence staffer called the leaking "treasonous" and "illegal," in addition to being unethical. He was most recently interviewed by the FBI in 2023.

Former House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes appeared for an interview with Grant Stinchfield and walks through the timeline of the Russiagate hoax. Within the interview, Devin Nunes makes a solid argument that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was due to their belief President Trump had the only copy of the HPSCI report, outside IC control; the outcome of a two-year investigation into how John Brennan and the CIA manipulated the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). It is important to remember that even though Representative Nunes knew the HPSCI investigators were looking at the construct of the...

Senator Chuck Grassley on Thursday released the newly declassified annex from former special counsel John Durham’s report “The Durham annex contains previously classified information exposing a reported Clinton campaign plan to falsely tie President Donald Trump to Russia,” Grassley said. Recall that it was just reported that FBI Director Kash Patel recently found the annex to the Durham report in a “burn bag” at the FBI. According to the newly declassified documents, Hillary Clinton personally approved the Trump-Russia hoax just a few days before FBI counter-intelligence agent Peter Strzok opened Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016 to distract from her...

Declassified Durham Appendix Shows Hillary Clinton PERSONALLY Approved Trump-Russia Hoax and Used FBI to Put “More Oil on the Fire”

‘You need to TRUST ME on this,’ Clapper’s crony told the analyst, saying he ‘would need to demonstrate [his] ability to “outgrow”’ the refusal to sign off on assessments he did not concur with. A crony of then-Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper threatened to withhold a promotion from a senior intelligence official unless he concurred in the fake Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, notes obtained exclusively by The Federalist show. The notes made public for the first time today recount a conversation the top analyst in the Office of the Director of...

The retired CIA spy who says she led the team that helped draft the controversial 2016 U.S. intelligence community assessment on Russian election meddling has called Donald Trump a “dictator” and MAGA supporters “Nazis” — and insists that the now-discredited Steele dossier “might be true.” Susan Miller, a recently-retired CIA counterintelligence officer, has taken to social media and news media interviews in recent days to tell the story of how she was allegedly hand-picked by former CIA Director John Brennan to lead the team which helped draft the ICA in late 2016, gleefully exposing her anti-Trump sentiments. She has repeatedly...

CIA Director John Ratcliffe appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the recent releases from his office and from the office of DNI Tulsi Gabbard. Within the interview Director Ratcliffe references the special counsel John Durham investigation, subsequent 306-page report, and then notes the 48-page classified appendix to the report. According to Ratcliffe he is in the process of declassifying and releasing the 48-page annex. Additionally, there are witness transcripts from Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Clapper and possibly Andrew McCabe that could be released. Remember, James Comey refused to be interviewed by John Durham; however, Andrew McCabe...

A defense contractor and top campaign contributor to House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) is in the running to get a contract to print millions of IDs and other government documents associated with the president’s planned executive amnesty, Breitbart News has learned exclusively. The contractor, General Dynamics, is on the list of “interested vendors” for a draft solicitation that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sent out to vendors in October. If the president goes through with an executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens and General Dynamics gets...

The Steele Dossier wasn’t just dirty politics — it was state-sponsored election interference. For eight years, Americans were told that Donald Trump was a Kremlin asset. That Russia rigged the 2016 election in his favor. That collusion wasn’t just a conspiracy — it was fact. It was all a lie. Thanks to newly declassified documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, we now know who really colluded with Russian disinformation: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They funded it. They laundered it through the FBI and CIA. They embedded it into official intelligence reports. And they used it to...

Newly unsealed records contradict claims made by top Obama officials that the Steele dossier was not incorporated into the 2017 ICA. The information was disclosed Wednesday in a declassified 2020 report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Approved for release by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the unsealed records paint a damning picture of how high-ranking Obama administration officials included unsubstantiated dirt about Trump in its 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Moscow’s shenanigans in the 2016 contest. The information was disclosed Wednesday in a declassified 2020 report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence...

Pro-independence Texans weren’t the only ones energized by the vote by Brexit vote. The California secession movement has been riding a wave of interest since Thursday’s vote by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. The campaign has already gained a Brexit-inspired nickname: Calexit “We have a lot of people sending us messages and a lot of people want to find our online digital version of our independence referendum,” said Louis Marinelli, who heads the Yes California Independence Campaign. “We have a lot of people who have joined our Facebook page, a lot of people who are talking about...

....31-year-old Mackey was arrested in West Palm Beach on one charge of conspiracy against rights and faces up to 10 years in prison. According to the unsealed indictment, Mackey conspired with others on Twitter to encourage black people to cast their votes via text message.... Far-left activist and “comedian” Kristina Wong posted the same fake voting meme on Twitter in 2016 — but she targeted TRUMP SUPPORTERS! Her tweet is still live on Twitter — via Jack Posobiec!...

A federal jury on Friday convicted pro-Trump troll Douglass Mackey of plotting to trick voters out of casting a ballot during the 2016 presidential election. The case, which sought to address if any of the toxic stew of Internet disinformation during the 2016 election rose to the level of a crime, has been closely watched by both anti-extremist groups and right-wing politicians and pundits. Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach, Fla., who gained fame on the Internet as the Twitter user “Ricky Vaughn,” posted two images made to look like fake Hillary Clinton ads telling people they could vote by...