Free Republic

On episode 20 of the show we are joined by Viktor Bout, a man whose life story is quite worthy of a film adaptation. A polyglot, entrepreneur, graduate of the Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages. In the West Viktor is portrayed as the “lord of war” and the “merchant of death”. A Russian businessman, a case against whom was fabricated by the American intelligence services on the basis of a provocation they carried out against him in Thailand in 2008. After extradition to the United States, Bout was sentenced to 25 years in a maximum security prison. He was...

“Joe Biden’s world-class hypocrisy is on full display, and it has taken a dangerous turn, in his trade of a notorious Russian arms dealer for Brittany Griner,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today. Biden’s swap of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout—known as the “Merchant of Death”—for Griner this week has brought expressions of outrage and astonishment. The jailed basketball gold medalist is one of two Americans who have been held by the Russians. The other is Paul Whelan, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who was imprisoned four years ago on espionage charges, and...

(The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.)The lopsided trade that sprung basketball player Brittney Griner didn’t include U.S. Marine Paul Whelan—because the Kremlin demanded convicted assassin Vadim Krasikov be freed from a German prison in exchange, according to the New York Times and multiple other outlets. The murderous Krasikov was once a colonel in the notorious Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the KGB.After Germany refused to take part in a three-way deal to free Krasikov, the United States instead settled on swapping Griner for “Merchant of Death”...

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) stated that Viktor Bout, the arms dealer who was serving time in prison for agreeing to supply weapons to U.S. agents posing as Colombian terrorists to kill Americans, freed by the Biden administration in the prisoner swap to secure the release of Brittney Griner from Russia, is “a nasty, bad” person, but “He has not killed Americans.” Although, Jackson Lee noted that Bout’s “weapons might have been used to kill Americans.”

Bout is alleged to have fueled multiple conflicts across the globe through arms dealing, sometimes to both sides ... A senior defense official is concerned that convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, the "Merchant of Death" .. could go back to illegally trafficking weapons, thereby fueling deadly conflicts around the world. "I think there is a concern that he would return to doing the same kind of work that he's done in the past.. Bout was in the middle of serving a 25-year prison sentence in a U.S. prison for several offenses, including conspiring to kill Americans ... Bout, a...

Former President Donald Trump shot down Russian attempts to trade former Marine Paul Whelan for “Merchant of Death” arms dealer Viktor Bout, former national security adviser John Bolton said Thursday — as Trump ripped his successor for agreeing to send Bout home in exchange for the return of WNBA star Brittney Griner. Bolton recalled in an interview with CBS that he was in the midst of his 17-month tenure at the White House when Whelan was detained on concocted espionage charges in December 2018. “The possibility of a Bout-for-Whelan trade existed back then,” said Bolton, 74, “and it wasn’t made,...

A Ukrainian man was arrested for partially sinking his Russian tycoon boss’ $7.7 million luxury super yacht in Spain in protest over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. Taras Ostapchuk, 55, was taken into custody on Saturday in Mallorca after he allegedly opened several valves to intentionally flood the 156-foot-long vessel, the Majorca Daily Bulletin reported. The yacht — named Lady Anastasia — is owned by businessman, Alexander Mijeev, who is the CEO of Russian military weapons company, Rosoboronexport. When officers arrived to arrest Ostapchuk, the crew member allegedly said: “My boss is a criminal who sells weapons that kill the...

The Biden administration is set to make public a report that blames Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman for the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The Washington Post journalist was a fierce critic of the kingdom and killed at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. CBS News senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang joins CBSN to discuss the report and how it could affect the U.S. relationship with the kingdom.

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE - Pope Francis said Tuesday that the latest round of financial scandal at the Vatican is actually a success story, because the situation was revealed thanks to an internal Vatican probe, which he said demonstrates that new controls are working. The pontiff also called both owning and deploying nuclear weapons “immoral,” saying that point should be added to the Catholic catechism, and suggested that it might be time to re-think the veto power wielded by a handful of countries in the United Nations Security Council. His comments came during an airborne news conference on the return...

Ukraine's arms firms walk tightrope between Kiev and Moscow Thomas Grove 8 MIN READ KRAMATORSK Ukraine (Reuters) - In quiet defiance of a promise by Kiev's pro-European government to cut arms ties with Moscow, a state-owned defense firm in eastern Ukraine has vowed to work around the clock to fill every Russian order it gets. As for many of Ukraine's defense firms, the stakes are high for Yuzhmash, an industrial behemoth that was so jealously guarded by the Soviet Union that the nearby city of Dnipropetrovsk was closed to foreigners until the bloc split apart. Now, in the face of...

Tomorrow's cruise ship will sail through the air, not the water By Joshua Tompkins John MacNeill LIFTOFF! On a pressurized plane, windows like these would explode outward . The Aeroscraft does not fly high enough to need pressurization. This is not a Blimp. It's a sort of flying Queen Mary 2 that could change the way you think about air travel. It's the Aeroscraft, and when it's completed, it will ferry pampered passengers across continents and oceans as they stroll leisurely about the one-acre cabin or relax in their well-appointed staterooms. Unlike its dirigible ancestors, the Aeroscraft is not lighter...

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff is connected to a Ukrainian arms dealer. Is this why he’s willing to lie in front of the nation when accusing President Trump of crimes? Adam Schiff is arguably the biggest liar in Congress…. ever. He now leads the House Intelligence Committee and this past week oversaw the Intel Committee where he attempted to align President Trump with some ‘trumped’ up allegations concerning his phone call with the President of the Ukraine. Schiff lied in his opening remarks and claimed numerous falsehoods about the President’s call in spite of the transcript being provided the day before.

A former CIA agent has revealed how she carried her newborn baby with her during undercover missions to stop al Qaeda from getting hold of a nuclear weapon. Amaryllis Fox gave birth to her daughter Zoe while based in Shanghai, China where she was posing as an art dealer on assignment for the intelligence service. The 38-year-old was so committed to her job that she put the child in a sling while meeting with arms dealers turned informants. Fox took evasive routes to shake off a person who was trailing her, while her baby was strapped to her chest, she...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who has played a leading role in investigating the Trump-Ukraine scandal, is facing questions about his own connection to a Soviet-born businessman who has raised money for his campaign and whose company has received lucrative defense contracts from Ukraine's government. That man is Igor Pasternak, the founder and CEO of Worldwide Aeros Corp., which makes blimps for military and commercial customers. His business has also been involved in weapons manufacturing, working with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to produce a modified version of the M4 and M16 rifles, according to reports. ...

Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi middleman-for-hire who amas­sed huge wealth and influence peddling everything from American weapons to favors for Riyadh’s rulers and CIA spymasters, only to see his fortunes collapse amid the Iran-contra affair and other scandals, died June 6 at a hospital in London. He was 81, by most accounts. The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, the family said in a statement reported by the Associated Press. Mr. Khashoggi’s name may have lost its luster since his peak in the 1970s and 1980s, but not so the list of misdeeds and abuses that remain defining events of the...

One of the most influential Arab journalists in the world, Jamal Khashoggi, went missing after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week. Turkish authorities have blamed the Saudis, but Riyadh has denied harming the veteran reporter.Jamal Khashoggi, 59, was born in Medina, Saudi Arabia, one of the holiest cities in Islam. Like many Saudis at the time, Khashoggi left to study abroad. He earned a business administration degree in 1983 at Indiana State University in the United States.Career in journalismKhashoggi began his career as a reporter for the English language newspaper Saudi Gazette. He went on to work for...

FAISALABAD, Pakistan — The father of Imran Awan — an IT aide to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz who investigators concluded made “unauthorized access” to House servers — transferred a USB drive to a Pakistani senator and former head of a Pakistani intelligence agency, the father’s ex-business partner, Rashid Minhas, alleged. Minhas told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Imran Awan’s father, Haji Ashraf Awan, was giving data to Pakistani official Rehman Malik, and that Imran bragged he had the power to “change the U.S. president.” Asked for how he knew this, he said that on one occasion in 2008 when...

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., once falsely accused President Ronald Reagan's CIA of all but causing urban cocaine dealing in the '80s. She claimed that Reagan, by working with Nicaraguan drug dealers to defeat the communists running that country, colluded with them to created the urban drug epidemic. Never mind that The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all debunked Waters' claim. At a town hall meeting about these allegations, Waters shouted, "If I never do anything else in this career as a member of Congress, I'm gonna make somebody pay for what they've done to...

This is all my opinion but this is the situation as I understand it now on the eve of an election that may spell the end of freedom as we know it. The meddling of Hillary in the Middle East has been disasterous in terms of lives and national prestige. The Left in this country made a big stink out of the loss of prestige over Iran-Contra back in the Eighties. Benghazi really makes Iran-Contra look like a walk in the park. The first thing to understand is that we were never supposed to know about Benghazi and what was...

EXCLUSIVE: American arms dealer Marc Turi, in his first television interview since criminal charges against him were dropped, told Fox News that the Obama administration -- with the cooperation of Hillary Clinton’s State Department -- tried and failed to make him the scapegoat for a 2011 covert weapons program to arm Libyan rebels that spun out of control.