Free Republic

Two men working on behalf of the Chinese government’s Ministry of Public Security attempted to bribe an IRS agent in a scheme intended to further Beijing’s harassment of Falun Gong believers, the Justice Department revealed in a criminal complaint unveiled today. The defendants were arrested today in California on charges including acting as unregistered foreign agents, money laundering, and bribery. “The Chinese government has yet again attempted, and failed, to target critics of the PRC here in the United States,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement this afternoon. “The Justice Department will continue to investigate, disrupt, and prosecute...

Volodymyr Zelensky has sacked his wartime minister of defence and replaced him with a trusted political ally who took part in failed peace talks last year with Russia.The dismissal of Oleksii Reznikov, who has headed Ukraine’s defence ministry since Russia invaded in February 2022, needs to be approved by the Ukrainian parliament.“I believe that the Ministry needs new approaches and other formats of interaction with both the military and society at large,” Mr Zelensky said.The 57-year-old Mr Reznikov became one of the most high-profile Ukrainians of the war, representing Ukraine at Nato meetings and dozens of bilateral talks to secure...

A former FBI informant pleaded guilty on Thursday to lying about a $10 million bribe that a Ukrainian businessman paid to then-vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter to “protect” his firm from a looming corruption investigation. Alexander Smirnov, 43, entered into a plea agreement with special counsel David Weiss and confessed to having created “a false and fictitious record” as part of a multi-year federal probe into the Bidens. The falsehoods included the bribery allegation, which was memorialized in an FBI FD-1023 form in 2020 and released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last year, and other aspects of...

Kash Patel announced on Thursday night that three individuals have been arrested by the FBI and other agencies “for theft of government property and a bribery scheme.” According to a DOJ press release, “Jian Zhao, and Li Tian, active-duty U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, along with Ruoyu Duan, a former U.S. Army soldier, were arrested today following indictments by federal grand juries in the District of Oregon and the Western District of Washington.” ” Tian and Duan were charged in the District of Oregon for conspiring to commit bribery and theft of government property. Zhao was charged...

KYIV — Now we know why the Democrats are so rabidly going after POTUS with a scam impeachment. CD Media has been on the ground in Kyiv for some time now investigating corruption of the U.S. State Department in Ukraine, along with multiple Democratic Party operatives in-country, who have been involved in a massive money laundering operation of IMF aid funds, along with corrupt Ukrainian officials, including former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. What we have to say is truly shocking. The theft totals in the billions of dollars. In short, multiple intelligence sources have produced evidence which will soon be...

As reported earlier, former Democrat Senator Bob Menendez, 71, sobbed in court as he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for bribery and corruption. A tearful Menendez sobbed as he begged SDNY Judge Sidney Stein to have mercy on him. The judge showed no mercy to “Gold Bar Bob” and sentenced him to 11 years. Last summer a jury convicted Senator Bob Menendez on all bribery and corruption charges. The jury returned the verdict following a 9-week trial. Menendez did not testify. In October 2023 Bob Menendez was charged with acting as a foreign agent in a superseding indictment....

A report from Fox News back in 2021 highlighted the scope of the crisis unfolding in Afghanistan as the Taliban took control of 75,000 US vehicles, 200 US aircraft, 600,000 US weapons, and $85 billion in military funding. This is like Obama’s Fast and Furious gun-running scandal on steroids. Today the Taliban is patrolling the streets of Kabul in US humvees. The big story might be the pallets of cash the Taliban have been posting videos of pallets of weapons and stacks of $100 bills they have seized. Here is a more complete list of US equipment now controlled by...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Thursday released the now-infamous FBI form that contains a witness's account of President Joe Biden allegedly partaking in a bribery scheme when he was vice president. Grassley published in full the lightly redacted FD-1023 form, the contents of which several congressional Republicans have seen but that the public has not. The Iowa Republican accused the FBI in an accompanying statement of seeking to “obfuscate and redact” it before the bureau ultimately cooperated with congressional Republicans to show it to them. “The American people can now read this document for themselves, without the filter of politicians...

The informant accused of fabricating a story about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden taking $5 million each in bribes allegedly had high-level Russian intelligence contacts, according to newly filed court documents. In the filing, Special Counsel David Weiss reveals that after his arrest last week, Alexander Smirnov told the FBI "that officials with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story" about Hunter Biden. Prosecutors argued in their filing Smirnov should be held pending trial, with Weiss saying that Smirnov's claims he has active contacts with "multiple foreign intelligence agencies" and had planned to leave the U.S....

Kamala Harris spent $1.5 billion on her failed presidential campaign, hemorrhaging on average $100 million per week — proving that she and her claque are as bad at managing money as they are at generating coherent policy ideas. The big-ticket items: - $900,000 to advertise on the outside screen of the Las Vegas Sphere (Harris ended up losing Nevada). - A cool million to Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions for Harris’ splashy townhall event with the media queen. - Ten million for a series of Gen X-bait conferences with the likes of Jon Bon Jovi (Harris ended up losing Gen X)....

Hunter Biden sent his father, President Joe Biden, monthly payments from the bank account he used to receive money from Chinese business associates, newly released bank records show. House Oversight Committee James Comer shared a video Monday on Twitter revealing redacted bank records containing direct payments to Joe Biden from Hunter Biden’s Owasco P.C. bank account. “Today, the House Oversight Committee is releasing subpoenaed bank records that show Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden. This wasn’t a payment from Hunter Biden’s personal account but an account for his corporation that received payments from...

The United States has allocated a new defense aid package to Ukraine totaling $400 million. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced this during a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. This package will include ammunition, military equipment, and weaponry. The Secretary assured that support under the security agreement between the United States and Ukraine will continue. Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed gratitude for the military assistance package and for all the support the U.S. has provided since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

As disaster response efforts ramped up following the devastation of Hurricane Helene, North Carolina announced it had agreed to purchase several Hunter Biden paintings in return for U.S. aid. While President Biden had already approved North Carolina's request to have the crisis declared a "major disaster" and authorized federal assistance, the state's leaders reportedly believed they would receive far more federal funding if they agreed to buy some of Hunter's paintings. "We know how things work with this administration," said North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper. "While we're certainly grateful for the president's willingness to provide us with the assistance we...

A Manhattan grand jury has indicted New York Mayor Eric Adams on federal criminal charges, multiple sources familiar confirmed to Fox News. The details about the indictment remain under seal. Multiple sources have confirmed to Fox News that the indictment could be unsealed as early as tomorrow. The FBI and Department of Justice are declining to comment on the matter, and it is unclear who Adams has retained as his personal attorney. "I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became," Adams said in a...

Moderna Inc.’s cost-reduction plans, pipeline cuts and reined-in financial guidance, unveiled Thursday, triggered a wave of downgrades as analysts focused on longer timelines to launch some products and questioned when the company will return to profitability.One key concern: The company’s full-year 2025 revenue guidance, issued Thursday, is nearly 8% lower, at the midpoint, than its full-year 2024 guidance — which was recently trimmed back. The 2025 forecast, on the heels of the 2024 guidance cut issued when Moderna reported second-quarter earnings, “is likely making investors lose confidence” and battering the stock, Evercore ISI analyst Cory Kasimov said in a research...

A former aide to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and current Gov. Kathy Hochul was arrested Tuesday morning on charges of violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy. The former aide, Linda Sun, is accused of acting on behalf of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party, to further their interests in the United States. Her husband, Chris Hu, was also arrested and charged with money laundering conspiracy, as well as conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification. Sun was...

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez was found guilty Tuesday of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes — including 1-kilogram gold bars — in exchange for using his powerful post to enrich and protect three businessmen and the Egyptian and Qatari governments. The bombshell jury verdict was delivered in Manhattan federal court after about 12½ hours of deliberations spread over three days. It capped a nine-week trial that revealed how the senator leveraged his position as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to cater to the whims of men who showered him and his wife with...

Justice Department officials plan to pursue the criminal cases against Donald Trump past Election Day even if he wins, under the belief that department rules against charging or prosecuting a sitting president would not kick in until Inauguration Day in January, according to people familiar with the discussions. That approach may become more consequential given this week’s Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, which probably will lead to further delays to Trump’s election interference trial in D.C. and has already affected one of his state cases. Senior law enforcement officials have long viewed the two federal indictments against Trump —...

When Hunter Biden was plotting with one of his business partners early in his career to score business with wealthy Greek businessmen, he immediately identified as key leverage a policy position his father took as vice president. “I'd like you there, but this is a preliminary meeting to introductions into Greek money. If you'd rather sleep in no problem," Hunter Biden wrote his associate Devon Archer on Jan. 26, 2011. "I think he will connect us to the top 10 wealthiest Greeks in the world - who by the way as a community think my Dad is a candidate for...

NEW YORK — Sen. Bob Menendez’s legal team tried Wednesday to unring a bell — literally. The government’s star witness had testified in the trial that Menendez used a bell to summon his wife to help in a conversation that involved bribery. Menendez’s defense attorney asked repeated questions about the bell, trying to fight back against the damning account. The witness, Jose Uribe, a New Jersey trucking and insurance industry figure, has pleaded guilty to bribing the senator and his wife, Nadine, in order to disrupt a state investigation circling his business. Nadine Menendez will stand trial separately following a...