Free Republic

As the media laments being totally wrong about the COVID lab leak theory, more details are coming out about the Chinese defector who has been taken into US custody. The man alleges that he has knowledge about a slew of chinse bioweapons programs and COVID. He alleges that the current pandemic was caused by a lab leak, and that bats were the real cover-up story. The defector alleges that while the lab leak was an accident, it was allowed to spread. Our friends at RedState wrote about this first, but Jen Van Laar has a new development. The identity of...

Most police departments—including Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police—are required to release an officer’s name within days of a fatal shooting. Not the U.S. Capitol Police, which is controlled by Congress and answers only to Congress. It can keep the public in the dark about the identity and investigation of an officer involved in a shooting indefinitely. Which is what happened with the Jan. 6 shooting of Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed protester in the U.S. Capitol riot who was fatally wounded by a plainclothes police lieutenant as she attempted to breach a set of doors inside the building. For the past six...

WASHINGTON/PORT-AU-PRINCE - “I am not a dictator,” Haitian President Jovenel Moise said during a national address Sunday, hours after announcing that the police had foiled a coup attempt and made more than 20 arrests. Haitians woke Sunday to gunfire in areas near the national palace, and a high police presence was seen by VOA Creole reporters on the scene. At midday, the president surprised the nation by going live on Facebook from the international airport in Port-au-Prince to announce a foiled coup attempt and the arrests. The prime minister would give more details, the president said, before heading to the...

The FBI has asked USA Today for the IP addresses and phone numbers of everyone who read one of its articles during a 35-minute period in February as part of an ongoing child porn probe, in what the publisher is calling a violation of the First Amendment. On February 2, FBI agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger were killed and three others were wounded when 55-year-old David Huber started shooting as they approached his apartment in Fort Lauderdale shortly after 6am. USA Today was among the many news outfits that covered the story on February 2. It published the story...

VIENNA - The United Nations’ atomic watchdog hasn’t been able to access data important to monitoring Iran’s nuclear program since late February when the Islamic Republic started restricting international inspections of its facilities, the agency said Monday. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in a confidential document distributed to member countries and seen by The Associated Press that it has “not had access to the data from its online enrichment monitors and electronic seals, or had access to the measurement recordings registered by its installed measurement devices” since Feb. 23. While the IAEA and Iran earlier acknowledged the restrictions limited...

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said there is "no reason" a coup could not happen in the United States.During a right-wing conference in Dallas called the "For God & Country Patriot Roundup" over the weekend, the former White House national security adviser was asked by someone in the audience, who identified as a " simple Marine": "Why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?"After cheers erupted in the crowd, Flynn replied, "No reason. I mean, it should happen here."The military seized control of Myanmar in February, ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and effectively putting commander in...

Congress notified that CIA inspector general has received allegations from fund-raiser Imaad Zuberi, including targeting of U.S. lawmakers and misuse of news organization for spy operation. Imaad Zuberi, a major Democratic fundraiser facing 12 years in prison, has filed an extraordinary complaint with the CIA's chief watchdog alleging he witnessed "flagrant problems, abuses, violations of law" while working as an asset for U.S. intelligence, according to documents and interviews. Zuberi, of Los Angeles, recently hired the CIA's retired acting general counsel Robert J. Eatinger Jr. to review his case and help to appeal his conviction on a plea deal with...

Data was withheld from World Health Organization investigators who travelled to China to research the origins of the coronavirus epidemic, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Tuesday (Mar 30). The United States, the European Union and other Western countries immediately called for China to give "full access" to independent experts to all data about the original outbreak in late 2019. In its final report, written jointly with Chinese scientists, a WHO-led team that spent four weeks in and around Wuhan in January and February said the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal, and...

The agency's San Antonio branch said right-wing extremists sought to join law enforcement and the military in an effort to 'further' their ideologies. The February 25 report says white supremacists would 'likely seek affiliation with military and law enforcement entities in furtherance of' their ideas. That said they seek to recruit service members into their ranks and, in some cases, join the military to acquire combat experience. FBI Director Christopher Wray has labeled the Capitol riot 'domestic terrorism.

U.S. Capitol Police officials said Wednesday they have "obtained intelligence that shows a possible plot to breach the Capitol by an identified militia group on Thursday, March 4" -- the date that far-right conspiracy theorists believe former President Donald Trump will return to power. The intelligence, which an FBI bulletin said could involve the "Three Percenters" group, which prosecutors call extremist, is being taken "seriously," the Capitol Police officials said in a statement posted on Twitter. "Our Department is working with our local, state, and federal partners to stop any threats to the Capitol. We are taking the intelligence seriously....

*snip* [just updated info included below. See link below for full article] As The War Zone points out, New Mexico is indeed home to White Sands Missile Range, the sprawling stretch of desert where the U.S. military has long tested everything from nuclear weapons to V-2 rockets. The site is actually the birthplace of America’s space program, and today is home not just to a space capsule landing field, but the latest in weapons tech, too, from lasers to electromagnetic railguns. But White Sands is approximately 400 miles away from the site of Sunday encounter’s west of Clayton, New Mexico,...

People have tried to sneak onto Air National Guard (ANG) bases 13 different times so far since the start of 2021. ANG Director Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh told Air Force Magazine that, as of Friday, Feb. 19, the service has seen 13 attempted or successful infiltrations of their bases. Loh did not disclose the locations where the security breaches occurred, due to security concerns. Loh said nine of the incidents have occurred at “installation-control points” at the bases. “Most of them come in, they don’t realize that they’re coming on a base, that they’re supposed to stop, and they...

Catholic League president Bill Donohue explains why the Equality Act is flawed: According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Equality Act is “about ending discrimination”; President Joe Biden agrees. That may be its intent, but its effect is to promote the most comprehensive assault on Christianity ever written into law. This explains why the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been fighting this proposed law for years. Most recently it said the Equality Act “would discriminate against people of faith.” The Catholic League and many other civil rights and religious organizations have also sounded the alarm. The Equality Act...

Several armed bystanders successfully stopped a shooting spree that left three dead, including the suspect, in a New Orleans suburb. The shooting happened at the Jefferson Gun Outlet in the suburb of Metairie, Louisiana, around 2:50 p.m., according to a release from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office. Sheriff Joseph Lopinto told reporters that a person went into the gun store and shooting range and fatally shot two people on Saturday. Several individuals engaged with the shooter inside the gun shop and in a parking lot outside.

WASHINGTON — House managers wrapped up their case in former President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial Thursday, arguing that he controlled the mob that wreaked deadly havoc on the U.S. Capitol and that he could incite further violence if he is not convicted. The impeachment managers, who act as prosecutors in the Senate, spent the third day of the proceedings trying to prove Trump's responsibility for the graphic and emotionally jarring scenes they had presented as evidence the day before — video of rioters roaming the halls in search of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Vice President Mike Pence,...

Megan McCain, co-host of The View and daughter of the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), said her father “despised” Lincoln Project cofounders Steve Schmidt and John Weaver. McCain shared her remarks via Twitter, hours after Schmidt resigned from his seat on the Lincoln Project’s board of directors. “I’ve been very hesitant to comment but since my deceased father keeps getting invoked I will say this: John Weaver and Steve Schmidt were so despised by my Dad he made it a point to ban them from his funeral,” McCain tweeted. “Since 2008, no McCain would have spit on them if they...

The group ‘Honest Elections Project’ reported that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced that she intends to remove almost 200,000 names from the registered voter list. One America’s Jack Posobiec has more.

Chief Justice John Roberts will not preside over Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. If was previously reported that Roberts was eager to avoid presiding over the sham impeachment of Trump because he doesn’t want to become a political lightning rod. Senate President Pro Tempore, Pat Leahy (VT) will preside over the sham trial instead. The Hill reported: A Senate source said Leahy, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is expected to preside at the trial. A spokesman for Leahy said the decision on presiding over the trial is up to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to present a proposal to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to delay the start of the impeachment trial of former President Trump until February, multiple sources familiar with the plan tell CBS News.

COVID is over on Feb. 8 The end of social distancing, and the secondary knock-on effect of exposing masking as an unenforceable charade, is approximately 40 days away. How apropos that we must wander in the desert of dystopia 40 more days, but here it is. What is the most precise way of determining when social distancing will end? The return of full-sale concert arena events. Note that this also portends the end of masking, as there is zero chance concert security is going to bust a fully-sold arena for mask violations. And the first one is a shocker. Michael...