Free Republic

The Center for American Liberty, in coordination with the Dhillon Law Group, filed a First Amendment lawsuit against Governor Gavin Newsom, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and named county officials, in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, for criminalizing the free exercise of religion. The suit comes days after the Center for American Liberty threatened County Supervisors with such a lawsuit. In response, both San Bernardino County and Riverside Counties made limited accommodations for practicing Christians on Easter weekend only. Today's suit, Gish v. Newsom, demands religious liberty beyond Easter Sunday. Among clients represented is...

Trump and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in a Press Briefing Most Recent: March 30, 2020 - 5:12 P.M. EDT No. 14: March 29, 2020 - 5:43 P.M. EDT No. 13: March 27, 2020 - 5:56 P.M. EDT No. 12: March 26, 2020 - 5:26 P.M. EDT No. 11: March 25, 2020 - 5:54 P.M. EDT No. 10: March 24, 2020 - 5:43 P.M. EDT FoxNews Virtual Town Hall: March 24, 2020 - 12:55 P.M. EDT Pence @FoxNews Virtual Town Hall: March 24, 2020 - 12:02 P.M. EDT No. 9: March 23, 2020 - 6:11 P.M. EDT No. 8:...

Coronavirus is nothing to sneeze at. But so far, widespread panic may not be justified. You should know: Almost all of the reported coronavirus deaths in the U.S. happened in long-term care facilities in Washington State. And almost all of those occurred at the same facility. Most people who get coronavirus have mild or no symptoms. No young or middle-age people have died of coronavirus in the U.S. Most around the world diagnosed from January-March 1 have already recovered. Obviously, this is a fast-moving news target. For the latest information from the government, you can visit the Centers for Disease...

Congressional Record Links to Debate on Trial Procedure Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - Answer and Trial Briefs Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - Debate on Impeachment Procedure, S.Res.483 Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - Debate on Amendment @ 3:16 p.m.: Amendment 1284: Subpoena Acting Chief of Staff of White House Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - Debate on Amendments @ 5:16 p.m.: Amendment 1285: Subpoena Documents from Department of State (Pompeo, Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, Volker, Taylor, Sondland) Amendment 1286: Subpoena Office of Management and Budget Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - Debate on Amendments @ 8:13 p.m.: Amendment 1287: Subpoena Mick Mulvaney Amendment...

Marco Rubio - @marcorubio #SenateTrial Day 10: Final arguments 11am Monday. Final vote Wednesday at 4pm. Last March Rep. Schiff said there was "little to be gained by putting the country through" the "wrenching experience" of a partisan impeachment. But then they decided to do it anyway. The House admitted they didn’t try to enforce testimony of witnesses in court because it would tie them up in litigation for a year. But then spent weeks demanding the Senate do it now. We were never going to play this stupid game with them The same people to say "how dare Trump...

Order of Procedure Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. Chief Justice, colleagues, we should expect 2 to 3 hours of session today. We will take a quick break if needed. The CHIEF JUSTICE. Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 483, the counsel for the President have 24 hours to make the presentation of their case. The Senate will now hear you. The Presiding Officer recognizes Mr. Cipollone to begin the presentation of the case for the President. Opening Statement Mr. Counsel CIPOLLONE. Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, Leader McConnell, Democratic Leader Schumer, thank you for your time and thank you for your...

113th Congress, 1st Session Senate Document 113-1 SENATE MANUAL CONTAINING THE STANDING RULES, ORDERS, LAWS, AND RESOLUTIONS AFFECTING THE BUSINESS OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE Prepared by MATTHEW MCGOWAN Under the Direction of KELLY L. FADO Staff Director COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION Chairman, CHARLES E. SCHUMER UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS U.S. Government Printing Office Washington : 2014 Available via the World Wide Web: www.gpo.gov/senatemanual COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York, Chairman DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California PAT ROBERTS, Kansas RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi...

As the U.S. presidential race began roaring to life in 2016, authorities in the former Soviet republic of Latvia flagged a series of " suspicious" financial transactions to Hunter Biden and other colleagues at a Ukrainian natural gas company and sought Kiev's help investigating, according to documents and interviews. The Feb. 18, 2016 alert to Ukraine came from the Latvian prosecutorial agency responsible for investigating money laundering, and it specifically questioned whether Vice President Joe Biden's younger son and three other officials at Burisma Holdings were the potential beneficiaries of suspect funds. "The Office for Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds...

The next big witness for the House Democrats' impeachment hearings is Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine who was recalled last spring at President Trump's insistence. It is unclear what firsthand knowledge she will offer about the core allegation of this impeachment: that Trump delayed foreign aid assistance to Ukraine in hopes of getting an investigation of Joe Biden and Democrats started. Nonetheless, she did deal with the Ukrainians going back to the summer of 2016 and likely will be an important fact witness. After nearly two years of reporting on Ukraine issues, here are 15 questions I...

The Geneva Convention is the UN-backed pact enacted during the Cold War that governs the conduct of foreign diplomats in host countries and protects them against retribution. But it strictly mandates that foreign diplomats "have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State" that hosts them. You can read the convention’s rules here. I dutifully checked out my source's story. And sure as day, Yovanovitch did give a speech on March 5, 2019 calling for Ukraine's special anticorruption prosecutor to be removed. ... And the Ukraine media was abuzz that she had done so. ... Given...

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Wednesday seeking answers to questions regarding the way a consulting firm hired by Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company, appears to have used Hunter's Biden's role on Burisma's board to possibly influence State Department matters. Recently obtained State Department emails, made public through a FOIA request, indicate Burisma's consulting firm noted "two high profile U.S. citizens (including Hunter Biden as a board member) affiliated...

Relatedly, Representative Collins asserts that HJC's investigation cannot be "preliminarily to" an impeachment trial until the full House passes a resolution authorizing a "formal impeachment proceeding." Collins Mem. at 1. DOJ equivocates on this proposed bright line test to meet the "preliminarily to" requirement, Hr'g Tr. at 69:10-11, but seems to indicate that the House must go at least that far, see DOJ Resp. at 28. Like all bright-line rules, this "House resolution" test is appealing in terms of being easy to apply. Yet, the reasoning supporting this proposed test is fatally flawed. The precedential support cited for the "House...

The FBI under James Comey "unilaterally" made the decision to interview retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, excluding input from the Justice Department, ignoring the White House counsel and leading Flynn to believe agents were arriving as friends to discuss terrorism, his lawyer says. ... "When the Director of the FBI, and a group of his close associates, plot to set up an innocent man and create a crime -- while taking affirmative steps to ensnare him by refusing to follow procedures designed to prevent such inadvertent missteps -- this amounts to conduct so shocking to the conscience and so inimical...

Earlier this week, Michael Flynn's star attorney, Sidney Powell, filed under seal a brief in reply to federal prosecutors' claims that they have already given Flynn's defense team all the evidence they are required by law to provide. A minimally redacted copy of the reply brief has just been made public, and with it shocking details of the deep state's plot to destroy Flynn. ... What is most striking, though, is the timeline Powell pieced together from publicly reported text messages withheld from the defense team and excerpts from documents still sealed from public view. The sequence Powell lays out...

An explosive new court filing from Michael Flynn's legal team alleges that FBI agents manipulated official records of the former national security adviser's 2017 interview that led to him being charged with lying to investigators. It's Flynn's lawyers latest attempt to get the case thrown out. ... Whether the combative filings will persuade the court in a case where Flynn has already pleaded guilty remains to be seen. Prosecutors have strongly rejected claims they're hiding evidence, saying "the government has exceeded its discovery and disclosure obligations in this matter," including by providing Flynn with thousands of pages of documents. Federal...

In this case, high-ranking FBI officials orchestrated an ambush-interview of the new president's National Security Advisor, not for the purpose of discovering any evidence of criminal activity--they already had tapes of all the relevant conversations about which they questioned Mr. Flynn--but for the purpose of trapping him into making statements they could allege as false. This is no paranoid "conspiracy" delusion, as the government implies. It is well documented by the evidence already made public, which was long known to the government -- yet withheld from the defense--until after Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty and in clear violation of Brady v....

Oct 24, 2019 Citing string of classified leaks, Grassley & Johnson call for public accountability WASHINGTON - The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) is again refusing to provide any assurances that a steady stream of sensitive and classified leaks from the nation's intelligence personnel are being investigated. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) are voicing concern that the ICIG's failure to assure the public of any efforts to investigate the leaks will further erode public trust in critical intelligence agencies. In a letter to ICIG Michael Atkinson,...

Bunch of "whereas" followed by: Resolved, That the Senate-- (1) calls on the House of Representatives, prior to proceeding any further with its impeachment in- vestigation into President Trump, to vote to initiate a formal impeachment inquiry; (2) calls on the House of Representatives to provide President Trump, like every other American, with due process, to include the ability to confront his accusers, call witnesses on his behalf, and have a basic understanding of the accusations against him that would form any basis for impeachment; and (3) calls on the House of Representatives to provide members of the minority with...

Michael T. Flynn ("Mr. Flynn") requests this Court order the filing of his proposed redacted Reply on the public docket. ... From June 6, 2019, as evidenced by defense counsel's confidential letter to the Deputy Attorney General, the government attached in its response, new lead counsel for Mr. Flynn has given the government every opportunity to dismiss this case in the interest of justice on its own because of the rampant wrongdoing of government agents from the inception of the "investigation" and prosecution of Mr. Flynn. Instead of doing so, the government has continued to defy its constitutional, ethical and...

As the Justice Department's review into the now-debunked Russia collusion probe becomes more public, one issue likely to dominate debate is whether the FBI treated Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump differently during the 2015-16 presidential election. Exhibit One in that debate may involve a December 2015 event that has been kept from public view for most of the last three years. A half dozen sources with direct knowledge tell me that Clinton's presidential campaign was given a defensive briefing from U.S. intelligence that month about a possible foreign threat. Government officials have known for months about the briefing but were...