Free Republic

Did FBI headquarters bury Hunter Biden laptop in “Prohibited Access” black hole? The United States attorney screening evidence related to Ukrainian corruption in the lead-up to the 2020 election did not know the FBI’s Sentinel case management system had a stealth feature to render files invisible during search queries. Nor did anyone from FBI headquarters reference the existence of such “Prohibited Access” files during discussions over access to relevant material related to Burisma and Hunter Biden. These new facts add to the growing scandal surrounding last week’s revelation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team placed documents related to the Russia...

Seriously, has anyone listened to the whole Hur audio? The establishment takeout that this is just about Joe Biden having pudding for brains is lazy and misses the deeper point, which is that the prosecutors had him cold on possessing classified documents he had no right to keep. Biden lies and dissembles and filibusters and goes vague and mumbly at all the crucial points, with the help of lawyer Bob Bauer, who interrupts every time Joe might incriminate himself and laughs like a hyena when Joe gets feisty or cracks a sarcastic joke at the prosecutors’ expense. It is vintage...

The City Council passed a slew of bills Thursday — including one that would ban noisy non-essential helicopter flights from city heliports following the horrific crash in the Hudson that killed a family of tourists and another to add a new gender ID to city documents. The two bills easily passed the Democratic-majority council but still need Mayor Eric Adams’ signature to become laws. A proposal aimed at cracking down on tour and commuter helicopters passed near unanimously — just two weeks after a couple and their three young kids visiting from Spain and a Navy veteran pilot all died...

An IDF brigadier general from the Southern Command lost classified and highly sensitive documents in a parking lot of an office tower in Ramat Gan, while on his way to a civilian meeting A civilian who passed by picked up the documents and handed them over to a security guard in the building, who reported the incident to the police and IDF. The IDF confirmed that the sensitive documents should not have been taken out the military base and the brigadier general is currently being investigated by the Information Security Department. Military sources stressed that he has not been suspended...

Vaughn Hillyard, NBC News Correspondent joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House with reaction to the breaking news that the Department of Education has mandated all employees out of headquarters by 6pm today, citing security concerns. Along with news that USAID is now instructing staff to shred or burn all classified documents.

The FBI is reportedly returning boxes of personal items back to President Donald Trump that were seized during the Mar-a-Lago raid, according to The Daily Wire. “The FBI is giving the president his property back that was taken during the unlawful and illegal raids," White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the outlet. "We are taking possession of the boxes today and loading them onto Air Force 1.” It is not clear what items were taken, but it comes after the FBI raided the president's Florida home in 2022. The raid was in response to allegations that Trump had failed...

Newly obtained emails reveal that former president Joe Biden's White House was involved from the beginning in the investigation into the classified documents found at Donald Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago. Trump has been under intense investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The official narrative suggested that Trump had retained sensitive materials without authorization, which led to an FBI raid at his Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022. However, these new revelations confirm coordination between the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and senior officials before the official referral to the Department of...

The Justice Department on Wednesday moved to drop its appeal of a federal court order dismissing the criminal charges against President Donald Trump's former co-defendants in the classified documents case, which would effectively end the case. Then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland had cited the pending appeal as the reason why he would not publicly release special counsel Jack Smith's report on the criminal case he'd brought against Trump, saying it could impact the due process rights of the co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. The Justice Department's motion to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to drop the...

WASHINGTON – The last time Joe Biden packed up and left office, he took with him thousands of papers from his decades in public service — including some classified documents that should have gone to the National Archives for safekeeping. That move spawned a federal investigation into whether Biden had knowingly broken the law and a damaging Justice Department report that referred to Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” igniting public concerns over his mental acuity that eventually led Biden to drop out of the race. The discovery also watered down the significance of the criminal case...

An appeals court on Tuesday granted a request by prosecutors to drop the case against President-elect Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents. Special Counsel Jack Smith had asked the court on Monday to dismiss the case because of a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president. A Trump-appointed district court judge in Florida threw out the documents case earlier this year, but Smith had appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ex-CIA Lawyer Joseph B. Sweeney explains the inner workings of how the deep state protected democrat party interests in an effort to stop Trump. For many that will be insufficient as far as what is discussed in the video. However, I am an older man whose health is not stellar, and for me it is impossible for me to take notes for a 2 hour discussion. If you want to watch it, then watch it, if you don't then I understand. I will say that it is very informative & exposes how this raid was as corrupt as you imagined,...

When the film Truth premiered in 2015, only a little over ten years after the events depicted, film critics seemed to take the movie as a historical account. Based on Mary Mapes’s memoir Truth and Duty, the film was something else again. It prompted John and me to revisit the story in the Weekly Standard article “Rather shameful.” On Power Line I itemized “problems” with the film in “Lies of Truth.” Today is the twentieth anniversary of the CBS News broadcast that we helped expose as a fraud in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election. I find that even...

Documents written by former President Ronald Reagan revealing a closer look at the president’s life and beliefs have gone up for sale. The Raab Collection based in Ardmore, Pennsylvania lists eight Reagan letters, one signed document and a signed photograph for a total estimated value of $80,000. The documents touch on Reagan’s faith, friendships and crisis-handling during various phases of his life as an actor, governor and president. The letters were written between the years 1952 and 1993, the organization said. Nathan Raab, historical documents expert and president of The Raab Collection, as well as the author of "The Hunt...

How involved were Secret Service staff with a Democratic congressman’s office to strip former President Donald Trump of his Secret Service detail, if at all? How involved were Secret Service staff with a Democratic congressman’s office to strip former President Donald Trump of his Secret Service detail, if at all? A U.S. Army veteran judge advocate and director of a nonprofit organization wants to know. James Fitzpatrick, director of the Center to Advance Security in America, filed Freedom of Information requests with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security inquiring about Department of Homeland Security Legislative Affairs’ and Secret Service’s staff...

A federal complaint unsealed on Tuesday in Brooklyn has charged Asif Merchant, also known as “Asif Raza Merchant,” a 46-year-old Pakistani national, with murder-for-hire in connection with a foiled assassination plot targeting a politician or U.S. government officials on American soil. The plot was thwarted by law enforcement before any attack could be executed. Merchant is currently in federal custody in New York, according to the press release. FBI investigators believe that the intended targets of the plot included Trump and other current and former U.S. government officials, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter, per CNN. According...

The Defendant Allegedly Traveled to New York City to Hire Hitmen to Murder a Politician or U.S. Government Official on U.S. SoilEarlier today, a complaint was unsealed in Brooklyn charging Asif Merchant, also known as Asif Raza Merchant, 46, with murder-for-hire as part of an alleged scheme to assassinate a politician or U.S. government official on U.S. soil. Law enforcement foiled the charged plot before any attack could be carried out. Merchant is in federal custody.“For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing...

The federal government’s classified documents indictment was once considered a “slam dunk.” But this month, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida dismissed the case, ruling that the attorney general improperly appointed Jack Smith, and therefore Smith could not legally prosecute Trump. Smith promptly notified Cannon that he intends to appeal her decision, but it’s not clear what his strategy will be. There is now a near-zero chance that Donald Trump will be tried over this case in front of a jury before November—but special counsel Jack Smith is forging ahead with an appeal that could go...

Hunter Biden is using a pair of judicial opinions that were favorable to his father's political rival to argue his conviction on gun charges should be tossed out. In federal court papers filed in Delaware, Hunter Biden’s attorneys asked the judge who oversaw his gun trial to dismiss the case against him because of a federal court ruling in Florida dismissing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump. In the ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Jack Smith’s criminal case against Trump on the grounds that the appointment of and funding for the special counsel were...

Special counsel Jack Smith has formally appealed a federal judge’s dismissal of criminal charges against former President Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified information after finding the prosecutor was unlawfully appointed. Smith’s office filed a notice saying it would appeal Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling tossing out the 40 charges Trump faced to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Trump-appointed judge on Monday ruled that Attorney General Merrick Garland did not have the authority to appoint a federal officer with the “kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith.” “The bottom line is this: The...

In 1974, the Supreme Court seemingly approved a special prosecutor’s authority in then-President Richard Nixon’s case over the Watergate tapes subpoena. But in dismissing the classified documents case against Donald Trump on Monday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected language from that Supreme Court ruling to find that Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel against the former president. How could she have done so? Putting aside for a moment that she may be reversed on appeal, the answer lies in something called dicta, meaning language in an opinion that isn’t necessary to the ruling. Cannon deemed the language...