Free Republic

Byron York warned Monday of the rising "toxicity" of the anti-Trump resistance movement, highlighting three troubling developments in recent days. In a Washington Examiner column, titled "Anti-Trump fever takes threatening turn," York points to two op-eds specifically in the New York Times and Washington Post that he characterized as "rationalizations for denying Trump supporters public accommodation and for doxxing career federal employees." Appearing on "America's Newsroom," York noted that the co-owner of a Virginia restaurant who refused to serve then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said she believes the "rules are changing" when it comes to businesses or their staffers...

Congress is debating emergency humanitarian aid to care for migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border. The need is obvious. With virtually no barrier to stop them, thousands of migrants are crossing illegally into the United States every day. More than a million will come this year. U.S. law prevents border officials from quickly returning them. While they are being processed, some of the migrants, including children, are being kept temporarily in terrible conditions. American officials have an obligation to take care of them before those with no valid claim to be in the United States are returned to their home countries....

One of the more unfortunate effects of the Trump-Russia investigation — and there have been many — is the weakening of traditional standards of argument and proof in the public debate over allegations that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the 2016 election. (Just for the record: It didn't.) In particular, angry disputes about the president have done terrible harm to the principle that an investigator, be it a journalist or a prosecutor, should meet at least some standard of proof before leveling an accusation. Two examples. First is the so-called Steele dossier, the collection of wild allegations...

--SNIP-- The backdrop of conspiracy and coordination made every Trump-Russia episode, including routine political activities, look sinister. The Trump Tower meeting looked ominous in the context of conspiracy and coordination. Donald Trump's public statements about Russia and Vladimir Putin looked incriminating. Michael Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador looked suspicious. And more.

In February 2018, the House Intelligence Committee released the so-called Nunes memo. In four pages, the document, from the committee's then-chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, revealed much of what the public knows today about the FBI's reliance on the Steele dossier in pursuing since-discredited allegations that the Trump campaign and Russia conspired to fix the 2016 election. Specifically, it revealed that the FBI included unverified material from the dossier in applications to a secret spy court to win a warrant to wiretap Trump foreign policy volunteer adviser Carter Page. All that was classified. To release it, the committee appealed to President...

From now on, the Trump-Russia affair -- the investigation that dominated the first years of Donald Trump's presidency -- will be divided into two parts: before and after the release of Robert Mueller's report. Before the special counsel's findings were made public last month, the president's adversaries were on the offensive. Now, they are playing defense. The change is due to one simple fact: Mueller could not establish that there was a conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign to fix the 2016 election. The special counsel's office interviewed 500 witnesses, issued 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search-and-seizure...

A huge controversy erupted last year when President Trump declassified parts of the FBI's secret request to wiretap former Trump campaign volunteer foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Defenders and critics of the president argued over whether the October 2016 warrant application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court relied extensively on the so-called Steele dossier, which was a collection of anti-Trump allegations compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. They also argued over whether the warrant adequately informed the court that the dossier was, in fact, a work of political opposition research,...

At a contentious hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General William Barr dropped a big hint about his investigation into the conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation. "Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant and a FISA warrant," Barr said. "I would like to find out whether that is in fact true. It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort designed to stop the threat as it is being represented." Here is what he meant. There has been a lot of discussion on the...

On Thursday evening, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein spoke to the audience at an Armenian Bar Association event, and the Washington Examiner’s Byron York shared a passage from the speech:

Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is over, but the aftereffects of the Trump-Russia affair live on. One such aftereffect is the reluctance of some important figures in the 2016 campaign to speak out, for fear of continued legal entanglements. Take J.D. Gordon, who served as the Trump campaign's director of national security. Never accused of any wrongdoing, he played a central role in one of the most controversial and least understood episodes of the Trump-Russia matter: the approval of the 2016 GOP platform at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. On July 18, 2016, the Washington Post published a story...

Mark Levin goes on a tear this morning noting the second part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Trump-Russia collusion is “crap” and simply an “op-ed” on the former FBI director’s thoughts about obstruction of justice. Levin is right… Volume I was complete nonsense, there never was any Russia collusion-conspiracy. Volume II, “Obstruction”, was always the purpose of Mueller, Weissmann and Rosenstein. Don’t get lulled into thinking this thing is over; it is not. The Democrats don’t want people to notice the long-planned and coordinated Pelosi launch platform. The collective “left” want to run the impeachment hearing through the...

On 'Life, Liberty & Levin,' Washington Examiner columnist and Fox News contributor Byron York says the Mueller report confirms President Trump's stinging criticism of the Russia investigation.

According to actuarial tables maintained by the Social Security Administration, the life expectancy of a 70 year-old man is 14.30 years -- enough time to serve two terms and move on to physical decline. The life expectancy of a 78 year-old man is 9.33 years -- enough to last two terms and not a lot more. The life expectancy of a 79 year-old man is 8.77 years -- barely enough to make it out of the White House. Of course, each man might live to 100. None of us knows. But given their age, the issue is more than just...

John Dowd was President Trump’s lawyer during a critical time in the Mueller probe. Boy, was there a lot going on behind the scenes. A peek inside the epic battle of the presidency with the president’s attorney.

Many Trump opponents were shocked and disappointed by Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller's conclusion that "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." Some members of the "Resistance" and NeverTrump communities apparently had a deep emotional commitment to the idea of collusion. But there was no reason for surprise. For more than a year, Mueller sent sign after sign that he would not allege collusion. Those signs took the form of indictments and plea agreements against key Trump figures that did not allege any conspiracy...

Many Trump opponents were shocked and disappointed by Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller's conclusion that "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." Some members of the Resistance and Never Trump communities apparently had a deep emotional commitment to the idea of collusion. But there was no reason for surprise. For more than a year, Mueller sent sign after sign that he would not allege collusion. Those signs took the form of indictments and plea agreements against key Trump figures that did not allege any...

Before you impeach somebody, you have to persuade the American public that it ought to happen. You have to persuade enough of the — of the opposition party voters, Trump voters, that you're not just trying to ... that you're not just trying to steal the last — to reverse the results of the last election." says Nadler

There are two sides to special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone. On one side there are the under-oath statements Stone made to the House Intelligence Committee that Mueller says are false. On the other, there are the Stone statements Mueller did not challenge. The testimony for which Stone was indicted concerns his descriptions of dealings with two men — Jerome Corsi and Randy Credico — who Stone used to attempt to get in touch with WikiLeaks head Julian Assange in the summer and fall of 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, when WikiLeaks...

Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels and a 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful, jumped into the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation battle on the afternoon of Sept. 23. On that day, The New Yorker had published the allegations of a woman named Deborah Ramirez, who claimed that a drunken Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a party at Yale sometime in 1983 or 1984. Almost immediately, Avenatti took to Twitter with an allegation of his own. Avenatti said he had a client, "a woman with credible information regarding Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge." He did not reveal her...

Republicans on Capitol Hill have added enormously to the public's understanding of what happened in the Trump-Russia investigation. They're still doing it. But it will come to a screeching halt if the GOP loses control of the House in next month's midterm elections. The driving force behind the revelations is House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes. But a number of other Republicans in the House, including Reps. Trey Gowdy, John Ratcliffe, Bob Goodlatte, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows and others have also played critical roles. (In the Senate, Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Charles Grassley has done key work, but the...