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As recriminations fly among Biden officials over who bungled the Afghanistan withdrawal, some are questioning the responsibility of Russell Travers, who was fired by the Trump administration as acting head of the National Counterterrorism and subsequently rehired by President Joe Biden to lead the interagency process on the evacuation operation. In March 2020, then-Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell fired Travers as acting head of the NCTC as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to streamline a bloated agency and remove ineffective individuals. The move was decried by former officials as a “purge” of career professionals, the Washington Post...

The Capitol Police officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol "will not be facing internal discipline," Capitol Police said Monday. After interviewing multiple witnesses and reviewing all the available evidence: "[The Department's] Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) determined the officer’s conduct was lawful and within Department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury. "The officer in this...

A Washington Post reporter has shared how British troops helped her and friends flee Afghanistan - as pressure mounts over US forces' continued refusal to leave Kabul airport. Susannah George told of how she and the paper's Afghan staff were able to latch on to a separate evacuation led by UK troops, after spotting them and asking for help to flee. That saw them hurriedly travel along a road to Kabul's Hamid Karzai Airport in armored cars driven by private security guards. Those roads were being guarded from Taliban interference by UK service personnel, before making it to the security...

The Biden administration on Sunday froze Afghan government reserves held in U.S. bank accounts, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in U.S. institutions, according to two people familiar with the matter. The decision was made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and officials in Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the people said. The State Department was also involved in discussions this weekend, with officials in the White House monitoring the developments. An administration official said in a statement, “Any Central Bank assets the Afghan government have in the United States will not be made available to the...

Afghan activists, journalists and advocates for women’s rights scrambled to identify escape routes Sunday as international civil society organizations intensified a chaotic effort to evacuate local allies under threat following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. The stunningly swift collapse of the Afghan state injected a sense of desperation into a month-long effort by outside aid groups and religious and advocacy organizations to secure visas, flights or any kind of way out for Afghans seen as likely militant targets. Human rights organizations in recent days have sent the State Department flurries of emails with spreadsheets laying out the identities and personal...

A federal judge just sided with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) in his defamation suit against The Washington Post. . According to the federal judge, the Washington Post published an article with “at least reckless disregard of the truth that it had previously reported.” . From The Epoch Times: The paper said in its motion to dismiss that its correction erased any claims to malice, but U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols rejected that argument. “A newspaper’s own prior (and correct) reporting that is inconsistent with its later (and incorrect) reporting could certainly give the paper reason to seriously doubt the truth...

The so-called bipartisan “infrastructure” bill, backed by Senate Democrats and 18 Senate Republicans, would reward blue states with federal money for driving up immigration levels to the United States. The bill, among other things, includes the Digital Equity Act that would help expand broadband to American communities that currently lack access to the internet. Slipped into the legislation are provisions allocating federal funding based on the number of newly arrived immigrants in a state or region — a design that rewards blue states who tend to have the largest foreign-born populations in the nation. As the legislation states, the Department...

Democrats are worried about winning the 2022 midterm elections after Republican state legislatures reformed 30 election integrity laws in 18 states and additional legislation may come.CEO of the Stacey Abrams-founded New Georgia Project, Nsé Ufot, told Politico, “If there isn’t a way for us to repeat what happened in November 2020, we’re f—ed.”Latosha Brown, cofounder of Black Voters Matter, told Politico that “hope is quickly turning into frustration.” She then asked, “When in the hell are those who claim that they are committed to democracy going to show up to protect those that protect democracy?”Along with the multitude of states...

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) plans to announce Monday the names of the five Republicans who will sit on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) committee to investigate the riot that occurred January 6 at the U.S. Capitol. McCarthy will appoint Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jim Banks (R-IN), Troy Nehls (R-TX), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), and Rodney Davis (R-IL) to sit on the 13-member select committee, according to a senior House GOP aide familiar with the matter. All McCarthy’s appointees voted against impeaching former President Donald Trump in January and all voted against establishing the select committee. Jordan, Banks, and Nehls...

Tuesday, MSNBC contributor and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson voiced his hope that former President Donald Trump’s legal team faces “the most severe punishment possible” for alleging voter fraud in the 2020 election. Robinson argued on “Morning Joe” that Rudy Giuliani, Lin Wood, and Sidney Powell all had the “responsibility” and “duty” to not push “out-and-out lies” and “comment section nonsense” about election fraud. “Thank heavens for the federal court system because it did remain strong throughout this entire disgraceful process,” Robinson stated. “Like you, I’m surprised that this hearing didn’t happen in March or April as opposed to in...

In August, FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to a felony count of making a false statement while working to secure FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) surveillance on Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. In the early days of the Russian probe, an FBI official had asked if Page had served as a source for the government, as Page maintained; Clinesmith falsely altered a document by adding "not a source" in a fourth FISA application. Skip Clinesmith's punishment for making a false statement? Prosecutors recommended three to six months, according to Politico. Federal Judge James Boasberg instead sentenced Clinesmith...

The FBI has infiltrated a "Bible study" group in Virginia that after the January 6 riot had members discussing surveilling the US Capitol and their wish for secession from the US, and investigators closely followed one member's plans to build and test Molotov cocktails, according to recently unsealed court records.— snip —The newly disclosed criminal case against Virginia man Fi Duong -- who also goes by "Monkey King" and "Jim," according to the court record -- arose after Duong interacted with undercover law enforcement officers several times on January 6 and into recent months, when the FBI ultimately gained access...

The 10-member panel on the House Ethics Committee voted Thursday to drop the $5,000 fine issued to Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who challenged the report by the Capitol that said she failed to complete a security screening before entering the House building. This is the third time a majority of the evenly split bipartisan panel voted in favor of waiving the metal detector fee since the Jan. 6 protest at the Capitol. In May the Capitol Police issued a report that documented an incident where Foxx set off a metal detector in front of a door to the House chamber....

MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace said Wednesday on her show “Deadline” that only Republicans have had a partisan approach to the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill. Wallace “I don’t think the Republicans are the ones to watch. I actually don’t. I think it’s how savvy can Democrats be with just how bipartisan this has been. It was a bipartisan vote to impeach. It was a bipartisan vote to convict the ex-president. It wasn’t enough. It was a bipartisan vote to create a commission and came up short in the Senate. What is partisan is the obstruction. The only thing partisan...

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) asked Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on Thursday to investigate if the National Security Agency (NSA) spied on Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “Now, there is a public report that NSA read the emails of Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Although NSA publicly denied targeting Carlson, I have serious questions regarding this matter that must be answered,” McCarthy’s press release stated.

The only relevant part of the article is this: According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. This is the entirety of the info on the Flynn leak in the WP article. Nothing else is written. It seems the reporter got the info from a "senior administration official" who hit the system, verified the date and volume of Flynn calls (and nothing else) to the Russian. Question: The...

Washington Post reporter Hannah Dreier published a series of misleading tweets over the weekend accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of fumbling the state’s response to the recent building collapse in the town of Surfside. On Saturday, Dreier posted a screenshot of FEMA’s response to the recent building collapse, claiming that it took DeSantis a full 24 hours to approve any form of emergency assistance for the affected area. “There’s a saying in emergency management: The first 24 hours are the only 24 hours,” Dreier stated. “FEMA was ready to deploy to the condo collapse almost immediately, and included the crisis...

Now, there is newly revealed evidence that Fauci may also have given false or misleading statements during a House hearing a year ago that was examining that same funding. As reported exclusively by Fox News, an upcoming book by two Washington Post reporters details how Fauci resisted a presidential directive from the Trump White House in April of 2020 to cancel a research grant to a nonprofit that was funneling taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan lab. Fauci knew why the order had been issued. President Trump was alarmed by various reports connecting risky gain-of-function research inside the lab to the...

ROME – On Friday the U.S. State Department confirmed a European tour for United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken next week that will include stops in Italy and the Vatican, where he is expected to meet with top Holy See officials. According to the State Department’s June 18 communique, Blinken’s tour will last from June 22-29. He will first visit Berlin and Paris before coming to Italy, making stops in Rome, the Vatican, Bari, and Matera. While in Rome, he will co-chair a meeting of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS alongside Italian Foreign Minister Luigi De Maio, and...

Breaking911 @Breaking911 #BREAKING: Police did not clear D.C.'s Lafayette Park of protestors so Trump could hold a photo op, Gov't probe says - https://breaking911.com/breaking-police-did-not-clear-d-c-s-lafayette-park-of-protestors-so-trump-could-hold-a-photo-op-govt-probe-says/ 12:59 PM · Jun 9, 2021 1.5K 132 Share this Tweet ============================================================================= We found that the USPP had the authority and discretion to clear Lafayette Park and the surrounding areas on June 1. The evidence we obtained did not support a finding that the USPP cleared the park to allow the President to survey the damage and walk to St. John’s Church. Instead, the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow...