Free Republic

USA -(AmmoLand.com)- In 2015, during Speaker Paul Ryan’s first Capitol press briefing as Speaker, he said he wanted a House of Representatives that was “more open, more inclusive, more deliberative, more participatory,” in his remarks. Three years later, after the Democrats won the House on November 6, 2018, Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi said, “Congress will be led with transparency and openness so that the public can see what’s happening and how it affects them … We will have accountability and we will strive for bipartisanship, with fairness on all sides.”I sent the following letter to Speaker Ryan and Speaker-designate Pelosi today,...

Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $575 million to resolve investigations by all 50 states and Washington, D.C., into a range of practices, the latest chapter in the bank’s long-running legal problems. The deal ends investigations that began after federal regulators revealed in September 2016 that Wells Fargo employees had for years opened millions of unauthorized bank accounts in customers’ names. The employees said they had done so because they feared losing their jobs if they could not meet the bank’s aggressive sales goals. The agreement comes after New York reached a separate, $65 million settlement with Wells Fargo in...

Raleigh, N.C. — The couple at the center of an international money laundering and murder-for-hire case appeared in federal court again on Tuesday morning in Raleigh. Investigators say Tanya and Leonid Teyf profited off a $150 million kickback scheme involving a contract with the Russian military and used the proceeds to purchase their multimillion-dollar mansion. Since December 2010, the couple opened at least 70 financial accounts at four different banks, and wire transfers show money coming into the couple’s bank accounts from countries known to launder money, including Belize, the British Virgin Islands, Panama and Seychelles. Investigators said the Teyfs...

Two nuns in California allegedly stole more than $500,000 from the school they had been at for years, which they spent in casinos and on vacations. Bank records show Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Lang had been embezzling funds from St. James Catholic School in Torrence for at least a decade, the Press-Telegram reported. But officials from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles told parents and alumni of the school that auditors have not been able to trace all of the money trail. Kreuper had retired as the school's principal earlier this year and she dealt with the school...

On Friday, failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stated she would “like to be president” during a live taping of Recode Decode at New York City’s 92nd Street Y. “I’d like to be president,” stated Clinton. “I think, hopefully, when we have a Democrat in the oval office in January 2021, there’s gonna be so much work to be done.” I mean, we have confused everyone in the world, including ourselves. We have confused our friends and our enemies. They have no idea what the United States stands for, what we’re likely to do, what we think is important. So...

Sexual Assault of a Child is a Crime! Don’t You bastards Understand That! IntroductionOn October 8, 2018, CRUX news service ran a story on the late Father John Harvey, founder of Courage, written by Opus Dei writer Christopher White. CRUX, as readers who have been following my byline for years know, doesn’t identify its large stable of Opus Dei writers, so until they do, I’ll have to do it for them.The title of White’s article is “Courage founder pushed bishops to resist zero tolerance on abuse”In his introduction, White notes that Father Harvey was opposed to the United States Conference of...

The numerous allegations of sexual harassment levied against him mean President Trump is a reprehensible monster, according to Hillary Clinton, but when it comes to similar claims made about her husband, former President Bill Clinton, it’s a different story. That’s what Hillary Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour during an interview Tuesday when Amanpour prodded her about the allegations facing her husband and how she squares supporting him with her criticisms of men like Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The difference-maker, according to Clinton, is the fact that the allegations facing her husband were thoroughly investigated by a federal...

Hillary Clinton, in a television interview Tuesday, rejected the idea that Democrats should be “civil” with Republicans in the age of Donald Trump, embracing a more confrontational and aggressive political approach. “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” Clinton said. Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said, “That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing Republicans seem to recognize and respect is...

After years of holding herself above the law, telling lie after lie, and months of flat-out obstruction, HIllary Clinton has finally produced to the FBI her server and three thumb drives. Apparently, the server has been professionally wiped clean of any useable information, and the thumb drives contain only what she selectively culled. Myriad criminal offenses apply to this conduct. Anyone with knowledge of government workings has known from inception that Hillary’s communications necessarily would contain classified and national security related information. Thanks to the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community, it is now beyond dispute that she had ultra-Top...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. California voters' decision to reduce penalties for drug and property crimes in 2014 contributed to a jump in car burglaries, shoplifting and other theft, researchers reported. Larcenies increased about 9 percent by 2016, or about 135 more thefts per 100,000 residents than if tougher penalties had remained, according to results of a study by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California released Tuesday. Thefts from motor vehicles accounted for about three-quarters of the increase. San Francisco alone recorded more than 30,000 auto burglaries last year, which authorities largely blamed on gangs. Shoplifting may be leveling off, researchers found,...

The Senate on Monday released 500 pages of documents, including text messages between demoted counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and his paramour, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. One of the formerly redacted texts suggests that the FBI may have been snooping into the Trump campaign way earlier than previously believed. Without mentioning any campaign specifically, the December 2015 text message refers to "oconus lures," which is FBI lingo for spies outside the continental United States. Strzok was leading the Clinton investigation at the time and would go on to play a central role in the Trump/Russia probe. It is being assumed...

Democrats have yet to reach a consensus on what message might resonate most favorably with voters this Fall. Citing a poll finding that 60% of voters don't believe the Mueller probe has uncovered any crimes, Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson suggested that "we need to focus our message on the successes of the investigation. Granted, there hasn't yet been any evidence of Russian collusion, but several people have been indicted for other crimes." Almost all of these "other crimes" involve lying to federal agents. The one seemingly significant crime not in this category is the charge that Paul Manafort engaged in...

Stop waiting for the constitutional crisis that President Trump is sure to provoke. It’s here. On Sunday, via Twitter, Trump demanded that the Justice Department concoct a transparently political investigation, with the aim of smearing veteran professionals at Justice and the FBI and also throwing mud at the previous administration. Trump’s only rational goal is casting doubt on the probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which appears to be closing in. Trump’s power play is a gross misuse of his presidential authority and a dangerous departure from long-standing norms. Strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin use their justice...

The former FBI informant at the heart of the Russian Uranium scandal, William D. Campbell, has given an exclusive, on camera interview to The Hill - in which he reveals that he was interviewed in December by FBI agents from the Little Rock, Arkansas for five hours about the Clintons. Of note - Campbell's attorney is Victoria Toensing, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General under Reagan who is now handling the Mueller investigation for President Trump along with her husband, former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova (also of note, newly minted National Security Advisor John Bolton was Reagan's Assistant AG, presumably...

<p>ES MOINES — The computer program that a former lottery security official used to rig drawings worth millions of dollars in Iowa and other states was more expansive than investigators first discovered, court records filed last week show.</p> <p>Eddie Tipton, a former employee of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL) in Clive, wrote the code to allow him to predict the randomly drawn numbers of multimillion-dollar jackpots in as many as 17 states and claim the cash prizes.</p>

One of the gravest and most damaging abuses of state power is to misuse surveillance authorities for political purposes. For that reason, The Intercept, from its inception, has focused extensively on these issues. We therefore regard as inherently serious strident warnings from public officials alleging that the FBI and Department of Justice have abused their spying power for political purposes. Social media last night and today have been flooded with inflammatory and quite dramatic claims now being made by congressional Republicans about a four-page memo alleging abuses of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act spying processes during the 2016 election. This memo,...

The time has come to face reality. Some American citizens are superior to others as far as justice under the law is concerned. They just are. Take the Clintons for example. Allegedly, they have been on a crime spree since they took control of the Governor’s Mansion in Arkansas back in 1979. And maybe earlier than that for all we know. But they are never held to account. Never. Rather than list all the Clintonian scandals and criminal accusations here, you can google them online and see the sordid details for yourself. The Clintons are representative of certain members of...

In July of 2016, FBI Director James Comey chastised Democratic presidential candidate for her "extremely careless handling of classified emails." It now appears that Comey himself may have been "extremely careless" when he leaked classified memos to a friend with instructions that they be subsequently leaked to the media in the hope that it would lead to the appointment of his friend Robert Mueller as Special Counsel. This week, David Hardy, Chief FOIA Officer of the FBI, made out a sworn statement that "all of Director Comey's memos were classified when they were written and remain classified to this day....

In the United States, nobody is supposed to be above the law, and that includes our elected officials. If top politicians are permitted to break the law over and over again and get away with it, that sends an absolutely terrible message to everyone else in our society, and it threatens the legitimacy of our entire system of justice. Hillary Clinton has been caught red-handed mishandling classified documents, it appears that she greatly betrayed our nation during the Uranium One deal, evidence has emerged that she has committed gross violations of campaign finance law, and the very deep corruption at...

Strong Republican critic of Donald Trump ‘dismayed’ by confidential information about the Trump Dossier he has seen… Senator Lindsey Graham, previously one of President Trump’s most trenchant critics who back in July 2017 actually proposed a law to prohibit President Trump from firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has now made the extent of his disillusionment with the FBI’s conduct and with the whole Russiagate investigation crystal clear. In an interview with Fox News Lindsey Graham says that after having reviewed confidential information about the Trump Dossier provided at the insistence of Congressional investigators he is filled with dismay and believes...