Free Republic

Former Rep. Ron Paul said he wished President Trump would "flip-flop" his policy on Iran and criticized Trump's loyalty to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia. "I think our country is not doing so well. Our foreign policy is in shambles," the Texas Republican said. "Unfortunately, the one place where I wish he would flip-flop every once in a while or change his policy completely is dealing with Iran. He is steady on it, he said it on the campaign. He's very loyal to Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia." Trump authorized airstrikes that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and...

Think about all of the media panel discussions on gun ownership you have watched; segments where second amendment advocates were ridiculed by media pundits for daring to bring up the possibility of the U.S. government using arms against U.S. citizens who hold opposing political views… There are hundreds of recent reference points. Now consider, earlier today U.S. House of Representatives Legal Counsel, Douglas Letter, argued in court it would be a possible remedy -for a conflict between branches of government- for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to order an armed “gun battle” between the House and the United States Department of Justice....

A Republican senator said he would vote to repeal the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act following a scathing report that found serious problems in how the FBI sought to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser. Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a longtime critic of the FISA program, told One America News Network on Saturday that the audit released last month by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz was a wake-up call to "stop allowing the American people to be subjected to this type of abuse and manipulation." "We should all be scared to death," Lee said. "We shouldn't rest until FISA is...

The historic fast-track impeachment of President J. Trump by the House Democrats may re-elect President Trump. The House followed party lines except for 4 Democrat representatives. The House vote is merely the charging document — tantamount to a grand jury indictment. The Senate is the trial court — the jury, the trier of fact.

The truth behind House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff’s role in engineering President Trump’s impeachment may soon come out. Judicial Watch, a nonprofit group promoting government transparency, is suing to get the whistleblower’s e-mails. That’s good news. Because no matter what comes of Trump’s Senate trial, Schiff should be held accountable for his devious methods. The public also needs the truth about the so-called whistleblower. Real whistleblowers deserve to be treated like heroes. But Eric Ciaramella — the man Judicial Watch and many media accounts have identified as the whistleblower and who doesn’t deny it — is no hero. To dignify...

Former US President Barack Obama is now in severe legal jeopardy, because the Russiagate investigation has turned 180 degrees; and he, instead of the current President, Donald Trump, is in its cross-hairs. The biggest crime that a US President can commit is to try to defeat American democracy (the Constitutional functioning of the US Government) itself, either by working with foreign powers to take it over, or else by working internally within America to sabotage democracy for his or her own personal reasons. Either way, it’s treason (crime that is intended to, and does, endanger the continued functioning of the...

The Democrats have taken a sinister, dangerous turn. The December 18 House votes (230-197 on abuse of power and 229-198 on obstruction of Congress) to impeach President Trump, one day shy of 21 years since Bill Clinton was impeached, followed one of American history’s most delicious ironies: the very date, December 10, that the House Judiciary Committee began formal debate, there was a reminder of the Ghost of Impeachments Past, none other than one Jerrold Nadler, who exactly 21 years earlier, in his opening statement in the Clinton vote, said, The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will...

FISA Court questions whether ‘information contained in other FBI applications is reliable’. Less than a week after Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz released his investigation detailing FBI misconduct in obtaining a FISA spy warrant on a Trump 2016 presidential campaign aide, the presiding judge of the FISA Court, Rosemary Collyer, issued a Four-Page Response Order on Dec. 17, 2019. This unprecedented order by the FISA court condemned—and verified—ongoing wrongdoing by the FBI in the entire approach to the FISA process. Judge Collyer’s order also highlighted just how serious these breaches of conduct actually were, and the potential...

The Department of Defense granted Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, the status of a special government employee in 2013, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to The Epoch Times. Alperovitch held the status for one year starting on Nov. 23, 2013. “He was an unpaid consultant limited to 60 total days in a year and has not provided any consulting services since that time,” Lt. Col. Carla Gleason, a Pentagon press spokesperson, wrote in an email. “In his role as a special government employee, Alpervotich provided services in cybersecurity, forensic cyber analysis, and post-incident remediation.” In 2013 and 2014,...

[GianCarlo Canaparo is a legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.] [...] Let’s start with the Constitution. Article 1, Section 2 states that the House “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” Section 3 states that the Senate “shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Critically, there is no mention of procedure here. So where does this supposed transmittal requirement come from? The answer is the Senate’s own rules. Specifically, its rules governing impeachment procedure. The first rule of impeachment procedure states that the Senate will not act on an impeachment until...

RUSH: To so to summarize in the Economist/YouGov poll, Trump leads Biden by six, Sanders by 26, Elizabeth Warren by 30, Pete Buttigieg by 41%. This is not a preference poll. It’s an electability poll. It’s voters, registered voters being asked, “Okay. In this matchup, who wins? That matchup, who wins?” It’s not a, “Who are you gonna vote for, who do you want to vote for, who do you want to see win.” It’s what do people think. And these margins, as I’ve said, make sense to me because the Democrats are offering nothing. We live in undeniably economically...

This has never made sense. It is never made sense when you throw every likelihood into it. They do these articles of impeachment, they go over to the Senate, they have a trial, Trump’s acquitted. What do they accomplish? Literally nothing. The worst outcome in any event, the worst outcome possible for her is for Trump to be acquitted. So how do you prevent that? You claim exactly what I said her out was gonna be. You refuse to send the articles and why? Because the Republicans are racist, sexist, bigots, homophobes, and they’re unfair, and they’re partisan, and there...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have the power she believes to prevent the Senate’s participation in impeachment proceedings, former Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz said Thursday. “Whether the House wants it to be in the Senate or not, the matter is now properly before the Senate,” Dershowitz said in a call with the Republican National Lawyers Association. “The presiding officer of the Senate can set a trial date, convene the chief justice and begin the trial. So I don’t think that Pelosi has the power that she thinks she has, or that my colleague Larry Tribe thinks she has.”...

Well, the last Democratic debate for 2019 concluded last night, and you can see why if you’re a betting man, the odds for Donald Trump’s re-election have increased. First, the Democrats are running on a platform that will destroy health care for millions of Americans. "Medicare for All" can only work if private health insurance is vaporized. That’s 150+ million private health care plans, some of which are held by union households. The wealth tax, the job-killing regulations, health care for illegals, bashing cops, the decriminalizing of border crossings, and entertaining some aspects of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New...

Former RNC chairman Michael Steele is the kind of Republican that MSNBC loves. He is more than willing to repeat the latest liberal talking points about President Trump. He continued that tradition on Thursday's MSNBC Live when he endorsed the latest scheme by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Harvard professor Laurence Tribe to refrain from delivering the articles of impeachment to the Senate until Senator Mitch McConnell gives into their demands for witnesses. Steele completely ignored the language of the Constitution, which plainly states “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” They don’t need to negotiate...

The New York Post named the suspected “whistleblower” — Eric Ciaramella — in a column published by the newspaper’s editorial board and called for the partisan CIA analyst to answer questions about his knowledge regarding allegations of corruptions against former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden.

On Sunday, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) appeared on MSNBC to talk about the 1994 crime bill. During the conversation, Clyburn made a shocking admission: he doesn't believe the Bill of Rights would pass if it was brought forth today. "You know what, I really believe sincerely that the climate we're in today, if the Bill of Rights the first 10 Amendments of the United States Constitution, were put before the public today, I'm not too sure we'd hold onto the Bill of Rights," Clyburn said. "Especially when I see what people are doing with the Second Amendment. No...

Former FBI Director James Comey initially portrayed last week’s damning report on the bureau’s probe of Russiagate as a vindication. This week, Comey admitted that Inspector General Michael Horowitz discovered “real sloppiness,” which is “concerning.” That characterization does not begin to cover the problems described by Horowitz, which this week prompted a highly unusual public rebuke from the court that reviews secret warrant applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The FISA court called the FBI’s conduct “antithetical to the heightened duty of candor” that applies in such cases. Comey may take comfort in the fact that Horowitz didn’t...

During a stunning interview last Sunday Devin Nunes called for the FISA court to be deconstructed. In my opinion it was that statement, not the IG report, that spurred FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer to make a public order today. Today, hours after Judge Collyer released her order, Devin Nunes responded to the review of the FISC by stating, accurately, Judge Collyer doth protest too much. In this interview Devin Nunes outlines his February 2018 notification to the FISC about the specific fraud upon the court; and as a result of that (and a follow-up) notification, Nunes again takes the...

To fully understand today’s response order (pdf here) from FISA Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer to the DOJ/FBI, a little background context is needed. As we noted, last weekend HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes dropped the gloves and essentially stated the DOJ/FBI were conspiring against U.S. citizens with the wilful participation of the FISA court. This was a stunning, albeit unreported, development. Nunes change in posture is important because he outlined that without severe corrective action the FISC should be dismantled. Additionally, on the specific issues of fraudulent applications to the FISC, in February 2018 Devin Nunes and former Judiciary Chairman...