Free Republic

Several thousand people rallied on Wednesday in Russia’s fourth-largest city as the showdown between authorities and activists protesting the plans to a build a new cathedral in a local park entered its third day. Thousands gathered in a riverside park in Yekaterinburg Wednesday evening. Some of them were on bicycles, more camped out on the grass while others were walking their dogs. As night fell, protesters turned on the light on their mobile phones and flashlights, chanting “We stand for the park!” Security measures for what has largely been a peaceful protest were heighted on the eve of the rally,...

Yujing Zhang, the Chinese woman arrested at Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump's private Florida club, earlier this year, has been found guilty on counts of unlawfully entering a restricted building and making false statements to a federal officer. Prosecutors called nine witnesses in a trial that lasted two days. Zhang chose to represent herself during the trial with assistance from the Federal Public Defender's office and court-appointed translators. Zhang faces up to six years in prison. She will be sentenced in late November.

Apparently the FBI springs into action over a $5,400 donation that may have come from China only because it concerns Donald Trump. The Democrats are weaving a new scandal as the Russian collusion delusion dies — China — the Dems will push a new narrative about Chinese influence over Trump as he battles them on trade. The FBI subpoenaed records on Tuesday related to a $5,400 donation (the maximum allowed) to Trump’s 2020 campaign from a woman named Bing Bing Peranio, a receptionist at one of Cindy Yang’s massage parlors. The Miami Herald reported that feds are looking into whether...

Failed Prosecutor John Durham’s report on the Hillary Clinton campaign plot to convince the American electorate and U.S. allies that Donald Trump was a stooge of Russia totally ignores the role that intelligence operatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Israel played in helping set the stage to provide the FBI with the pretext of predication for launching its now discredited Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump Campaign. Let me take you back to an article I wrote in May 2019. John Durham and his team failed to address any of the issues and leads I raised:...

Full title: Judicial Watch: AP Reporters Gave DOJ/FBI Ukraine Info and Code to Private Locker of Paul Manafort in Apparent Effort to Push Criminal Prosecution Andrew Weissmann organized off-the-record DOJ/FBI meeting with AP to exchange ‘clarification’ and ‘assistance’ in their investigation for details on former Trump Campaign Director Paul Manafort (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released two productions of heavily redacted FBI documents – 28 pages and 38 pages – about an April 11, 2017, “off-the-record” meeting set up by then-Chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Fraud Section Andrew Weissmann, between the DOJ, the FBI and the Associated Press...

With an increased awareness of how some U.S. politicians appear to be reacting to the COVID-19 challenges; and with a new American perspective toward the way media outlets, some businesses and many politicians appear to be influenced by China; it’s worth revisiting a recent speech by Secretary of State Pompeo that might have been overlooked. Pompeo’s remarks were made to the National Governors Association (NGA) Feb 8, 2020; and there’s an interesting segment where Pompeo reveals his awareness of a list of U.S. governors compiled by China’s communist party; and their alignment with China’s interests. A transcript of the key...

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...

When Attorney General William Barr stated "spying did occur" against the 2016 Trump campaign, most attention was focused on the FBI's surveillance of former junior foreign policy aide Carter Page. But the spying Barr was thinking of, and which he said may or may not have been legally authorized, is more likely to be that carried out by Stefan Halper, a former Republican operative and White House aide who became a foreign policy academic with close ties to both American and British intelligence. One could be forgiven for believing Halper was a creation of the spy novelist John Le Carré....

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge this week as part of a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will allow him to go free after having spent five years in a British prison, according to court documents. Assange was charged by criminal information — which typically signifies a plea deal — with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, the court documents say. A letter from Justice Department official Matthew McKenzie to U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona of the Northern Mariana Islands District said that Assange would appear in court at...

What happens when the face of a country’s anti-corruption movement suddenly is investigated for the sort of bribery he once condemned? Ukraine, a U.S. ally and neighboring foe of Russia, is soon to find out. And it’s a case with implications in the United States, where the fallout from the unproven Trump-Russia collusion scandal has engulfed several Ukrainians. The country’s chief corruption prosecutor on Thursday opened an investigation into “suspicions” that Serhiy Leshchenko, a crusading anti-corruption member of Ukraine’s parliament and former investigative journalist, accepted bribes in 2016 from a Russian source that enabled him to buy a luxury condo...

Iran quadrupled its uranium-enrichment production capacity amid tensions with the U.S. over Tehran's atomic program, nuclear officials said Monday, just after President Donald Trump and Iran's foreign minister traded threats and taunts on Twitter. Iranian officials made a point to stress that the uranium would be enriched only to the 3.67% limit set under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, making it usable for a power plant but far below what's needed for an atomic weapon. But by increasing production, Iran soon will exceed the stockpile limitations set by the accord. Tehran has set a July 7 deadline for...

OCONEE CO., SC (WSPA) - Deputies in Oconee County are asking people to be vigilant after a threat was made against churches in the county. According to the Oconee County Sheriff's Office, a juvenile made a threat to "harm a nonspecific church by the use of a firearm" on social media. Investigators say the social media post was made last week and deputies were made aware on Tuesday. The Oconee County Sheriff's Office, Westminster Police Department, SLED, and the FBI are investigating the threat. Investigators say they believe the threat is for a certain area but no specific people or...

The C.I.A.’s concerns were not unwarranted. In 2019, the Russians undertook an elaborate operation to find Mr. Poteyev, forcing a scientist from Oaxaca, Mexico, to help. The scientist, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, was an unlikely spy. He studied microbiology in Kazan, Russia, and later earned a doctorate in the subject from the University of Giessen in Germany. He was a source of pride for his family, with a history of charitable work and no criminal past. But the Russians used Mr. Fuentes’s partner as leverage. He had two wives: a Russian living in Germany and another in Mexico. In 2019,...

ROME (Reuters) - The new coronavirus was circulating in Italy since September 2019, a study by the National Cancer Institute (INT) of the Italian city of Milan shows, signaling that COVID-19 might have spread beyond China earlier than previously thought.

Vatican spy story takes center stage as fraud trial resumesVATICAN CITY — The Vatican's big fraud and extortion trial resumes Friday after exposing some unseemly realities of how the Holy See operates, with a new spy story taking center stage that is more befitting of a 007 thriller than the inner workings of a papacy.According to written testimony obtained Thursday, one of Pope Francis' top advisers brought in members of the Italian secret service to sweep his office for bugs and commissioned intelligence reports from them, completely bypassing the Vatican's own police force in the process.The reported actions of Archbishop...

Arnav Gupta appears to have grown up in Bethesda, Maryland. An online search of records indicates that he graduated from the Landon School, a private college prep school for boys, in 2004. His picture was also included in a Landon Magazine article from 2013 that highlighted what alumni were up to. Gupta was pictured at Everest Base Camp in Nepal. You can see that page here. After high school, Gupta moved to Boston for college. He studied International Relations and Affairs at Boston University. He appears to have graduated in 2008. Arnav Gupta worked as a personal trainer while he...

A man sets himself on fire Wednesday on the Ellipse in downtown Washington, across from the White House, the Secret Service said. A spokesman for the Washington Fire Department tells CNBC, “I can confirm that we’ve transported one patient with burns from the Ellipse and we’re now on the scene assisting law enforcement,” referring to Park Police and U.S. Secret Service officers. Alina Berzins says she was visiting the National Mall with two of her cousins from Bolivia when “we saw this man” on the Ellipse and “he starts running, and then we saw him covered in flames.”

Link only - https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/dec/20/documents-allege-payments-arkansas-woman-company-u/?news-arkansas

On Feb. 3, long-time Trump associate Felix Sater filed a cross-complaint in a New York federal court. The complaint alleges that Russian and Kazakhstan-connected individuals and entities conducted “a shadow intelligence operation of Sater and Trump for the purpose of manufacturing information to harm Donald Trump politically,” including by providing Christopher Steele a PowerPoint presentation riddled with lies Steele later fed to the FBI. Sater’s cross suit comes nearly three years after the City of Almaty, Kazakhstan, and BTA Bank filed suit against Sater, two of the companies he owned, a former business associate, and that associate’s LLCs, in City...

A criminal IRS investigation into Hunter Biden — President Biden’s son — appears to have convened a grand jury as far back as May 2019, a confidential subpoena served to JPMorgan Chase bank reveals. The subpoena also seeks bank records of James Biden, the president’s brother, which appears to be the first time another Biden family member has surfaced in connection with the investigation. The document, obtained by Breitbart News, specifically demands information on related transactions between JPMorgan Chase Bank, which the document calls “correspondent bank,” and the Bank of China, which the document calls the “originating or beneficiary bank.”...