Free Republic

A former Google insider claiming the company created algorithms to hide its political bias within artificial intelligence platforms - in effect targeting particular words, phrases and contexts to promote, alter, reference or manipulate perceptions of Internet content - delivered roughly 950 pages of documents to the Department of Justice's Antitrust division Friday. ... "I honestly think that a free market can fix this issue," he told this reporter at a meeting in Washington D.C. "The issue is that the free market has been distorted and what's happened is that the distortion is so grotesque and the engineering is so repulsive,...

Friday, August 9, 2019 WASHINGTON, D.C. - Yesterday, Senator Rick Scott sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr urging him to seek answers from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray. Senator Scott has been seeking information on what steps the FBI has taken to address critical deficiencies in its handling of actionable intelligence on the perpetrators of acts of mass violence in Florida, including the tragic shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Pulse Nightclub. This letter follows an inadequate response from the FBI to Senator Scott's continued requests for this information.

The provisions in 26 U.S.C. S: 6103 protecting confidentiality of tax returns prohibited the Department of the Treasury from complying with a request by the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee for the President's tax returns. The text of section 6103(f), the statutory exception under which the request was made, does not require the Committee to state any purpose for its request. But Congress could not constitutionally confer upon the Committee the right to compel the Executive Branch to disclose confidential information without a legitimate legislative purpose. Under the facts and circumstances, the Secretary of the Treasury reasonably...

WASHINGTON, DC: Southeastern Legal Foundation filed a Motion for Publication of Records with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) on behalf of award-winning investigative reporter John Solomon and itself, seeking rulings, orders and opinions issued by the Court finding any of the attorneys associated with the Carter Page FISA applications violated rules of the Court or rules governing professional conduct by attorneys. Southeastern Legal Foundation successfully pursued Bar sanctions against sitting President Bill Clinton, ultimately resulting in the surrender of his law license on the last day in office and disbarment by the U.S. Supreme Court (1998-2001) as part of...

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., pressed President Trump on Wednesday to ask British Prime Minister Theresa May about the Steele dossier when he visits the United Kingdom next month. In a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner, Nunes lists a number of recommended questions "about the British government's knowledge of the Steele dossier and whether the British government took any unilateral actions based on information provided by [Christopher] Steele or at the request of any U.S. departments." ... Link to letter (scribd link from source)

David Kramer, a former State Department official, said in a deposition on Dec. 13, 2017 that he provided a copy of Christopher Steele's dossier to reporters from McClatchy, NPR, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed and to CNN's Carl Bernstein. He also shared the report with State Department official Victoria Nuland, Obama National Security Counsel official Celeste Wallander and Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger. ... Kramer said he also met Mother Jones's David Corn, The Guardian's Julian Borger, and Washington Post reporters Tom Hamburger and Rosalind Helderman. Kramer also said that ABC News's Brian Ross showed him...

It was widely reported that Theresa May paid a visit to Angela Merkel in Berlin shortly before the Chequers meeting. What did they discuss? We weren't told at the time. According to a confidential source who has seen a complete transcript of the meeting, the two leaders agreed to a plan that Mrs May allegedly told the Chancellor would "appease" Brexit voters while nonetheless enabling her to get rid of those Tories who were (in her words) "against progress and unity in the EU." According to the transcript, Mrs May is also reported to have agreed "to keep as many...

READ: The transcribed interview of Peter Strzok by the Committee on the Judiciary, joint with the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Link to transcript

Interview of: Lisa Page READ: The transcribed interview of Lisa Page by the Committee on the Judiciary. READ: The transcribed interview of Lisa Page by the Committee on the Judiciary - Day 2.

1 COMMITTEE SENSITIVE EXECUTIVE SESSION COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, JOINT WITH THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D.C. INTERVIEW OF: BRUCE OHR Tuesday, August 28, 2018 Washington, D.C. The interview in the above matter was held in Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, commencing at 9:05 a.m. COMMITTEE SENSITIVE 2 COMMITTEE SENSITIVE Mr. Parmiter. Good morning. This is a transcribed interview of Bruce Ohr. Chairman Goodlatte and Chairman Gowdy requested this interview as part of a joint investigation by the House Committee on the Judiciary and the House Committee on Oversight and Government...

Adam Lovinger, a former Defense Department analyst ... a whistleblower, is now battling to save his career. The Pentagon suspended his top-secret security clearance May 1, 2017, when he exposed through an internal review that Stefan Halper, who was then an emeritus Cambridge professor, had received roughly $1 million in tax-payer funded money to write Defense Department foreign policy reports, his attorney Sean Bigley said. Before Lovinger's clearance was suspended he had taken a detail to the National Security Council as senior director for strategy. He was only there for five months before he was recalled to the Pentagon, stripped...

June 6, 2018 The Honorable Rod J. Rosenstein Deputy Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20530 Dear Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein: The Department's reply to my May 11, 2018 letter seeking information about the circumstances surrounding Lt. General Michael Flynn's reported conversations with the Russian ambassador and FBI records related to those conversations is insufficient. The letter only recounts a series of publicly known facts about Lt. General Flynn's plea agreement and relies on improper excuses in refusing to provide the requested information. The Committee requires this information to fulfill its Constitutional function...

Case 1:18-cr-00032-DLF Document 8 Filed 05/05/18 Page 1 of 4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA DEFENDANT CONCORD MANAGEMENT AND CONSULTING LLC'S OPPOSITION SPECIAL COUNSEL'S MOTION TO CONTINUE INITIAL APPEARANCE AND ARRAIGNMENT Defendant Concord Management and Consulting LLC ("Concord"), through under- signed counsel, hereby opposes the Special Counsel's Motion to Continue Initial Appearance and Arraignment, and in support thereof states as follows: 1. The Special Counsel is not entitled to special rules, and is required like the Attorney General to follow the rules of the Court. See United States v. Libby, 498 F.Supp.2d 1, 10-11 (D.C.C. 2007)....

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence today made public a committee memo with information on abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Chairman Nunes issued the following statement: "The Committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes. Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies exist to defend the American people, not to be exploited to target one group on behalf of another. It is my hope that the Committee's actions will shine a light on this alarming series...

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post yesterday ran editorials calling for prior restraint on a memo written by the duly elected chairman of the House Intelligence Committee after he and his staff reviewed classified documents related to the so-called Russia investigation. These editorials are a stain on American journalism ... I believe in the First Amendment, and I thought that mainstream media did too. I did not see it as a doctrine of convenience that applied only to documents that buttress one side but then not applied if it might conceivably help the other side. ... the...

Timing of the release of the so-called Nunes memo is under what the press refers to as an arcane rule of the House. Here is the rule. Rules of the House of Representatives RULE X - ORGANIZATION OF COMMITTEES Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence 11. (a)(1) There is established a Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ... (g)(1) The select committee may disclose publicly any information in its possession after a determination by the select committee that the public interest would be served by such disclosure. With respect to the disclosure of information for which this paragraph requires action by the...

Prepared Floor Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee On Oversight of the Justice Department and the Need for Transparency January 24, 2018 I wanted to come to the floor today to talk about the Judiciary Committee's important oversight and investigations work over the past year. There are a lot of issues that need more sunlight and scrutiny. One of my key concerns is the loss of faith in the ability of the Justice Department and the FBI to do their jobs free from partisan political bias. The American people are rightly skeptical because of...

It became harder Monday night for President Donald Trump to help engineer the collapse of the Affordable Care Act. A federal court ruled that attorneys general in 17 states and the District of Columbia would be allowed to intervene in a case over crucial subsidies known as cost-sharing-reduction payments. ... In 2016 a judge ruled in favor of the House, saying the CSR payments were illegal because Congress did not appropriate them. ... But on Monday, the court ruled that the 17 states and DC could intervene and ... said ending the payments would be damaging to the states' citizens.

Republicans are questioning their ability to govern following seven months of constant turmoil capped by the dramatic failure in the Senate to advance ObamaCare repeal. ... In public, Republican lawmakers for the most part have sought to avoid blaming the steady stream of White House distractions and controversies for their legislative record. Privately, staff and members are more forthcoming. ... "We're horrified by the drama coming out of the White House," said a Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment frankly on the administration.

Now, a complaint filed Tuesday by Wheeler in United States District Court in the Southern District of New York threatens to spark new conversation. In the complaint, Wheeler alleges "Fox News was working with the Trump administration to disseminate fake news in order to distract the public from Russia's alleged attempts to influence our Country's presidential election," according to his attorney, Douglas Wigdor. ... The lawsuit alleges Ed Butowsky and Malia Zimmerman, a Fox News contributor and journalist, respectively, "fabricated two quotations and attributed them to Mr. Wheeler," and included them in the now retracted article. ... In the complaint,...