Free Republic

'The only reason' for spying was to 'inform the president' Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy pointed out that counterintelligence operations by the FBI, Justice Department and are carried out for the president. So it would have been the responsibility of the Obama administration's counterintelligence investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign to make sure Barack Obama knew what was going on, he said in a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night. "What I'm saying is not that the president sits there and directs that there be counterintelligence investigations, McCarthy explained, according to BizPacReview. "What I'm saying is that...

While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted. The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy...

LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — A judge was allowed to go on his way after aggressively challenging a police officer during a traffic stop and ordering him to “check the registration on this plate soon, mister.” Police dashcam video obtained by the LNP newspaper in Lancaster shows the April traffic stop of Lancaster County President Judge Dennis Reinaker.

News of Trump’s order to declassify all documents relating to the targeting of his presidential campaign by members of the Obama administration intelligence community has reverberated throughout Washington and beyond since Thursday night. The same Democrats who are demanding that Trump release his business records and tax returns because he “may have” broken the law are panicking over this directive. Rep. Adam Schiff, who has built his reputation on his hatred for Donald Trump, tells reporters it’s “un-American” and of course, he’s worried about revealing “sources and methods.” For nearly three years, Democrats and the media have persecuted this President,...

David Daleiden Journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who exposed suspect dealings at taxpayer-funded abortion mill Planned Parenthood via undercover videos, were denied a request to halt criminal prosecution, a press release from The Thomas More Society said on Friday. Ocasio-Cortez: There'd Be 'As Many Planned Parenthood Clinics' As Post Offices If Male Politicians Could Get Pregnant (See video in link at source) Last month, the California Supreme Court issued a stay in the high-profile case based on "political bias and selective prosecution." But now the case is moving forward. Daleiden and Merritt were hit with 15 felony charges in...

The House Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled for former White House counsel Don McGahn was "silly" and the committee's chair knew he couldn't challenge in court McGahn's refusal to comply with a subpoena, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said on Tuesday. "The whole thing is a political exercise, and Jerry Nadler is not going to take this to court because he knows if he did, he would be completely humiliated," McClintock said while appearing on Fox News' "Outnumbered." "He wants the grievance, not the substance," McClintock added. His comments came as Nadler vowed to "go to court" if needed in order to...

Government accountability is an idea that draws bipartisan support: calls for more transparency and oversight of politicians and bureaucracies go over well with voters. But what about oversight of the people who put them in office? Democracies give power to the people — does anyone hold the people responsible for this power? Not really, and that has long been a problem. Since its beginning in ancient Greece, democracy has faced a crisis of legitimacy when the people have not been held accountable for their exercise of sovereignty, allowing elites to dismiss democracy as mob rule. Today, defending our democracy begins...

Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., said it is time for impeachment inquiries to be opened if former White House Counsel Don McGahn is a no-show to Tuesday's scheduled congressional hearing. Cicilline, a member of the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee, appeared on MSNBC and offered his reaction that the White House is instructing McGahn to refuse to comply with a subpoena to appear on Capitol Hill and the assurance from the Department of Justice that McGahn has "immunity" which does not legally require him to testify before Congress, something Cicilline believed was "legally incorrect." "Let me be clear; if Don McGahn doesn't...

The name of a Navy veteran may be cleared after he was convicted, fined, and imprisoned for digging ponds in a wooded area near his Montana home, to supply water in case of fire. The Supreme Court has vacated a lower court ruling against Joe Robertson, who was sent to federal prison and ordered to pay $130,000 in restitution through deductions from his Social Security checks. Any definitive legal victory for Robertson would be posthumous, since he died March 18 at age 80. But his lawyers describe the Supreme Court’s action as a “big win” for Robertson’s widow, Carrie, who...

WASHINGTON -- If there's one thing that tells you government in America is too big and unaccountable, it's when one branch of government stops another government from doing what it was set up to do, even if it's not the first agency's job. Case in point: Under President Barack Obama, the Food and Drug Administration stopped multiple states from carrying out executions because the agency had not approved the drugs they intended to use for lethal injection. Really. President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is changing that. On May 3, Steven Engel, head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel,...

In his first pair of interviews since being sworn in, Attorney General Barr told Fox News and WSJ that he was pursuing the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe – an investigation he has tasked John Durham, the US Attorney from Connecticut, with leading – because Americans need to know whether the government “put a thumb on the scale” to try and undermine President Trump both during the campaign and during the first two years of his term, just like “we need to ensure that foreign actors don’t influence the outcome of our elections.” Separately, he told WSJ...

As Democrats push forward with a plan to haul Attorney General William Barr before a federal judge for contempt of Congress, a stunning admission by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler could torpedo that case, legal experts say. The House Judiciary Committee last week took the first step toward holding Mr. Barr in contempt for defying a Congressional subpoena demanding special counsel Robert Mueller’s “full unredacted” report along with all the supporting evidence. Republicans say he even rejected an amendment that sought to carve grand jury information out of the subpoena, issued in March. But Mr. Nadler now says he...

Washington seems to be barreling toward a constitutional crisis. Democrats are barraging President Trump with demands for witnesses and documents. Trump has answered by stonewalling, vowing to fight “all the subpoenas.” As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned, Trump seems to be goading the Democratic-controlled House toward impeachment, perhaps because it’s a battle he thinks he can win. Politicians on both sides are repairing to their tribal corners. Is there anyone who can serve as honest referees in this partisan standoff? One answer — don’t laugh — is lawyers. Specifically, Republican lawyers. Even as Republicans in Congress have fallen in line...

House Democrats are threatening the salaries of Interior, Commerce and Justice Department staff if they block ongoing committee investigations. House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) sent letters Tuesday calling for eight current and former Trump administration officials to provide information for two of the panel’s investigations, cautioning that officials who block the interviews from taking place could see their salaries withheld.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday told House Democrats he would not furnish President Trump’s tax returns despite their legal request, the latest move by Trump administration officials to shield the president from congressional investigations. Mnuchin, in a letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), said he had consulted with the Justice Department and that they had concluded that it would not be lawful for the Trump administration to turn over the tax returns because of potential violations of privacy. Mnuchin added that requests from Congress “must reasonable serve a legitimate legislative purpose” and that the...

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) on Friday gave Attorney General Bill Barr an ultimatum — comply with the “counter offer” or the committee will move forward with contempt of Congress. “The committee is prepared to make every realistic effort to reach an accommodation with the department,” Nadler wrote in a letter to Bill Barr on Friday. “But if the department persists in its baseless refusal to comply with a validly issued subpoena, the committee will move to contempt proceedings and seek further legal recourse.” Nadler gave the Justice Department a 9 AM Monday deadline to comply with the committee’s...

"BREAKING: Special Counsel Mueller “deeply disturbed” by Pelosi accusations against AG Barr today and is urging Nadler to push up his hearing to testify and correct the record as soon as possible - @OANN"

Rep. Jerrold Nadler on Sunday threatened to issue a subpoena to compel Attorney General William Barr to appear before his House panel after Barr reportedly balked over how he would be questioned. “Then we will have to subpoena him and we will have to use whatever means we can to enforce the subpoena. We’ll use all legal mechanisms to get them to comply with the subpoenas and they will comply,” the New York Democrat told reporters during an appearance on Staten Island. “Ultimately, the law says they have to comply. What the administration is doing is seeking to draw it...

Attorney General Bill Barr will be a no-show at a long-awaited hearing on Thursday before the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee based on current negotiations over his appearance, a source on the committee told Fox News on Sunday. The emerging spat comes after Barr has endured withering attacks from congressional Democrats, who have outright accused him of sacrificing his integrity to appease President Trump. Barr shepherded the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report in recent weeks, and he has largely become a punching bag for progressives frustrated that Mueller's probe failed to validate claims that the Trump team colluded with...

Now that we have significant research files on the 2015 and 2016 political surveillance program; which includes the trail evident within the Weissmann/Mueller report; in combination with the Obama-era DOJ “secret research project” (their words, not mine); we are able to overlay the entire objective and gain a full understanding of how political surveillance was conducted over a period of approximately four to six years. Working with a timeline, but also referencing origination material in 2015/2016 – CTH hopes to show how the program operated. This explains an evolution from The IRS Files in 2010 to the FISA Files in...