Free Republic

A former State Department budget analyst has pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $650,000 from the agency over a two-year span, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC. Levita Almuete Ferrer, 64, of Maryland, admitted to abusing her signature authority over a State Department checking account between March 2022 and April 2024 in her capacity as a senior budget analyst in the department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol. She wrote 60 checks to herself and three checks to someone else she had a personal relationship with, prosecutors said. She printed and signed each check before depositing all...

The American branch of Russian state-funded media network Russia Today (RT) is shutting down and laying off most of its staff, CNN reports. According to a memo, RT America will be “ceasing production” due to “unforeseen business interruption events.” “Unfortunately, we anticipate this layoff will be permanent, meaning that this will result in the permanent separation from employment of most T&R employees at all locations,” the memo said, via CNN. Per CNN, Misha Solodovnikov, the general manager of T&R Productions, the production company behind RT, delivered the news in person to hosts, correspondents, producers and others in the Washington, D.C....

On Tuesday morning, “journalist” Daria Kaleniuk confronted British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, demanding NATO enters the war in Ukraine, despite massive public objections to Western nations becoming involved.Kaleniuk, however, is scarcely the “journalist” Western media outlets are portraying. Instead, The National Pulse can reveal, Kaleniuk is a long-time political activist recently used in the Joe Biden 2020 campaign. Additionally, Kaleniuk serves as a World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Young Leader.

Ukraine accused Moscow on Thursday of forcibly relocating hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians from their besieged homes to Russia, where officials believe many will be held as “hostages” to negotiate a surrender from Kyiv. Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s ombudsperson, said 402,000 people – including 84,000 children – have been deported against their will. Russia gave nearly identical figures of those that have been relocated, though claimed that the people wanted to leave. Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev on Thursday said that the roughly 400,000 people evacuated to Russia since the invasion began were from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern...

Neocon and rabid anti-Trumper Bill Kristol has been getting torched on social media for comparing President Joe Biden’s dangerous call for a regime change in Russia to former President Ronald Reagan’s iconic “tear down this wall” speech. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said of Russian leader Vladimir Putin during his speech in Poland. While world leaders criticized the president’s remarks, with French President Emanuel Macron saying it could lead to a breakdown in peace negotiations, Bill Kristol hailed it as a historic moment on par with Reagan. Kristol was joined by several other pro-Biden figures...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought death, destruction and debate over historical analogies. Is this the summer of 1914, with great powers stumbling into a horrific global conflict? Or is it the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939? What about Moscow’s 1939-40 Winter War against Finland? Will Vladimir Putin’s gambit end like the Soviet Union’s 1979-89 misadventure in Afghanistan? Matt Pottinger has been thinking of another conflict. Mr. Putin’s attempted conquest, and his burgeoning partnership with China’s Xi Jinping, reminds Mr. Pottinger of the Korean War. “In 1950, Stalin and Mao and Kim Il Sung badly miscalculated how easy the...

Before March had arrived, we witnessed the early probing of forward Russian troops into Ukraine. Initially, this force consisted of young inexperienced troops and old equipment. *snip* Ukraine begged for experienced Western fighting forces and their sophisticated weaponry to intervene to take on the might of the massive Russian heavily armed force in static formation before the heavy tanks began to roll. But that help was not forthcoming. *snip* Ukraine is, like Israel 1948, 1967, 1974, alone militarily. And if/when we finally act, whatever they receive may be too little too late. It pains me to see the obstinacy of...

For years, world leaders have accused Russia of funding environmental groups in Europe to steer nations away from energy independence and strengthen Russia’s iron grip over the continent. As nations across the globe begin shunning Russian oil in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. leaders are also questioning how deep Russia’s ties go in the environmental community. "The Russians actually fund some of the most rabid environmental groups in Europe because they sic them on the energy projects that aren’t Russian," James Carafano, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign...

Kamala Harris has strong ties to U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves and his activist wife. Which is why a Harris Department of Justice could be more dangerous than Biden's DOJ. Democrats ended their four-day convention on Thursday with a vacuous speech by the party’s installed candidate, Kamala Harris. Her short stint on the main stage made the regime media, which has blessed her with 84 percent positive news coverage since the Pelosi coup according to one analysis, drunk with joy. Harris, like the roster of speakers before her, spent most of the speech demonizing her general...

... Historical data reveals that Routh has been a North Carolina resident for much of his existence before relocating to Kaaawa, Hawaii, around 2018. There, he and his son ran a shed construction enterprise... reports the Express US.... Back in June 2020... he publicly supported Tulsi Gabbards Democratic presidential pursuit.... In July, following the assassination attempt on Trump... Routh called on Biden and Harris to visit those wounded..."Trump will never do anything for them .... show the world what compassion and humanity is all about," read a post on Routh's feed, seemingly addressing Harris. Voter registration records reveal he registered...

The story of Vasquez joining the Ukrainian Army turned out to be fake. In 2022, Newsweek ran a glowing story about an American man who claimed to be a volunteer fighting with the Ukrainian Army. Vasquez claimed in March 2022. that he'd "taken out 7 Russian tanks." Former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger advocated for Vasquez, urging Twitter to verify his account, and posed in pictures with him. Only the story of Vasquez joining the Ukrainian Army turned out to be fake. "Kinzinger’s favorite Ukraine hero just deleted his account after it came out he is a fraud," Jack Posobiec said....

Trump’s would-be assassin has been identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58.@zelensky_official I am an American coming to fight with you in Ukraine; I am flying into Krakow and will take any transport to Kyiv to meet you and fight to the death. We must get every civilian in the world to come and join the fight; I will be the example. Attack moscow now— Ryan Routh (@RyanRouth) March 14, 2022Shots were fired at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach on Sunday afternoon at 1:30 pm as the former president was playing a round of golf with real estate investor...

A hub for rocketry research and development in its early days, the Cape served as a test center not just for spaceflight and research but also for the US missile development programs...and along the eastern coastline, the iconic “missile row” of Atlas and Titan launch complexes dominated the skyline. Many of the Cape’s launch facilities have long since fallen silent, but with newcomers Firefly and Relativity preparing for their first launches from Cape Canaveral, the sight of rockets lifting off along the “row” is about to return. The eight launch pads that made up the core of what is unofficially...

The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty sentence imposed on Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The death sentence had been tossed out earlier by a federal appeals court. “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed heinous crimes,” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion. The Supreme Court on Friday reinstated the death penalty sentence imposed on Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, reversing a lower federal appeals court ruling that had voided that punishment. In its 6-3 ruling, the high court rejected arguments by Tsarnaev’s lawyers that his trial judge erred in barring certain questions to prospective jurors, and in blocking...

A Houston college student sentenced for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 breach at the U.S. Capitol is one of the alleged victims of a FBI agent who was indicted for theft. Alexander Fan was sentenced to 12 months probation for trespassing during a sentencing hearing on Friday. His attorney, Mark Thering, said he pleaded guilty and expressed genuine remorse in a statement to the court. Fan's home was searched after his arrest in June 2023. Court records filed ahead of the hearing state, "the next day, Fan reported to the FBI that some items--including cash and silver bars--had...

I wonder how far all this will go. By “all this”, I mean the headlong push, always in the same direction, always away from the world I recognise. To me it seems as though a pendulum is swinging, has been swinging for years now, but always and only one way – further and further from the point where I stand. I wonder too, how far that pendulum can swing before it must stop and, inevitably swing back the other way, and with a vengeance. Every action, after all, has an equal and opposite reaction. To me there seems no avoiding...

The pastoral center of Christ the King Cathedral in Loikaw, Myanmar, was bombed on Nov. 26 and occupied by the Burmese military the next day, according to reporting by Agenzia Fides, the news arm of Pontifical Mission Societies. Though no one was killed in the bombing, the pastoral center’s ceiling collapsed and Bishop Celso Ba Shwe and the 80 refugees taking shelter in the church were forced to flee, per the Hong Kong Catholic news service UCA News. Shwe said in a statement published by Agenzia Fides that “the Burmese army tried to take the Christ the King Cathedral complex...

A stricken widower is suing the parents of four teenagers who dismembered his 73-year-old wife by viciously dragging her along behind her own SUV during a horrific fatal carjacking. Rickey Frickey launched the lawsuit to hold the parents 'responsible', his attorney said, holding them partly to blame for her March 2022 death in a newly filed suit, seeking at least $50,000 in damages. After the final perpetrator, John Honore, 18, was convicted of murder this week, Linda's grieving husband is suing Honore's parents and those of three others involved. Honore's accomplices, Briniyah Baker, 17, Lenyra Theophile, 16, and Mar'Qel Curtis,...

Authorities were combing New Jersey woods for a man wanted on charges related to the January 6 riot at the Capitol. The search for 46-year-old Gregory Yetman began around 9am on Main Street in Helmetta, as police were trying to serve a warrant. The FBI described him as a white man in his 40s wearing a red jacket and a ball cap. Yetman fled into a wooded area, according to officials, who said he may be armed. Spotswood Public Schools sheltered in place and local streets were closed. Tactical teams could be seen in the backyard of homes. Aerial footage...

Multiple top officials within Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry's office engaged in a discussion about keeping certain budgetary items "off paper," according to recently-released documents. During a March 2022 email exchange — involving Deputy Climate Envoys Sue Biniaz and Rick Duke, former SPEC senior director for climate finance Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, senior adviser Jesse Young and nine other SPEC officials whose names were redacted — aides discussed how they would brief Kerry on the office's proposed budget for fiscal year 2023. The emails, obtained via records request by watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) and shared with...