Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has decided that the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees is not immune from being sued, reversing the U.S. government’s position that the organization was protected from civil liability.The Justice Department revealed its new stance in a letter it filed in federal court in New York on Thursday as part of a lawsuit that aims to hold the agency, known as UNRWA, accountable for the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly attack on Israel by Hamas. The change in position underscores the hardened perspective toward the agency under the Trump administration following allegations by Israel that some...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The executive order directed at one of the country’s most prestigious law firms followed a well-worn playbook as President Donald Trump roared down the road to retribution. Reaching beyond government, Trump has set out to impose his will across a broad swath of American life, from individuals who have drawn his ire to institutions known for their own flexes of power and intimidation. Which is how the Paul Weiss, a storied New York law firm that since its 1875 birth has advanced the cause of civil rights, shepherded the legal affairs of corporate power brokers and grown...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pam Bondi had insisted at her Senate confirmation hearing that as attorney general, her Justice Department would not “play politics.” Yet in the month since the Trump administration took over the building, a succession of actions has raised concerns the department is doing exactly that. Top officials have demanded the names of thousands of FBI agents who investigated the Capitol riot, sued a state attorney general who had won a massive fraud verdict against Donald Trump before the 2024 election, and ordered the dismissal of a criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams by saying the...

The Office of Special Counsel is responsible for protecting the federal workforce from illegal personnel actions, such as retaliation for whistleblowing. It investigates whistleblower claims of reprisal, can pursue disciplinary action against employees who punish whistleblowers and provides a channel for employees to disclose government wrongdoing.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal judge overseeing the election interference case against Donald Trump directed prosecutors Wednesday to search for and provide to the former president’s lawyers any Justice Department information related to a separate investigation into Mike Pence’s handling of classified documents. Trump’s lawyers had argued that that information could be relevant to their defense o the extent it shows that Pence, Trump’s vice president, had “an incentive to curry favor with authorities” and implicate Trump while facing his own investigation into the retention of classified documents in his Indiana home.... U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered Smith’s team...

ASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the U.S., the Justice Department said Tuesday. Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City told investigators after his arrest Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with Election Day next month and that he and a co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents.

Russian Spy Hunter, Max Boot, was married to a real life foreign spy while he pushed the debunked Russian collusion hoax in the page of the Washington Post. Evidently he never noticed all of the expensive luxury goods his wife, Sue Mi Terry, was bringing home.

Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is accused by federal prosecutors of acting as a secret agent for South Korea. Terry, whose husband Max Boot regularly falsely accused former President Trump of being a Russian asset, reportedly used her position and access to U.S. officials to provide sensitive information to South Korea in exchange for luxury items and other lavish benefits, according to the indictment, New York Post reported. The allegations state that from Oct. 2013, Terry engaged in activities that compromised her role as an independent foreign policy...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former CIA employee and senior official at the National Security Council has been charged with serving as a secret agent for South Korea's intelligence service, the Justice Department said. Sue Mi Terry accepted luxury goods, including fancy handbags, and expensive dinners at sushi restaurants in exchange for advocating South Korean government positions during media appearances, sharing nonpublic information with intelligence officers and facilitating meetings between U.S. and South Korean government officials, according to an indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan. She also admitted to the FBI that she served as a source of information for...

BUTLER, Pa. (AP) — The man who was killed at a rally for former President Donald Trump was Corey Comperatore, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Sunday. Comperatore was a former fire chief from the area who loved his family, Shapiro said. “Corey died a hero. Corey dove on his family to protect them last night,” the governor said.

A bill that would reauthorize a crucial national security surveillance program was blocked Wednesday by a conservative revolt, pushing the prospects of final passage into uncertainty amid a looming deadline. The legislative impasse follows an edict earlier in the day from former President Donald Trump to “kill” the measure. The bill in question would renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization is currently tied to a series of reforms aimed at satisfying critics who...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Jack Smith asked a judge on Wednesday to bar Donald Trump's lawyers from injecting politics into the former president's trial on charges that he schemed to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Smith's office told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in a 20-page filing that Trump's lawyers should be prevented from “raising irrelevant political issues or arguments in front of the jury,” including that the prosecution against him is vindictive and selective or was coordinated by President Joe Biden. “In addition to being wrong, these allegations are irrelevant to the jury’s determination of the...

Former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was the home address of former President Barack Obama on the same day that a man with guns in his van was arrested near the property, federal prosecutors said Wednesday in revealing new details about the case. Taylor Taranto, 37, who prosecutors say participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, kept two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition inside a van he had driven cross-country and had been living in, according to a Justice Department motion that seeks to keep him behind...

Former President Donald Trump can be sued by injured Capitol Police officers and Democratic lawmakers over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the Justice Department said Thursday in a federal court case testing Trump’s legal vulnerability and the limits of executive power. The department wrote that although a president enjoys broad legal latitude to communicate to the public on matters of concern, “no part of a President’s official responsibilities includes the incitement of imminent private violence. By definition, such conduct plainly falls outside the President’s constitutional and statutory duties.” *** The Justice Department wrote that it also...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s early announcement of his third White House bid won’t shield the former president from the criminal investigations already confronting him as an ordinary citizen, leaving him legally and politically exposed as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination. The Justice Department is pushing ahead with its probes. And with the midterm elections now mostly complete and the 2024 presidential campaign months away from beginning in earnest, federal prosecutors have plenty of time to continue their work even as Trump hits the campaign trail. “I don’t think the department is going to hesitate as a result of...

Danchenko, a Russian analyst, was a source of information for Christopher Steele, a former British spy who was paid by Democrats to research ties between Russia and presidential candidate Donald Trump. The compilation of research files, which included salacious rumors and unproven assertions, came to be familiarly known as the “Steele dossier.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Tuesday it had uncovered efforts to obstruct its investigation into the discovery of classified documents at Donald Trump’s Florida estate, saying “government records were likely concealed and removed” from a storage room even after the former president’s representatives had assured officials that they’d thoroughly searched the property. The FBI also seized 33 boxes containing more than 100 classified records during its Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago and found three classified documents stashed in office drawers, according to a filing that lays out the most detailed chronology to date of stained interactions between Justice...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Archives recovered 100 documents bearing classified markings, totaling more than 700 pages, from an initial batch of 15 boxes retrieved from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, according to newly public government correspondence with the Trump legal team. The numbers make clear the large volume of secret government documents recovered months ago from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, well before FBI officials returned there with a search warrant on Aug. 8 and removed an additional 11 sets of classified records. The warrant also reveals an FBI investigation into the potential unlawful retention of the records as...

WASHINGTON -- A former White House official told the House committee investigating the Capitol riot that President Donald Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had been advised of intelligence reports showing the potential for violence, according to just-released transcripts. Cassidy Hutchinson, a special assistant in the Trump White House, told the committee “there were concerns brought forward” to Meadows before the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but it was unclear what Meadows did with that information.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest filing from special counsel John Durham in his investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe has been seized on by the conservative media and Donald Trump himself as vindication of the former president’s oft-repeated claims that he was “spied” on. One headline said Durham had alleged that the campaign of Hillary Clinton paid to “infiltrate” servers at Trump Tower and the White House — though that verb is not used in the filing — and Trump suggested that Democrats had been caught “illegally spying” in a scandal worse than Watergate. Neither claim is exactly...