Free Republic

Apologies for any inexact language, I’m dictating from the road back from Ithaca. This afternoon a story came out on Public that I co-wrote with Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag. Like our previous collaborations, this is a breaking news story, one that we worked on for many weeks. Without giving away the whole story, this first installment relies on a never-released classified report to describe a broad political espionage campaign that reportedly involved at least 26 Trump aides and associates. I strongly urge anyone interested in the topic to check out the article, titled “CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On...

When the Trump-Russia operation began unraveling, it was clear that there was an international cast of characters involved in the frame-up. The operation to get Trump — in time to torpedo his election in 2016 and then subvert his presidency — involved the Hillary Clinton campaign, the CIA's John Brennan, who informed President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden of the operation, the FBI, which appeared to cover it up, a reputed Russian spy working for a Democrat think tank, a mysterious Maltese professor, an international honeypot, an Australian diplomat, and a British spy. It was the earthly equivalent of...

Anxious FBI chiefs are trawling through 'numerous' top-level investigations spanning 22 years for fear they were compromised by convicted bureau spook Charles McGonigal, DailyMail.com can reveal. The forensic clean-up operation ranges over the entire time the philandering former head of counterintelligence in New York worked for the agency. McGonigal, 55, has already been sentenced to four years and two months in prison for taking money and conspiring with a sanctioned Russian oligarch who is a crony of despot President Vladimir Putin. But the full possible repercussions of his treachery are outlined in a sentencing memorandum by the US government for...

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that he believed supporters of former President Donald Trump were “engaging in threats of violence,” while supporters of President Joe Biden were not prone to violence. Strzok said, “My biggest concern is that we have the presumptive Republican nominee for president who has and continues to engage in calls for violence from his supporters. Look, there’s an interesting data point here. Just shortly after the Michigan Supreme Court indicated they weren’t going to take this up, Donald Trump took to Truth Social and lauded their decision, talked about how they...

Former high-ranking FBI official Charles McGonigal started tearing up Thursday as he was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison for colluding with a Russian oligarch to evade US sanctions. McGonigal, 55, was ordered to surrender by Feb. 26, 2024, made to serve three years of supervised release following his time behind bars, and was fined $40,000. After he exited the courthouse, McGonigal told onlookers, “Happy holidays.” McGonigal, who helmed the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York from 2016 to 2018, pleaded guilty to the charge back in August. “[McGonigal] well knew his actions violated those sanctions,” Manhattan federal judge...

Charles McGonigal, who had been the special agent in charge of the FBI‘s counterintelligence division in New York, is accused of taking secret payments from Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in exchange for investigating a rival oligarch, according to court documents. Mr. McGonigal, 54, is one of the highest-ranking FBI officials ever charged with a crime. He faces one count of violating U.S. sanctions, one count of money laundering and two conspiracy counts.

The FBI’s reputation problems have accelerated with the arrest on corruption charges of Charles McGonigal, the former chief of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office, one of the most powerful spy-hunters in the country - who also happened to be connected to Hunter Biden. In twin indictments last month, McGonigal was charged with taking secret cash payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer, holding secret meetings with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and attempting to remove top Kremlin oligarch Oleg Deripaska from a US sanctions list. The Albanians cited by prosecutors tie this scandal to Hunter Biden and...

A former FBI agent and senior official for counterintelligence operations in New York was arrested and charged for his involvement with a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to Fox News. Charles McGonigal, special agent in charge of the counterintelligence division of the FBI's New York field office from 2016 to 2018, allegedly violated U.S. sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian who was charged in 2022 for violating sanctions against him. McGonigal was among top FBI officials who learned of claims from President Donald Trump's team that Russia had compromising knowledge about then-candidate Hillary Clinton, which subsequently...

Donald Trump ordered a complete withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and Somalia after he lost the 2020 election, the January 6 committee said at their Thursday hearing. The memo was written to the acting Secretary of Defense on November 11 to take effect on January 15, 2021 - just before President Joe Biden was meant to take office. The revelation was made by GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who is retiring from Congress at the end of this year after facing opposition from Trump over his re-election. Trump National Security Council Official Gen. Keith Kellogg said he warned the former...

Charles McGonigal, the former head of counterintelligence at the FBI field office in New York City who was involved in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia during the 2016 election, has fallen under the scrutiny of a grand jury convened by U.S. attorneys late last year for his own ties with Russia and other foreign governments, reports Insider. The grand jury is reportedly investigating McGonigal’s business dealings with a top aide to Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire Russian oligarch who was at the center of allegations that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign, according to a recently obtained...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign charged with lying to the FBI during the Trump-Russia investigation is asking a judge to block from his upcoming trial evidence or testimony related to a dossier of uncorroborated allegations compiled by an-ex British spy. Attorneys for Michael Sussmann said prosecutors on special counsel John Durham’s team told them last month that they plan to introduce testimony related to the so-called “Steele dossier,” a collection of Democratic-funded research assembled by former British operative Christopher Steele that purported to link Donald Trump to Russia. The dossier contains unproven and discredited assertions...

The Federal Election Commission has fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign $8,000 and the Democratic National Committee $105,000 for obscuring their funding of the "Steele dossier," a 2016 opposition research report that sought to highlight alleged links between Donald Trump and Russia. The bipartisan election commission also dismissed a complaint against Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier that caused a firestorm of allegations and investigations that shook the early months of Trump's presidency. The campaign mislabeled Steele's work as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" in campaign filings, the FEC concluded...... Steele's report concluded, based on anonymous sources, that...

resident Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg were roundly mocked by conservatives last week for suggesting that working-class Americans struggling to pay the ever-climbing prices at the pump should consider simply buying an electric vehicle instead. It was the Biden-era equivalent of Marie Antoinette’s (admittedly apocryphal) adage, “Let them eat cake.” Yet this simple solution floated by Democrat elites might just be even more fantastical than expecting average Americans to be in the financial position to switch to an EV as they struggle to afford groceries. Turns out, the U.S. doesn’t only rely on Russia for oil imports —...

MOSCOW (Mineweb.com) -- It is almost forty years since those fine falsettos, the Bee Gees, put their pop classic, “Massachusetts”, on the top of the charts. They had no idea that their lyrics might become the alleged plot of a scheme by a trio of Ukrainian metal men to steal hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the processing of manganese ore, and the sale of ferromanganese, ferrosilicon, and silicomanganese to steelmakers around the world. “And the lights all went out in Massachusetts,” sang Robin and Barry Gibb. “They brought me back to see my way with you.” On...

Alexei Navalny, the man seen as one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top critics in the country, was allegedly poisoned during a flight from Siberia to Moscow and has since been hospitalized. The 44-year-old is said to be in a coma and on a ventilator in a hospital intensive care unit after falling ill on a flight back to Moscow from Tomsk, a city in Siberia.

Fired FBI executive Andrew McCabe says America's conservatives are as bad as Islamic terrorists and the federal government needs vastly increased powers to spy on them. The stunning words from McCabe came during his recent speech at the University of Chicago, and were captured by a report in The Federalist about his comments on conservatives. "I can tell you from my perspective of spending a lot of time focused on the radicalization of international terrorists and Islamic extremist and extremists of all stripes … is that this group shares many of the same characteristics of those groups that we've seen...

video“I thank the gentleman for yielding because I think someone may be trying to kill me. And if they are successful, I would like my constituents and my family to know who stopped their arrest.Madam Speaker, on October 8, 2021, a Twitter handle, styled, CIA Bob is at your door, tweeted to @RepMattGaetz, ‘Looky here, pal. I lived in Portland. Portland has ordered a hit on you. I accepted the contract. Have a good day.’Following this tweet, this individual traveled to Washington, D.C., and the Capitol Police recommended his arrest.That’s information that was just shared with me by the investigations...

Barr stated: "The thing that’s interesting about this is that this was handled at a very senior level of these departments. It wasn’t handled in the ordinary way that investigations or counterintelligence activities are conducted. It was sort of an ad hoc, small group — and most of these people are no longer with the FBI or the CIA or the other agencies involved." They worked exclusively for two groups of “customers,” officials said. The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government. The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA and FBI...

A dark money group based in California contributed $2 million to The Democracy Integrity Project, the organization that has contracted with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to investigate President Donald Trump. The Democracy Integrity Project’s founder, a former staffer for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has acknowledged to the FBI that the group provides information to the press, lawmakers and investigators. Fund for a Better Future is the second Democracy Integrity Project donor to have been identified. George Soros gave $1 million to the group. A dark money group with links to several high-profile liberal activists contributed $2 million to The Democracy...

Breaking news from the New York Times: John H. Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to scrutinize the Russia investigation, has told the Justice Department that he will ask a grand jury to indict a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on a charge of making a false statement to the F.B.I., people familiar with the matter said.