Free Republic

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - A $200,000 bond agreement has been reached for former President Donald Trump as part of last week’s sweeping Fulton County indictment. Also on Monday, a $100,000 bond agreement was reached for John Eastman, one of Trump’s attorneys. A $10,000 bond agreement was also reached Monday for Scott Graham Hall, the Atlanta-area bail bondsman who was allegedly involved in commandeering voting information that was the property of Dominion Voting Systems from Coffee County in south Georgia. On Monday afternoon, Drew Findling, one of Trump’s Atlanta-based attorneys, was seen walking into the Fulton County courthouse. A...

Tyler Massengill has admitted using a homemade explosive to set a fire at the Peoria clinic in January, a few days after Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law with additional legal protections for abortion procedures. No one was inside the clinic when the fire happened. “I feel for the people who have lost their jobs. I’m not trying to play like I am victim at this. I was sincerely hurt,” Massengill, 32, said in court, apparently a reference to his belief that a former girlfriend had an abortion a few years ago. Prosecutors, however, said the woman told the...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Victory has many fathers while failure is an orphan, the saying goes. But there’s been no shortage of scapegoats floated by Ohio Republicans and conservatives this week as they look to explain why voters overwhelmingly rejected State Issue 1 earlier this week. A popular target for blame is the Ohio business community, which was divided over State Issue 1. The business groups that endorsed Issue 1 struggled to raise in-state money, due to their apprehensions about being tied to an upcoming November ballot issue that would add abortion rights to the Ohio Constitution, prompting the “yes” campaign...

Issue 1 was projected to fail on Tuesday, according to Decision Desk HQ, dealing a blow to Ohio Republicans who wanted to hamstring a November ballot question on abortion rights. Decision Desk HQ, an election results reporting agency providing results and race calls for the USA TODAY Network Ohio, called the race around 8:09 p.m. With about 28% of the vote counted, no vote was leading 68% to 32%. Tuesday’s election was the culmination of a months-long fight that began last year, when Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, first introduced a plan to tighten the...

On Friday night, a judge dismissed former President Donald Trump's lawsuit against CNN in which the current 2024 front-runner for the Republican nomination claimed CNN’s coverage of his election lies equated him to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Judge Raag Singhal, a Trump-appointed judge, ruled that CNN referring to Trump’s claims about the election being stolen as “The Big Lie” did not meet the criteria for defamation despite Trump’s belief to the contrary. "There is no question that the statements made by CNN meet the publication requirement for defamation under Florida law," Singhal wrote. "The next question is whether the...

LANSING — A key suspect in an alleged plot to illegally access Michigan voting machines following the 2020 presidential election says she has been indicted in the long-running probe and expects to be arraigned next week. “My attorney has been informed that I have been indicted by DJ Hilson, the special prosecutor in Michigan, working at the request of (Attorney General) Dana Nessel,” Stefanie Lambert said Wednesday on a conservative podcast, where she bashed the pending criminal action. “I'm not losing any sleep over this,” continued Lambert, a metro Detroit attorney who has worked for 2020 election deniers across the...

Voters in Ohio will decide in November whether to enshrine the right to abortion in their state constitution, after state officials on Tuesday confirmed abortion rights supporters had gathered enough signatures to place the question on the ballot. The measure will be closely watched by groups on both sides of the abortion debate, as activists consider pursuing referendums in other states after the U.S. Supreme Court last year stripped away national abortion rights. Ohio is likely to be the only state to vote on abortion rights this fall. The outcome may not rely on a simple majority. The state's Republican-controlled...

The Justice Department is appealing the 18-year-prison sentence handed down for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as other far-right extremists' punishments that were shorter than what prosecutors had sought, according to court papers filed Wednesday. While Rhodes received a lengthy sentence for seditious conspiracy and other convictions, the 18-year term was below the recommended range under federal guidelines and less than the 25 years the Justice Department had asked for in one of the most serious cases to go to trial in the Capitol attack. Defendants routinely appeal...

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Tuesday said, simply and for the first time, that "white nationalists are racists." That remark to reporters marked a reversal from days of controversial comments to the contrary, which had drawn criticism from Democratic leaders and head-scratching from some of Tuberville's Republican colleagues. Earlier on Tuesday, the senator told ABC News that white nationalists shouldn't all be labeled as "racist" while also insisting he opposes racism. Tuberville, a former college football coach first elected in 2020, had been pressed on his stance by ABC's Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott, who asked him, "Can you explain...

An attorney for former President Donald Trump was booted from the New York attorney general's case against Trump, and will now serve in a new role with a Trump-aligned political action committee. Alina Habba will take the lead in a new position for the Save America Leadership PAC, according to a press release on Friday. Habba is set to take over as the PAC’s legal spokesperson and general counsel while maintaining her position in assist Trump with “certain legal matters.” Trump’s communication director described the now-ex-general counsel as having performed “diligently” and “tirelessly” regarding the “many witch-hunt cases that have...

Former Virginia Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman, who advised the Jan. 6 committee, has joined Hunter Biden’s legal team to combat GOP investigations into the president’s son, conduct data investigations and analysis, and attempt to pour cold water on the first son’s now-infamous laptop. Riggleman, who served only one term in Congress before losing a primary in 2020, confirmed in a tweet on Wednesday that he is working with the younger Biden’s legal team to conduct data investigations and analysis to ensure the information being released about the president's son is factual and wholly accurate. “Truth matters. When I took this...

WASHINGTON — A Trump supporter who stormed the Capitol wearing a “Make Space Great Again” hat had two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition in his van when he was arrested Thursday near former President Barack Obama’s home, federal authorities said Friday. A federal prosecutor said in court Friday that Taylor Taranto, a 37-year-old man first identified by online sleuths in August 2021, also had a machete in the van he appeared to be living in. Taranto's van has been parked near the D.C. jail in recent weeks and he has appeared at protests in support of other Jan. 6...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – A member of South Dakota’s House of Representatives District 1 went on a podcast recently and claimed that Mount Rushmore is a “freemason shrine” and a portal for demonic entities to enter and spread communism throughout the country. A clip from a Now Is The Time podcast episode with Joe Donnell, from Sisseton, went viral on Twitter recently. As of Tuesday, June 27, the tweet reached 558,8000 people and had over 500 comments, 968 retweets and 1,378 likes. “What the Lord has revealed to me is that Mount Rushmore has a direct ley line to...

Washington — A California man who prosecutors described as "one of the most violent defendants on January 6, 2021" was sentenced to 151 months — about 12 ½ years — in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to violent and obstructive conduct during the Capitol riot. Daniel "DJ" Rodriguez admitted as part of a plea agreement in February that he attacked former Washington, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone with a taser, causing him to lose consciousness, and that he worked to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Rodriguez will also have to pay $96,000 to cover...

John Eastman, the Trump-allied lawyer who created a memo arguing that then-Vice President Mike Pence could overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, is set to face disciplinary hearings starting Tuesday in Los Angeles. The counsel for the State Bar of California is asking a court to revoke Eastman’s license to practice law in the state. Eastman faces 11 disciplinary charges for allegations that he engaged in a plot to push a far-fetched legal strategy for Pence to overturn Biden’s electoral victory during the certification of Electoral College votes by a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors alleged...

John Russell Howald, 44, from Basin, Montana, was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release for shooting into a home in what prosecutors described as an attempt to rid the small town of LGBTQ+ residents, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Howald was convicted by a federal jury on Feb. 17 of a hate crime involving an attempt to kill and discharge of a firearm, the news release said. He used an AK-style rifle at the residence of a lesbian, who was home at the time. He then walked...

A lawyer for former President Donald Trump reportedly said he was “waved off” of searching his Mar-a-Lago office for classified documents after the feds issued a subpoena demanding their return. Attorney Evan Corcoran told two colleagues he was barred from looking for secret documents in Trump’s personal office at the Florida resort club as he sought to respond to the subpoena, the Guardian reported Tuesday. The new report did not say whether it was Trump himself or some other aide who told Corcoran not to search the office, or why he complied with the request. Corcoran wound up searching only...

Defying a last-minute appeal by former President Donald Trump, the Texas House voted overwhelmingly Saturday to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, temporarily removing him from office over allegations of misconduct that included bribery and abuse of office. The vote to adopt the 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23. The stunning vote came two days after an investigative committee unveiled the articles — and two days before the close of a biennial legislative session that saw significant right-wing victories, including a ban on transgender health care for minors and new restrictions on public universities' diversity efforts. The vote revealed substantial divisions...

Doug Mastriano, the far-right state senator who was blown out in Pennsylvania's gubernatorial contest last fall, announced Thursday that he will not run for Senate in 2024. "At this time we have decided not to run for Senate, but to continue to serve in Harrisburg," Mastriano said in a video posted on Facebook Thursday. "So I know for some, that’ll be disappointing. For others, it won’t be disappointing, because you’re like, ‘Who’s going to fill his seat? Who’s going to be our voice in Harrisburg?’ … Whoever is that nominee, I will support them," he added. Mastriano had been openly...

Oath Keepers Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs was sentenced to 12 years in prison Thursday for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the U.S. Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021. This is the second sentence to be handed down to a defendant found guilty of seditious conspiracy with relation to the Jan. 6 riot, with the first being handed to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was sentenced Thursday to 18 years in prison. Rhodes received the longest sentence, to date, related to the attack on the Capitol. Along with a 12-year prison sentence, Meggs, 53, of Dunnellon, Florida,...