Free Republic

In general, the West should be horrified not by the 76 percent who backed Putin but by the fact that in the Russian elections: patriotic, communist and nationalist ideas were supported by 95 percent of the population, leaving the liberal ideas with a pathetic five percent. And you, my Western friends, are guilty of this. By your hostility and sanctions, you have pushed the Russian people into the arms of the Moscow regime. Had you behaved sensibly and reached compromises, this outcome would not have occurred; but now that it has, the West must assume all responsibility. As a result,...

The office of Russia’s infamous troll factory believed to be at the vanguard of Russia’s information war has been set on fire in St. Petersburg overnight. An investigation revealed last year that the secretive troll factory had rebranded itself as a media conglomerate with 16 news websites generating more than 30 million pageviews every month. Its operational hub, a website called FAN (Federal News Agency), is based a stone’s throw from the troll farm’s original location in northern St. Petersburg. The Fontanka.ru news website cited police as saying that an unknown suspect broke the agency’s ground-floor window and threw a...

Across Hungary, George Soros’s aged face dominates bus stops, pedestrian pathways, and major intersections with the cryptic message, “Don’t let Soros have the last laugh.” Last laugh? A tag line explained the allusion: “99% reject illegal immigration.” The anti-Soros ad campaign conflates the controversial financier’s investments in leftwing political causes, including open borders, with the European Union’s ongoing effort to force Hungary and other EU countries to accept an annual quota of illegal immigrants. To redistribute hundreds of thousands of people who arrived in Italy and Greece in 2015, the EU assigned each member state a compulsory number: 1,294 for...

It’s going to be awkward at FBI headquarters next month when President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the bureau likely takes over. *** Patel has promised to “clean house” at the Hoover Building, and hold all those who “abused their power” during the Russiagate “witch hunt” accountable. He might start with the officials and agents who secretly vacuumed up his phone records and emails starting in late 2017, when he led a House Intelligence Committee investigation into the FBI’s reliance on Hillary Clinton’s false opposition research to surveil a Trump campaign official as a supposed “Russian agent.” According to a...

Julian Assange tried to contact Hillary Clinton and the White House when he realized that unredacted U.S. diplomatic cables given to WikiLeaks were about to be dumped on the internet, his lawyer told his London extradition hearing on Tuesday. Assange is being sought by the United States on 18 counts of hacking U.S. government computers and an espionage offense, having allegedly conspired with Chelsea Manning, then a U.S. soldier known as Bradley Manning, to leak hundreds of thousands of secret documents by WikiLeaks almost a decade ago. On Monday, the lawyer representing the United States told the hearing that Assange,...

In March 2018, Barack Obama’s former Secretary of State, John Kerry was caught secretly meeting with Iranian officials to salvage Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Kerry was working against the Trump administration to salvage Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal that funded terrorism across the Middle East. Obama’s former Secretary of State was seen dining with several Iranian regime officials. The above photo was taken as Kerry left the restaurant in Paris. Around this time, President Trump withdrew from the sham Iranian nuclear deal. President Trump knew the deal with the Iranian mullahs was not working. John Kerry reportedly told the Iranian officials...

Israel has praised the Lockheed Martin F-35 as a “game-changer”. Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) commander Brigadier General Farzad Ismaili, who had been in office since 2010, has been fired by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after he kept secret that Israeli Air Force (IAF) F-35 stealth fighters had violated Iran’s airspace, the Kuwaiti daily Al Jarida reported on Saturday. The newspaper emphasized that it was the original media source that exposed the Israeli raids, which had taken place in March 2018. Al Jarida cited senior Iranian military who said that only following its March report did...

A newly-uncovered trove of documents detailing plans to create a Covid-like virus in China months before the pandemic make the 'lab leak almost certain', experts say. The records - obtained now by FOIA requests - lay out a plan to 'engineer spike proteins' to infect human cells that would then be 'inserted into SARS-Covid backbones' at the infamous Wuhan virology lab from December 2018. Just a year later, in late 2019, the Covid-19 virus emerged with a uniquely adept ability to infect humans, going on to cause a global pandemic. The proposal was made by the now-notorious EcoHealth Alliance, a...

He spoke with the religious fervor of a modern-day Jonathan Edwards, but instead of sinners in the hands of an angry God, we were humans in the hands of an angry universe. Stephen Hawking lost his longtime battle with ALS on March 14, 2018 — what would have been Albert Einstein’s 139th birthday. While Hawking’s scientific achievements led the field of astrophysics forward in a number of important ways, his impact on the general public was much more of a mixed bag.Hawking took us to the limits of space and time. In the 1960s, his doctoral work helped us better...

The mother of the Nashville school shooter who killed six people – including three 9-year-olds – appeared to be a gun control activist who once urged friends on Facebook to sign a petition calling to keep firearms out of schools. “So important!” Norma Hale wrote in a March 8, 2018 Facebook post as she shared the petition that stated “Keep Guns Out of School” that appeared to be from the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation.

The discovery of two batches of classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president could bring renewed attention to an office the president shared with his scandal-plagued son Hunter and a Chinese energy conglomerate linked to Chinese military intelligence. Joe and Hunter Biden were "office mates" with executives from CEFC China Energy in 2017, according to emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop. In an email to the general manager for the K Street office building, Hunter Biden said the office would be shared by his consulting firm Hudson West, CEFC China Energy, and the Biden Foundation, his family charity. "[P]lease...

A presenter on Russian state television has issued an apparent threat to "traitors" living in Britain. Kirill Kleymenov warned of the dangers of spying on Russia and advised those who betrayed their country: "Don't choose Britain as a place to live." The comments, made on Channel One's Vremya news programme on Wednesday evening, came amid speculation over who was behind the attempted murder of a double agent on British soil. "I don't wish death on anyone, but, purely for educational purposes, I have a warning for anyone who dreams of such a career," he reportedly said. "The profession of a...

Military documents state that EcoHealth Alliance approached DARPA in March 2018 seeking funding to conduct gain of function research of bat borne coronaviruses. The proposal, named Project Defuse, was rejected by DARPA over safety concerns and the notion that it violates the gain of function research moratorium. The main report regarding the EcoHealth Alliance proposal leaked on the internet a couple of months ago, it has remained unverified until now. Project Veritas has obtained a separate report to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, written by U.S. Marine Corp Major, Joseph Murphy, a former DARPA Fellow. “The proposal...

U.S. Marine Corps Major Joseph Murphy wrote a letter in August of 2021 with important evidentiary attachments that have now been obtained by Project Veritas. The documents further verify previously released information, according to Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe. Murphy, formerly a fellow with DARPA, has exposed additional “incriminating documents…hidden in a top-secret shared drive” concerning the gain-of-function research on bat-borne coronaviruses and the link between NIH and EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. According to Murphy, the documents were placed in the folder in July 2021. To this day, Fauci denies involvement in gain-of-function research and/or contracts....

This is just too rich. Seriously. From the insufferable Iran deal… to the appeasement “Russian Reset”… to the Libya fiasco… to the rise of ISIS… to installing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt… to the explosion of terrorism in Yemen… to civil war in Syria… to the crisis in Ukraine… to the 2010 State Department apology tour (WikiLeaks cables scandal)… to their inability to stop North Korean nuclear ambitions and the rise of China as an influential power… there were/are zero foreign policy successes in eight years of the Obama administration. There was not a single Obama foreign policy initiative that...

Hours before he was scheduled to retire in 2018, Andrew G. McCabe, then the F.B.I.’s deputy director, was fired by the Justice Department, depriving him of his pension and prompting cheers from President Donald J. Trump, who had been hounding him over his role in the Russia investigation. On Thursday, the department reversed Mr. McCabe’s firing, settling a lawsuit he filed asserting that he was dismissed for political reasons. Under the settlement, Mr. McCabe, 53, will be able to officially retire, receive his pension and other benefits, and get about $200,000 in missed pension payments. In addition, the department agreed...

In 2018 — nearly two years before the start of the global coronavirus pandemic — U.S. officials in China sent warnings to Washington expressing safety concerns over a Wuhan facility's research into coronaviruses in horseshoe bats, adding weight to the theory that the novel virus originated in a lab and not at a Wuhan wet market. The news broke in a report Wednesday by Josh Rogin of the Washington Post, who said that he obtained access to the first of two diplomatic cables sent from State Department officials who had visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in January and March...

The Clinton’s get busted again. It’s a never-ending saga that somehow always seems to out do itself. Special counsel Robert Mueller is getting the cooperation of a Lebanese-American businessman with ties to Arab royalty in his probe of foreign influence on the Trump presidential campaign, including the possibility of a back channel between the Kremlin and the Trump transition team. George Nader testified last week to the Mueller grand jury. Mr. Nader is an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates. According to The Times, Mr. Mueller...

U.S. prosecutors unsealed Tuesday an indictment against four people affiliated with the Panama City law firm Mossack Fonseca, the first such American charges related to the 2016 Panama Papers leak. The charges, filed in the Southern District of New York, include defrauding the United States, wire fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, and making false statements to investigators. An accountant, an investment advisor, and a former client of Mossack Fonseca’s are under arrest while a Mossack Fonseca partner, Ramses Owens, remains on the lam, the Wall Street Journal reports. The American law enforcement action follows a Panama Papers-related raid on Deutsche...

**SNIP** After Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was murdered in 2016, conservative lobbyist Jack Burkman baffled some people when he paid for a private investigation to find the killer. Then in March, Burkman himself became the victim of a mysterious shooting and was hit by an SUV in a parking garage when he was picking up documents from someone he thought was an FBI whistleblower. Using fingerprints, detectives tracked down the suspect and it turned out to be Kevin Doherty, a man who had worked for Burkman on the Seth Rich case.