Free Republic

A dual Venezuelan-Italian citizen who controlled multiple companies via U.S. based bank accounts was charged in an indictment returned Tuesday for his role in laundering the proceeds of inflated contracts that were obtained by making bribe payments to officials at Venezuela’s state-owned and state-controlled energy company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA). Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan of the Southern District of Florida, Special Agent in Charge Anthony Salisbury of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Miami Field Office, and Acting Special Agent in...

Former Sen. Al D’Amato is going after Mitt Romney for trying to take down GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, claiming Romney’s acting like a “spoiled rich kid” who is trying to revive his political career at the expense of Republican Party. “This is Romney’s reach from the grave,” D’Amato told The Post in a withering attack against the 2012 GOP standard bearer. “If you believe that Gov. Romney’s purpose in sabotaging Trump was to save the nation and the Republican Party, then you probably still believe in the tooth fairy,” said D’Amato. “Romney would love to see a deadlocked Republican...

ASHINGTON, June 7— A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade as it grew from obscurity into a global terrorist threat, lawmakers and investigators said this week.As Congressional investigators look back far beyond the series of signals missed before the Sept. 11 attacks, they are seeking answers to many questions about Al Qaeda that law enforcement and intelligence agencies still cannot answer themselves, officials said.In particular, they said, Congressional investigators are trying...

D’Amato has supposedly endorsed Bruce Blakeman for Senate, and has lately been selling his soul to get Conservative and Republican endorsements. Even the most amateur of political observers conclude that good old Al has been desperately seeking the Republican nomination for Blakeman, in order to ensure Gillibrand’s retention of her ill-gotten seat. Two pictures are worth a thousand words; and, remember, they are taken less than 18 months apart. On the left we have Blakeman’s formal announcement of his candidacy for U.S. Senate. And on the right, we have the Gillibrand announcement. Anyone who has already endorsed Bruce Blakeman may...

At the state level, governors like New York’s George Pataki and California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger pandered to government-employee unions and opened the spending spigots, to taxpayers’ ongoing horror. Other culprits include the state-level influence peddlers who seem more interested in cash than in free-market and conservative principles.New York ’s former U.S. senator Alfonse D’Amato is a perfect example of this breed. “Senator Pothole” personally discovered an obscure state senator, George Pataki, from Peekskill, N.Y. After being muscled through the state GOP convention, Pataki scored the party’s nomination and won the governorship in 1994. After some limited first-term tax cutting, Pataki’s spend-o-rama...

The appointment by New York Governor David Paterson of Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand to the vacant senate seat of Hillary Clinton raises serious questions surrounding the illegal dirty tricks employed to elect Gillibrand to Congress in the first place. In 2006 Governor George Pataki's Chief of Staff Zenia Mucha illegally obtained New York State Police records regarding a domestic dispute between then Congressman John Sweeney and his wife. The records were obtained by former State Police captain Daniel Wiese, who functioned as a dirty tricks operative for Pataki and later Governor Eliot Spitzer. Wiese was also the operative who pressured State...

A federal grand jury in Manhattan is investigating one of the largest internet poker sites serving US gamblers and could bring indictments against some of the world's best known professional players, according to people familiar with the case and a subpoena issued to a witness this week. The probe is aimed at Full Tilt Poker and individuals including Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer, champion gamblers who are among those accused of controlling the company in a Los Angeles civil lawsuit filed last year. Online gambling is illegal in the US and according to the subpoena the investigation is examining whether...

DioGuardi Gets Hometown SupportBy Elizabeth Benjamin Former Westchester Rep. Joe DioGuardi has locked up the support of his hometown party organization as the jockeying for position among would-be GOP challengers to Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand intensifies, the DN's Glenn Blain reports. Westchester Republican Chairman Doug Colety said his committee will formally announce its endorsement of DioGuardi as early as next week. The decision was made at a committee meeting about a week ago. "We want to give him the hometown support and a very strong kickoff,” DioGuardi said. DioGuardi, who turns 70 this year, is a certified public accountant and...

Former Sen. Al D'Amato (R-NY) appeared on Neil Cavuto's TV show, and said that he'll likely be making an endorsement soon in the NY-23 special election -- and that he's leaning heavily towards backing Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava. "I will say to you that I am leaning heavily towards the Conservative," said D'Amato, citing Scozzafava's support for the Employee Free Choice Act as major point against her. D'Amato was first elected in 1980, defeating liberal Republican incumbent Sen. Jacob Javits in the GOP primary. He was re-elected in 1986 and 1992, and then defeated...

Former three-time U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato is expecting his a baby with wife Katuria, 43. This will be his 6th child and he also has 14 grandchildren. Alfonso D’ Amato is going to be a daddy again at the ripe old age of 71. His wife, Katuria, who is 43 years old is expecting their second child together. The baby is due this October. Their first child together, Alfonso Marcello is only 14 months old.D’Amato has four children from a previous marriage along with 14 grandkids.The former senator said that this baby will make their family complete now. “Our little...

February 26, 2009, 4:00 a.m. RINO Fixers Are Part of the GOP’s ProblemAl D'Amato and Warren Tompkins wreak havoc, north and south. By Deroy Murdock As Republicans crawl from the wreckage of the once-mighty GOP, it is important to identify exactly who helped drive the party into a ravine. At the federal level, spendthrift former president George W. Bush and equally irresponsible pork-barrelers like Rep. Don “Bridge to Nowhere” Young made a mockery of the party’s fiscal-conservative credo. At the state level, governors like New York’s George Pataki and California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger pandered to government-employee unions and opened the...

ORLANDO, Fla. — Senator John McCain of Arizona scooped up $1 million for his presidential campaign on Tuesday night in the center of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s political turf, the St. Regis Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, and announced the support of former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato and a swath of the New York Republican establishment.

In his autobiography, Alfonse M. D’Amato, the former senator from New York, wrote with what may have been unintended irony that the day two decades ago on which he and Rudolph W. Giuliani donned undercover disguises to expose drug dealing was “the high point of our alliance.” Now, the on-again, off-again, on-again relationship of Mr. D’Amato and Mr. Giuliani has taken another twist. Not only has Mr. D’Amato been prepping Fred D. Thompson, the former television actor and senator from Tennessee, for next Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, in mock encounters he has also been playing the role of Mr. Giuliani.

NEW YORK -- Former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato is looking forward to a few big milestones - his anniversary, his 70th birthday and a baby. "If you had told me this prior to getting married, I would have said you're out of your mind," D'Amato joked Friday as he confirmed his wife, attorney Katuria D'Amato, 41, is due in February. The D'Amatos celebrate their third anniversary next week; his birthday is Aug. 1. "We're tremendously blessed. God has given us this wonderful news and we're very excited about it," D'Amato said. The baby business isn't exactly new to D'Amato, who lost...

June 26, 2007 -- Former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato has selected a team of prominent Republicans - including outgoing MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow - to lead Fred Thompson's presidential effort in New York, The Post learned yesterday. Kalikow, a major developer, will be responsible for fund-raising in the city's super-affluent real-estate community while Syracuse-area businessman and former state GOP boss Patrick Barrett will raise funds upstate, D'Amato said. D'Amato, who will head up Thompson's New York campaign and serve as an adviser to his national effort, said he expects the former U.S. senator from Tennessee to officially declare his candidacy "in...

On Tuesday’s “Inside City Hall,” former GOP Senator Alfonse D'Amato announced he is backing former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson for the Republican presidential nominee. Speaking as part of NY1's weekly "Wise Guy's" roundtable, D’Amato said the Law and Order star and fellow Republican is the man to lead the country. "I think he can provide America with the kind of leadership that the people desperately need, and that this country needs,” said D’Amato. “And you know if America doesn't have a leader that the world can look up to, the world is in trouble." While Thompson has yet to officially...

Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, right, U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, center, and Benjamin Baer, chairman of the U.S Parole Commission, pose in undercover clothes in this July 9, 1986 file photo, after D’Amato bought what he later told a news conference were vials of crack on a New York City street. D’Amato, dressed in a fatigue cap and Eisenhower jacket, made the buy with an agent of the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Long before he became mayor of New York or the Republican front-runner for the presidency, Giuliani made a name for himself as a crime-busting federal prosecutor in Manhattan. During a...

Former GOP Senator Al D’Amato said Republicans will "race to the center” in 2008 to make up for losses in the 2006 elections, and Sen. John McCain will be the man to lead them there. D’Amato, appearing Thursday on Fox News Channel, said the Republican Party was hurt in the elections by the "morass” in Iraq and the ineffectiveness of a GOP-controlled Congress to pass meaningful legislation. He also said President Bush was damaged by the appearance that he didn’t do enough to help Hurricane Katrina victims, with the image of Bush "flying over” New Orleans in a helicopter viewed...

Last month, William F. Weld, a candidate for governor of New York, set state Republican politics astir by telling of an encounter with Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato that cast his fellow Republican in a bad light and offered an explanation for their simmering feud. Mr. Weld said that in 1996, when he was governor of Massachusetts and running for the Senate, he received a $750,000 check from Mr. D'Amato that was delivered with an expletive-filled warning. Mr. D'Amato vigorously denied the encounter, calling it "a bunch of baloney" and asserting that he had never even spoken to Mr. Weld in...

When Al D'Amato and Bill Buckley are quoted on the same day saying nice things about Madame Evita Rotten Klintoon, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It sounds like a bit of preplanning for another Clinton Administration. I have a very sick feeling that the fix may already be in.