Free Republic

Forfeiture Action is the Latest Disruption of an Indicted North Korean Official’s Efforts to Generate Revenue for North Korea and its Weapons Program Through Illegal IT Worker Schemes and Cryptocurrency Theft The Department of Justice filed a civil forfeiture complaint today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleging that North Korean information technology (IT) workers obtained illegal employment and amassed millions in cryptocurrency for the benefit of the North Korean government, all as a means of evading U.S. sanctions placed on North Korea. The funds were initially restrained in connection with an April 2023 indictment against...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday gave the Trump administration the green light to revoke special legal protections for thousands of Venezuelan immigrants. The high court granted an emergency application filed by the administration, meaning officials can move forward with reversing a decision made at the tail end of the Biden administration to extend protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans under the federal Temporary Protected Status program. The brief order noted that liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the application. Litigation will now continue in lower courts. As a result of political instability in Venezuela, the Biden...

MRC President Brent Bozell and MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider rebuked the Soros empire for financing groups that have voiced support for the terrorist group Hamas. In an Oct. 12 letter to Open Society Foundations (OSF) founder George Soros and his son — OSF Chairman Alex Soros — Bozell and Schneider called on both George and Alex Soros to disclose all of their pro-Hamas grantees, publicly disavow them and terminate all funding to those groups. “Given that your donations have gone straight into the bloodstream of those who seek to exterminate Jews and push Israel into the...

Under the news radar, two ugly power grabs from a pair of would-be Marxist dictators were announced yesterday from South America. From socialist Venezuela: CARACAS (Reuters) -Maria Corina Machado, one of the favorites to win the Venezuelan opposition's nomination for president in an October primary, has been barred from holding public office for 15 years, the country's controller general said in a letter. Machado, a 55-year-old industrial engineer and former lawmaker, is leading polling for the 13-candidate primary, convened to select a unity candidate to face socialist President Nicolas Maduro in a 2024 election. A previous ban placed on her...

A China Coast Guard ship and an accompanying vessel yesterday rammed a Philippine Coast Guard ship and a military-run supply boat off a contested shoal, Philippine officials said, in an encounter that heightened fears of an armed conflict in the disputed South China Sea. A top Philippine security official said there were no injuries among the Filipino crew and an assessment of the damage to both vessels was under way. The official said that the two incidents near Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙), where China has repeatedly tried to isolate a Philippine marine outpost, could have been worse if...

A veteran FBI agent who blew the whistle on what he saw as political meddling in the bureau’s work was arrested this week by federal authorities while attempting to board an international flight at New York City’s JFK Airport. Jonathan Buma, who had worked for the bureau for 15 years, stands accused of illegally disclosing classified records in his upcoming tell-all book about his career. He drew scrutiny during Trump’s first term for reportedly saying during a presentation that he believed Rudy Giuliani may have been compromised by a Russian counter-influence operation—concerns that were immediately shut down by his superiors....

An FBI agent who accused the bureau of political bias during President Donald Trump's first administration was arrested Monday in New York on charges related to the alleged unauthorized disclosure of confidential information, according to court documents filed Tuesday. Johnathan Buma, a 15-year veteran of the bureau, allegedly shared text messages, internal documents and other sensitive information with associates, including as part of a prospective book he began writing about his career as an FBI agent. Beginning in Oct. 2023, Buma "printed approximately 130 files from the FBI's internal network ... some of which were clearly marked with warnings that...

An expulsion for Palestine is an honor, a sacrifice that pales in comparison to those of the Palestinian people,' Aidan Parisi wrote Thursday... Aidan Parisi, the son of a longtime State Department official who emerged last spring as a Columbia University encampment leader and is best known for owning an "emotional support rabbit," was among the students Columbia expelled for storming Hamilton Hall, he announced Thursday night. Parisi, a graduate student in Columbia’s School of Social Work, wrote on X that he was among the student activists expelled nearly a year after they stormed and occupied Hamilton Hall. Last spring,...

‘We expected Hamas to kill Jews. We didn’t expect Americans to celebrate it.’Someone asked me the other day how I planned to commemorate October 7. I found myself speechless, befuddled by the question. How do you offer an elegy when the war is not yet over—and 101 hostages, those still alive and the bodies of the murdered, are not yet home? How do you remember a catastrophe when it is still unfolding? How do you mark a past event that feels as though it was a prelude to a much deeper darkness, whose dimensions we are still discovering? How do...

If President Donald Trump can negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, communist China could become the next target of the United States, analysts say.During a phone call on Feb. 24, Chinese leader Xi Jinping reaffirmed the “no limit” partnership he declared three years ago with Russian President Vladimir Putin.In a show of unity, Xi told Putin that their nations are “good neighbors” and “true friends who have been through thick and thin together,” according to Beijing’s readout.Analysts said the warm sentiments expressed as the war in Ukraine marks its third year reflect the Chinese regime’s serious concerns.“Xi Jinping’s...

Citi has fired one of its personal bankers after she defended Hitler and the holocaust in a vile anti-Semitic post following the Hamas terror attacks. CUNY Brooklyn College graduate Nozima Husainova, 25, sparked outrage with the remark which she posted on her now-deleted Instagram page and she's since lost her job, the bank confirmed Thursday. Responding to a post about the Gaza hospital bombing that Israel has denied, she wrote: 'No wonder why Hitler wanted to get rid of them all,' complete with a smiley face emoji.

The head of the Russian Republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, has expressed support for the Palestinians and called for a ceasefire and offered to send his troops to Palestine as part of a peacekeeping mission. In a statement, Kadyrov appealed to the international community to "make a fair decision regarding Palestine at least once."

Don’t imagine this is just an unprovoked, brutal attack by a bunch of terrorists from Gaza. It is much more than that. The hands that pushed these killers forward are in Moscow. US President Joe Biden and European leaders have long feared an escalation of the Ukraine war and that is what they’ve now got. Unwilling to take the fight directly to NATO, instead, Putin has been fomenting conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Serbia and Kosovo, in West Africa and now in Israel. The instability created in these places is intended to pull US attention, as well as resources, away...

Democrat President Joe Biden has nominated his son Hunter’s former business associate to serve as special counsel. Biden nominated Hampton Dellinger who previously worked alongside Hunter while he served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. The White House announced the move in a Tuesday press release. Dellinger will replace Henry Kerner, whose term as the position’s current occupant expires. The Office of Special Counsel is primarily responsible for safeguarding the “merit system by protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, especially reprisal for whistleblowing,” its website states. Dellinger was previously nominated by Biden as an...

Intelligence firm Graphika said a Beijing-linked campaign known as "Spamouflage" spread disinformation about Spain's deadly floods last year. A Chinese online influence operation impersonated a human rights group in Spain to spread calls on social media for the Spanish government to be overthrown following deadly floods in Valencia last year, according to research by intelligence firm Graphika. The Chinese state-linked campaign — dubbed "Spamouflage" by analysts — posed as the Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders on social media platforms including Facebook, TikTok and X to circulate content criticising the government's response to the floods that killed at least 225 people last...

WASHINGTON - A young teenager will spend the next seven years behind bars for her role in the beating death of a frail D.C. man on a street in Northwest last year. The 13-year-old was sentenced Wednesday. In court, she apologized before she was ordered held until her 21st birthday. All five girls involved in the beating death of 64-year-old Reggie Brown, a D.C. man who family says suffered from multiple disabilities and was battling to beat cancer, were between the ages of 12 and 15 when they committed the crime in October 2023. Despite their age, the girls are...

On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated that while President Joe Biden’s move to send a carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean is a good move, it was a mistake to give up military facilities in Afghanistan, and that having bases in a country that borders Iran would be useful to help isolate them.

NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump is demanding the immediate release of the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, saying that if they are not freed before he is sworn into office there will be “HELL TO PAY.”“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth...

Closed door testimony by former Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady to the Judiciary Committee last week is a chilling case study of how credible corruption allegations against Joe Biden and his family were covered up by the FBI and DOJ — before and after the 2020 election. Brady’s testimony fits a pattern revealed by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley last week, in which over 40 confidential human sources gave information to the FBI, over several years, about potential criminal activity involving the president, his brother James and son Hunter. In a blistering letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland Wednesday, Grassley alleged...

Meanwhile, the House Ethics Committee’s years-long investigation into Matt Gaetz over allegations of sexual misconduct ended after the lawmaker resigned from Congress. The Gateway Pundit reported on the Ethics Committee’s revival of the junk allegations against Gaetz, even after the Biden DOJ exonerated Gaetz of criminal wrongdoing and dropped the charges in February 2023. The investigation was reopened in 2023 as Gaetz ramped up challenges to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was later ousted by Gaetz’s Motion to Vacate the chair. Later, when Gaetz threatened to bring a Motion to Vacate against McCarthy in October 2023, McCarthy’s RINO allies...