Free Republic

The Federalist has learned that the now-outed CIA and FBI informant Stefan Halper served as a source for Washington Post reporter David Ignatius, providing more evidence that the intelligence community has co-opted the press to push anti-Trump conspiracy theories. In addition, an email recently obtained by The Federalist from the MI5-connected Christopher Andrew bragging that his long-time friend Ignatius has the “‘inside track’ on Flynn” adds further confirmation of this conclusion.Svetlana Lokhova, the Russian-born English citizen and Soviet-era scholar, told The Federalist that she only realized the significance of her communications with and about Ignatius following the filing of attorney...

Among intelligence professionals, President Trump’s nomination of an inexperienced, partisan politician to oversee America’s spy agencies prompted deep dismay — but also a stolid reaffirmation of the spymaster’s credo: Let’s get on with it.

A new bombshell report reveals that a George Soros-backed group paid nearly $4 million dollars to Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, the author of the debunked Trump-Russia dossier. The rumors and stories of Soros funding the discredited hit on Trump have been circulating for sometime and are now confirmed. Back in 2018, Washington Post reported that George Soros had indirectly funded Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the infamous Steele dossier, a spokesman for the billionaire financier has acknowledged. Michael Vachon, the Soros aide, told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that Soros provided a grant to a nonprofit group...

As the spotlight shines on ex-CIA Director David Petraeus' biographer-turned-mistress Paula Broadwell, journalists have uncovered a speech in which she may have revealed classified information about the attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Broadwell told a Denver audience in October: "Now I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex [to the consulate] had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back."The CIA adamantly denied her the claim, which would have been a violation of laws prohibiting CIA detention....

The matter of Gen. Michael Flynn began with criminal conduct. But it was not committed by Flynn. The crimes were leaking the contents of classified telephone conversations between Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and revealing the identity of Flynn as a party to the conversations. The sorry saga began with a January 12, 2017 column about the Flynn/Kislyak conversations by The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who described his source as a “senior U.S. government official,” i.e., an Obama administration functionary. Whoever told Ignatius the fact of and substance of the eavesdropped conversations committed a felony by leaking classified information....

Guess what, @IgnatiusPost.he (Mike Flynn) doesn't know you and could give two shits about your opinion. What we do know is that you are an accomplice to a crime.

Jamal Khashoggi, serviced Muslim Brotherhood. Mulla / IG reps that now lamment J Cas absence. A Persian, Salman is the man.

WASHINGTON -- President Trump seems convinced that he has found the formula for success in foreign policy: Bully your adversaries, sanction them, squeeze them -- and then flatter them and make a deal. Trump followed this approach with North Korea and he got a showy summit meeting in Singapore in June with Kim Jong Un and a pledge (encouraging but so far undelivered) for denuclearization. He adopted the hard-talk/sweet-talk tactics with Mexico and, eventually, after a long pout, with Canada, and he got a trade deal that's a modest but real improvement over NAFTA.

On Friday’s Morning Joe, the MSNBC show’s hosts and guests spent most of their broadcast mourning the announced resignation of Minnesota Senator Al Franken from Congress in the wake of over half a dozen allegations of sexual assault against him. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, MSNBC’s liberal morning pundits went to extraordinary lengths to cast doubt on the women who have accused Franken of sexual misconduct, violating the network’s own oft-repeated standards for Republican and conservative politicians.New York Times writer Bari Weiss was even brought on to complain about how “some innocent people are going to go down” as...

The dean of foreign correspondents at the Washington Post, David Ignatius, just returned from a week in Syria. He went on MSNBC to talk about his trip and - reluctantly - report on the popularity of Donald Trump with fighters who are battling ISIS in Syria. Legal Insurrection: WaPo’s David Ignatius has just returned from a week in Syria. He was almost apologetic in prefacing his remarks: “I’m going to say something that in some ways is sympathetic to Trump.” He then proceeded to say that he was told by top US commanders that “the most daring and decisive” attack...

For David Ignatius, what is an acceptable number of terrorists and terrorist attacks in the United States? The question arises because on today’s Morning Joe, Ignatius, of the Washington Post, was discussing the Trump admin statement that since 9/11, 300 people admitted from countries on the reissued executive order have been subject to “criminal, counter-terrorism investigations.” Sniffed Ignatius: that’s a “tiny number.” Really? If those 300 had not been caught up in counter-terrorism investigations, how many would have carried out terrorist attacks? If only 1-in-20 had, that would be 15 terrorist attacks. Fifteen San Bernadinos, Pulses. Even one. Tiny? View...

Will Islamic terrorists launch a major pre-election attack to help elect Donald Trump? That’s the scenario Donny Deutsch floated on today’s Morning Joe. Deutsch is an ad man/Hamptons playboy. His pronouncements on national security and terrorism might thus be taken with a giant grain of salt. But Deutsch was responding to a statement by Wapo’s David Ignatius, a serious student of foreign affairs, who said a major attack could be a “game changer” that would aid Trump. Deutsch said if “the terrorists and the radical Islamists want Trump in there. And if the way Trump gets in there is a...

So much of America's future is at stake in the 2016 presidential election. But let's focus for a moment on just one area--energy and the environment--where the Obama administration has made startling progress.... Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, arguably President Obama's best Cabinet appointment, has been leading a quiet revolution in clean-energy technology. Innovation is transforming this industry, costs are plummeting and entrepreneurs are devising radical new systems that create American jobs--in addition to protecting the planet.... Here's a suggestion for any fact-based, technology-respecting candidate in either party: Promise that, if elected, you'll try to persuade Moniz to remain in place.......

Michelle might want to gently tap the president on the shoulder and remind him "umm, Barack, you're not in the faculty lounge any more. You're actually, uh, President and Commander-in-Chief. So you don't get to criticize your own failed policies as if you're not responsible for them. They're, umm, your policies, you know?" Commenting on President Obama's 60 Minutes interview in which he said he was "skeptical from the get-go" about his administration's failed policy of training Syrian rebels, WaPo's David Ignatius on today's Morning Joe called the president's reaction "weird," adding "he spoke almost like a man vindicated when...

The Washington Post published a column Thursday night by David Ignatius that purports to clear leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in exclusively using a home brew server kept in her home that held top secret classified information during her four year tenure as secretary of state. The column is entitled The Hillary Clinton e-mail ‘scandal’ that isn’t. Ignatius’ lead defense witness for Clinton is one Jeffrey Smith who is given four paragraphs of quotes defending Clinton. Ignatius identifies Smith as “a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents...

The Washington Post published a column Thursday night by David Ignatius that purports to clear leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in exclusively using a home brew server kept in her home that held top secret classified information during her four year tenure as secretary of state. The column is entitled The Hillary Clinton e-mail ‘scandal’ that isn’t. Ignatius’ lead defense witness for Clinton is one Jeffrey Smith who is given four paragraphs of quotes defending Clinton. Ignatius identifies Smith as “a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents...

Does Hillary Clinton have a serious legal problem because she may have transmitted classified information on her private e-mail server? After talking with a half-dozen knowledgeable lawyers, I think this “scandal” is overstated. Using the server was a self-inflicted wound by Clinton, but it’s not something a prosecutor would take to court. “It’s common” that people end up using unclassified systems to transmit classified information, said Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel who’s now a partner at Arnold & Porter, where he often represents defendants suspected of misusing classified information. There are always these back channels,” Smith explained. “It’s...

When protests broke out in Syria in late 2011, Russia hoped for a short, nasty war as a matter of Russian national interest -- just enough to put the Muslim Brotherhood and assorted Sunnis in their place. Violence from its own Sunni Muslim population has plagued Russia for decades. Saudi Arabia took over the defeated nationalist Chechen rebellion in the late 1990s, infusing it with money and Islamist overtones, prompting the second Chechen war. More recently, there has been open fighting and rioting in Moscow between Muslims and Slavs. Iran counted on a short war as well -- something to...

Amid reports that the Obama administration is refusing to share information regarding Iran with Israel as “punishment” for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s upcoming speech before Congress, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius on Monday provided new details into the tensions between Jerusalem and Washington. According to Ignatius’s column, the mistrust between the Obama administration and Netanyahu has widened even further in recent days because of suspicion in the United States that the Israeli prime minister has authorized leaks of details about the U.S. nuclear talks with Iran. “The decision to reduce the exchange of sensitive information about the Iran talks was...

TEL AVIV — This latest breach in the U.S.-Israeli relationship began around Jan. 12 with a phone call from Netanyahu. Obama asked the Israeli leader to hold fire diplomatically for several more months while U.S. negotiators explored whether Iran might agree to a deal that, through its technical limits on centrifuges and stockpiles, extended the breakout period that Iran would need to build a bomb to more than a year. But Netanyahu is said to have responded that a year wasn’t enough and to have reverted to Israel’s hard-line insistence that Iran shouldn’t be allowed any centrifuges or enrichment. Relations...