Free Republic

The veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who interviewed Kamala Harris for the segment that triggered the just-settled lawsuit filed by President Trump against CBS News and its parent company reportedly grew emotional during a staff meeting held after the deal was announced. Bill Whitaker, 73, appeared “teary-eyed” and “quite somber” during a tense Zoom meeting Wednesday morning as he addressed his “60 Minutes” colleagues in the wake of Paramount Global’s $16 million settlement with Trump, according to Oliver Darcy’s Status newsletter. Paramount Global, CBS’s corporate parent, agreed on Wednesday to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes”...

The FBI shut down an investigation into an alleged Chinese Communist Party plot to interfere with the 2020 election because the scheme would have contradicted then-FBI Director Christopher Wray’s congressional testimony, newly released documents show. Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) released internal FBI documents Tuesday showing how the FBI suppressed intelligence about a suspected CCP attempt to create fake drivers licenses and manufacture mail-in votes for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The FBI suppressed an intelligence report from the Albany, N.Y., field office produced in summer 2020 based on information from a confidential human source alleging the Chinese...

A bombshell new CIA review of the Obama administration’s spy agencies assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump was deliberately corrupted by then-CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who were “excessively involved” in its drafting, and rushed its completion in a “chaotic,” “atypical” and “markedly unconventional” process which raised questions of a “potential political motive.” Further, Brennan’s decision to include the discredited Steele Dossier, against the objections of the CIA’s most senior Russia experts, “undermined the credibility” of the assessment. The “Tradecraft Review of the...

A woman has been arrested after allegedly assaulting and biting a Trump supporter at a “No Kings” protest in Upstate New York. Catherine Benincasa, 32, of Manchester, New Hampshire, was arrested Saturday after an argument escalated during an anti-Trump rally in Warrensburg, N.Y. She’s been charged with second-degree menacing, third-degree assault, and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Benincasa was arraigned in Centralized Arraignment Court, according to the Warren County Sheriff’s Office. She was released on her own recognizance and is due in Warrensburg Town Court at a later date. The Warren County Sheriff’s Office said Benincasa struck a man...

The administration of New York Governor Kathy Hochul assigned a senior state government official to participate in back-channel talks led by a Chinese Communist Party bureau allegedly involved in espionage and co-opting foreign political leaders. This individual was slated to deliver remarks on a Zoom call on October 19, 2023 with the CCP’s International Department and several Chinese officials linked to the Party’s political influence organs, according to emails and documents obtained by National Review under a public records disclosure law. Hochul’s then-director of Asian Affairs, Elaine Fan, coordinated the official’s participation. The official was only referred to as a...

Not a week seems to go by without a rogue lower court judge issuing yet another overreaching edict designed to subvert the will of the American people. While these “judges” certainly deserve criticism for rubber-stamping leftists’ lawfare, there’s one individual who deserves primary blame for this concentrated effort to cripple Trump’s presidency via a judicial coup: Chief Justice John Roberts. Over the past five months, rogue lower courts have issued nearly 200 overreaching injunctions and temporary restraining orders attempting to prevent Trump from fulfilling his Article II obligation to execute the nation’s laws. And yet, despite this egregious usurpation of...

A key prosecutor on the classified documents case against President Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a congressional interview Wednesday, .... Jay Bratt had been subpoenaed to appear before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee for a closed-door interview but did not answer substantive questions because of his Fifth Amendment constitutional right to remain silent. Bratt spent more than three decades at the Justice Department before retiring in January, just weeks before President Donald Trump took office. He was a key national security prosecutor on special counsel Jack Smith’s team, which in 2023 charged Trump with illegally...

Brentwood Union Free School District changed its teams’ names to the “Spartans” from the “Indians” after New York State banned public schools from using Native American mascots. The district took a vote last April to choose a name to replace the Indians and selected the Spartans after “an inclusive process that involved input from students, staff and the broader community,” schools superintendent Wanda Ortiz-Rivera told Newsday. The district’s then-superintendent estimated in 2023 that changing its teams’ names from the Indians could cost more than $400,000. Now, the district is set to adopt the Spartans name at the conclusion of the...

Shock jock Stern was a different person back when Steve Grillo, now 58, worked for him in the 90s on New York’s WXRK station. Pre-woke, decades before he did softball interviews with Joe Biden, Stern’s politics leaned Republican. “He definitely got George Pataki elected Governor [of New York in 1995] and he was a big [Rudy] Giuliani supporter,” said Grillo. “It’s gross to see what he’s turned into. I think it’s quite pathetic, to be honest.” Grillo is referring to Stern’s 180 in terms of his political standing, “At some point, his brain flipped,” he said. “I think it has...

With each passing day, Justice Barrett is demonstrating why she had no business being appointed to the Supreme Court. Indeed, she should have never been put on the "short list" before she decided a single case. And I'm not sure why she leapfrogged over so many other qualified candidates in Indiana for the Seventh Circuit seat. Justice Kavanaugh was described as the most qualified Supreme Court nominee in modern history. Justice Barrett, by that standard, would be the least qualified Supreme Court nominee in modern history….If the goal was to give Chief Justice Roberts a wing-woman, mission accomplished. I'll lay...

Federal prosecutors have indicted three Pennsylvania Democrats who are accused of changing voter registration information for dozens of people and fraudulently casting mail-in ballots in their names in a failed bid to steal a mayoral election. The defendants, Md Nurul Hasan, Md Munsur Ali, and Md Rafikul Islam, conspired to help Hasan win the 2021 mayoral election as a write-in candidate in Millbourne Borough, a small municipality west of Philadelphia, according to the indictment filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The men successfully changed voter registration information for about three dozen people in...

Republican attorneys general are asking Congress for information necessary to potentially investigate former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson (R) is leading a group of GOP statewide prosecutors asking congressional GOP leadership for information from the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic’s investigation into the pandemic that could lead to state-level investigations and prosecutions, National Review has learned. “As state Attorneys General, we possess the authority to address violations of state law or breaches of public trust. We are fully committed...

If a pardon had been accepted, a recipient would not be able to plead ‘the fifth’ because there would be no threat of incrimination Fauci is one of the recipients of Biden’s preemptive pardons. In late September of last year, the House Oversight Committee…subpoenaed National Institutes of Health’s Margaret Moore, who it alleged was “involved in a conspiracy” to teach people within Fauci’s office “how to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and avoid public transparency related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” including destroying documents…Moore would decline to testify and invoke her right against self-incrimination. The subterfuge in which Moore,...

Cornell University is encouraging international students and staff to return early from winter break in anticipation of President-Elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration. According to Cornell’s guidance, “it is a good idea” for students from the 12 countries targeted in Trump’s previous travel ban, such as Iran and Yemen, to return to the United States before the university’s semester starts on Jan. 21. Countries like China or India could also be added to the list, it says. The president-elect has pledged to enact a travel ban and revoke student visas from “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.” The guidance also encourages undocumented...

Carter’s true legacy is one of economic misery at home and embarrassment on the world stage. He left the country in its weakest position of the post–World War II era. After being booted out of office in landslide fashion, the self-described “citizen of the world” spent the rest of his life meddling in U.S. foreign policy and working against the United States and its allies in a manner that could fairly be described as treasonous. His obsessive hatred of Israel, and pompous belief that only he could forge Middle East peace, led him to befriend terrorists and lash out at...

In an X post on Sunday, Hochul claimed that crime has decreased on Big Apple trains since she deployed the National Guard in March. Last week, Hochul sent 750 National Guard members to the subways in an effort to curb holiday crime. "In March, I took action to make our subways safer for the millions of people who take the trains each day," Hochul's post read. "Since deploying the @NationalGuardNY to support @NYPDnews and @MTA safety efforts and adding cameras to all subway cars, crime is going down, and ridership is going up." Hochul's post came around eight hours after...

The New York Daily News held a vigil for Neely ... CNN remembered Neely as “an entertainer” and “a kind and sweet soul.” He was a “talented dancer” who had a “fan club,” The Guardian recounted. Those who defended Neely and the subway riders who assisted him were guilty of “spinning an act of vigilantism to blame the person killed by it,” The Independent’s Alex Woodward declared. Elected officials in New York went further in the effort to cast Penny as the true threat to civic order. “To say anything else is an equivocation that will only further a narrative...

The remarkable thing about Russell Rickford is that there is nothing extraordinary about him. The Cornell University prof gained notoriety in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7 by declaring that he found the terror attack “exhilarating.” Afterward, Rickford apologized for his “horrible choice of words.” After the controversy over his warm words for Oct. 7, Rickford took a “voluntary leave” and is now back in the classroom. What’s outrageous isn’t that he hasn’t been disciplined by the school, but that he fits in so seamlessly. If Rickford, a history professor, went somewhere else to ply his wares, he’d in all...

There have been recent reports of pet cats injured, or worse, in the Ithaca area, with animal predation one of the possible causes, and pet welfare experts suggest keeping cats indoors will help keep them safe, from foxes or coyotes or birds of prey, among other risks of harm. “It’s extremely difficult to tell” what harmed or killed a particular cat without witnessing an incident, says Dr. Bruce Kornreich, the director of the Cornell Feline Health Center and a cardiologist in the Department of Clinical Sciences at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He’s skeptical of anecdotal reports that cats...

Former President Donald Trump said that he plans to stay off the campaign rally circuit until after the Democratic National Convention, which ends on Aug. 22. The pace and the plan for the Republican nominee’s August this year is a stark departure from what Trump’s schedule looked like in August of 2016, the last time he campaigned in person for president. Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, — as well Trump’s running mate JD Vance, — have all spent the week barnstorming presidential battleground states.