Free Republic

A violent Portland Antifa ringleader has been convicted by a jury in a five-day trial marred by tight security restrictions and intimidation from Antifa members in the gallery. Alissa Eleanor Azar, 32 (b. Feb. 12, 1991), was charged with felony riot, disorderly conduct in the second degree and unlawful use of mace in the second degree. The jury found Azar guilty of felony riot and second-degree disorderly conduct. The unlawful use of mace charge resulted in a hung jury. The case stems from an Antifa riot in 2021 at a park in Clackamas County, Ore., and that's where the trial...

The comments came a few days after Senator JD Vance, the vice-presidential candidate from Ohio, rejected far-right white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who had recently targeted Vance's wife, Usha Vance, because of her Indian heritage. Vance stressed that the best way to handle such attacks was to "ignore" them. Jaden McNeil @JadenPMcNeil: Homosexual anti-Trumper Nick Fuentes praises Kamala Harris as a good candidate and says she's extremely likable. Aug 19, 2024

The largest organization of socialists in America cheered Vice President Kamala Harris’s pick of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate for 2024, saying it showed they and the left “are a force that cannot be ignored.” “Harris choosing Walz as a running mate has shown the world that DSA and our allies on the left are a force that cannot be ignored,” Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) boasted on X. The Uncommitted movement, in which DSA members played crucial roles nationally and in multiple states, pressured the Democratic establishment into choosing a new candidate and backing down...

The Harris-Biden administration is a boon to Putin. A Trump presidency will destroy all that. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelen, both of whom have been languishing in the Soviet, I mean, Russian prisons for years on trumped-up espionage charges, have been released. It appears that their release is part of a larger, multi-nation prisoner swap that includes the exchange of prisoners from Germany, Great Britain, the US, and Slovenia on the one side and Russia and Belarus on the other. The basis for the suspicion about the multi-national, multi-prisoner release is the sudden...

The United States government said in a statement on Thursday that Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia beat socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro during the country’s recent presidential election. The announcement comes after at least 17 protesters have been killed and hundreds more arrested so far in riots that have broken out over the country’s sham election. More than 12 million Venezuelans voted during the election, which is run by the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE). “The CNE’s rapid declaration of Nicolás Maduro as the winner of the presidential election came with no supporting evidence,” the U.S. State Department said in...

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...

Iran Chamber of Commerce revealed that 12 million liters of fuel are smuggled daily from Iran to neighboring countries. But is this massive smuggling really done by border fuel carriers, or is there more to the story? Many border residents, especially from the Baloch ethnic minority in southeastern Iran, turn to fuel smuggling due to poverty and unemployment. Some of these fuel carriers don’t even have vehicles and carry fuel canisters on their backs. The Washington Post reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are at the center of this large-scale fuel smuggling operation. Hashem Oraei, President of the Energy Scientific...

A top adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been relieved of duty following the discovery of several anti-Israel social media posts. U.S. Army Col. Nathan McCormack was removed from his advisory role on Israel-related matters following the discovery of the posts. According to his LinkedIn profile, McCormack served as the Levant and Egypt branch chief within the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s J5 planning directorate. He reportedly posted several inflammatory comments on his X account, including calling Israel a “death cult” and referring to its government as “Netanyahu and his Judeo-supremacist cronies,” according to the Jewish News Syndicate. A...

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...

Putin has appointed his ex-bodyguard, who is considered a likely successor for the Russian leader, as an 'angel of vengeance' tasked with trying to reclaim the territory seized by Ukraine. Former bodyguard Alexei Dyumin, who once single-handedly scared off a bear from the president's mountain residence, will lead the charge on 'Operation Revenge' to reclaim the 386 square miles of Russian soil now under Ukrainian control. Dyumin, 51, grew up in the Kursk region, where a state of emergency was implemented almost immediately after thousands of Kyiv's troops surged across the border and began seizing territory. Putin has now chosen...

The former governor of Russia's Kursk region, parts of which were seized by Ukrainian forces in August 2024, has been detained and charged with embezzling money earmarked for building defences, Russia's interior ministry said on Thursday. Alexei Smirnov was head of the western region when Ukrainian troops smashed across the border in a large-scale incursion. -snip- In the first hours of Ukraine's August incursion into Kursk, Smirnov repeatedly offered assurances that the situation was under control, even as Russian border guards were left reeling and in retreat by the surprise attack.

A former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who fled to Moscow and became one of the Kremlin’s most prolific propagandists is working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents show that John Mark Dougan, who also served in the U.S. Marines and has long claimed to be working independently of the Russian government, was provided funding by an officer from the GRU, the country’s military intelligence service. Some of the...

The worst part about the porous Biden/Harris southern border is that we don’t know who we’ve let in and how dangerous some of those people might be. However, we now know of at least one allegedly very nasty character who’s been hanging out in our country, Peruvian gang member Gianfranco Torres-Navarro, who’s suspected of almost two dozen murders back in his homeland. He was arrested Wednesday in New York State by immigration authorities. Fox News’ Bill Melugin reported on the story: BREAKING: ICE Buffalo arrested a Peruvian gang leader yesterday who is wanted for 23 murders in Peru & was...

The Venezuelan Human Rights Education-Action Program reported that the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro's kidnapped Freddy Superlano, leader of the Voluntad Popular party founded by Leopoldo López. "These detainments can lead to forced disappearances and cruel and inhumane treatment to force the victims to make statements, as has been denounced in the past by the UN Mission on Venezuela," Provea wrote on its account on the social network X. The organization published a video on social networks showing how several hooded men put Superlano in a van. According to the information, three other opposition leaders were also kidnapped. Meanwhile, Voluntad...

Venezuela's most violent gang, which has already sparked chaos across the US, has moved its headquarters to the outskirts of a major American city, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal. Dubbed the 'epitome of evil', the notorious criminal organization Tren de Aragua, or TdA as it is known by federal agents, previously operated out of an infamous South American prison so completely under gang leaders' control that it had its own zoo, swimming pool and nightclub. But after kingpin Hector Guerrero Flores escaped last year, the mafia moved its command center to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico on the US border - directly...

During his visit to Chechnya on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin stopped at the Prophet Isa mosque in Grozny and posed for photos while holding, and kissing, a gold-leaf copy of the Quran. Putin was flanked by his hand-picked Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, and top Chechen Muslim cleric Mufti Saah Mezhiev during his Quran smooch. The Grand Mufti ceremonially read a verse from the Quran, translated into Russian for Putin. The Prophet Isa mosque, constructed in 2020, is a huge and expensive structure that can accommodate 5,000 worshipers at once. “Prophet Isa” is Islam’s version of Jesus Christ, who ranks...

Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina was released from Kremlin custody in a prisoner swap with the United States on Thursday morning. Karelina was freed in exchange for German-Russian Arthur Petrov at a swap in Abu Dhabi, the Wall Street Journal reported. “American Ksenia Karelina is on a plane back home to the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. “She was wrongfully detained by Russia for over a year and President Trump secured her release. @POTUS will continue to work for the release of ALL Americans,” he added. The dual-citizen spa worker was accused of treason against the Russian government...

The strikes targeted facilities in parts of Yemen controlled by the Iran-backed group. U.S. B-2 bombers and other aircraft struck five underground Houthi weapons storage locations in parts of Yemen that the Iranian-backed rebel group controls, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday. The facilities, which officials said were hardened, housed "various weapons components of types that the Houthis have used to target civilian and military vessels throughout the region," Austin said. Houthi rebels have attacked civilian vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The group was suspected in an attack in August. The strikes were the first...

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned, according to the Washington Free Beacon. In a letter to the Columbia community, Shafik wrote that her tenure has been “a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.” "This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community,” she added. In recent months, Shafik has come under fire for her handling of anti-Semitism on campus following Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel that began last October. “I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic principles and...

The pro-Palestinian activists who disrupted campuses across the nation are plotting their return for the new academic year. Demonstrators say all forms of protest are still on the table, despite the more than 2,000 arrests so far, as students try to figure out a new strategy to demand their schools divest from Israel, among other goals. “What we will see [is] the students will continue their activism, will continue doing what they’ve done in conventional and unconventional ways. So not only protests, not only encampments, kind of any — any available means necessary to push Columbia to divest from from...