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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos resigned Thursday night, blaming President Donald Trump for rhetoric that fueled the invasion of the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump suppporters. DeVos is the second member of Trump’s cabinet to quit because of the riot Wednesday. Earlier Thursday, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said she would resign. Chao is the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who refused to endorse Trump’s efforts to have Congress block the confirmation of Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential vote in the Electoral College. A number of other Trump administration officials have quit since Wednesday.

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the first-degree murder conviction of a former Blackwater security contractor, ordering a new trial for the man prosecutors say fired the first shots in the 2007 slayings of 14 Iraqi civilians at a crowded traffic circle in Baghdad.</p>

(Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge erred in dismissing all charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007, an appeals court ruled on Friday. The unanimous three-judge panel reinstated the charges and sent the case back to the judge for more proceedings, handing a victory to the U.S. Justice Department in a high-profile prosecution dating to 2008. The five guards were charged with 14 counts of manslaughter, 20 counts of attempt to commit manslaughter and one weapons violation count over a Baghdad shooting that outraged Iraqis and strained ties between the two countries.

President Trump plans to assign a New York billionaire to lead a broad review of American intelligence agencies, according to administration officials, an effort that members of the intelligence community fear could curtail their independence and reduce the flow of information that contradicts the president’s worldview. The possible role for Stephen A. Feinberg, a co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, has met fierce resistance among intelligence officials already on edge because of the criticism the intelligence community has received from Mr. Trump during the campaign and since he became president. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump blamed leaks from the intelligence community for...

Right Side Broadcasting Network interviews and event speakers starts at 3 p.m. Trump is supposed to be on at about 7 p.m. Any FReepers at the rally should check in here!

Blackwater founder and former Navy SEAL Erik Prince told Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM that according to one of his “well-placed sources” in the New York Police Department, “The NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making” in the Anthony Weiner investigation, but received “huge pushback” from the Justice Department. Prince began by saying he had no problem believing reports that the FBI was highly confident multiple foreign agencies hacked Hillary Clinton’s private email server. “I mean, it’s not like the foreign intelligence agencies leave a thank-you note after they’ve hacked...

A National Rifle Association leader-turned-critic is meeting with New York investigators...and the NRA wants to be there. The powerful gun lobby asked a New York state judge Friday to let it in the meeting, saying it would be “severely prejudiced” if privileged information is divulged. NRA lawyers said they reviewed 899 pages of documents from North’s lawyers that were prepared for investigators and found several dozen examples of privileged information that had not been redacted. The NRA is facing several legal battles. The attorney general of Washington, D.C., has subpoenaed the group and its related charitable organization in a probe...

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents. One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly...

A key witness in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election has been indicted with seven others on charges of conspiring to funnel more than $3 million in illegal foreign campaign contributions for that year’s elections, the Justice Department announced. George Nader, an adviser to the United Arab Emirates who acted as an intermediary for members of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign seeking to forge contacts in the Middle East, was charged with conspiring to make conduit campaign contributions and related offenses in a 53-count indictment unsealed Tuesday in Washington, prosecutors said.

Robert Mueller says he was able to pinpoint security company executive Erik Prince’s precise location for several hours in January 2017 by matching his mobile phone signal to a cell site near Trump Tower in New York City. The special counsel’s report discloses the use of this investigative technique, by which police determine a suspect’s location via a cellphone’s GPS signal. The Prince narrative is one instance in unredacted sections of the report in which Mr. Mueller’s team explicitly discloses cellphone tracking. It raises the question of whether the FBI applied the process to other investigative subjects — a phone’s...

A Lebanese-American businessman and key “witness” in the special counsel’s investigation of Russian election interference was arrested and charged Monday with transporting a dozen images of child pornography and bestiality. George Nader, 60, was arrested Monday morning at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, according to federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia. Nader was involved in several key meetings at the center of the special counsel’s Trump/Russia investigation and his name shows up more than 100 times in the Mueller report. Throughout the investigation, Nader was represented by Kathryn Ruemmler, Obama’s long-term White House Counsel/fixer. The...

A major witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was arrested Monday on child-pornography charges, after flying into the U.S. for the first time since his cooperation with Mr. Mueller’s team. George Nader, a dual U.S. and Lebanese citizen, was charged in a criminal complaint more than a year ago, in April 2018, after he had spent hours with Mr. Mueller’s investigators detailing his contacts with Trump allies and efforts to set up meetings between Trump campaign associates and a Russian businessman close to President Vladimir Putin. Nobody connected to the Trump campaign was charged as a result of Mr....

A man with citizenship in Lebanon and the United States was arrested this morning after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on charges of transporting visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. According to court documents, George Aref Nader, 60, was charged by criminal complaint after he arrived at Washington-Dulles International Airport on Jan. 17, 2018 from Dubai in possession of a cell phone containing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. The charges were unsealed after his arrest this morning. Nader previously pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Virginia to...

Let the games begin! House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the Washington Post’s Robert Costa that he will make a criminal referral to the Department of Justice against Erik Prince for perjury. At issue is Prince’s testimony to his committee that a meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian financier was unplanned, while Prince’s testimony to special-counsel investigators suggest it was planned: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that his panel would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding potential false testimony by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private military...

The GoFundMe campaign that generated $20 million in private donations is being shutdown and those who donated are being refunded their money unless they decide to donate it to a newly-established 501(c)4. Brian Kolfage, the veteran who started the campaign, on Friday posted the following message on the campaign's website: Eight days before Christmas I started this GoFundMe campaign because I was tired of watching the U.S. government’s inability to secure our southern border. Like most Americans, I see the porous southern border as a national security threat and I refuse to allow our broken political system to leave my family...

The Clinton’s get busted again. It’s a never-ending saga that somehow always seems to out do itself. Special counsel Robert Mueller is getting the cooperation of a Lebanese-American businessman with ties to Arab royalty in his probe of foreign influence on the Trump presidential campaign, including the possibility of a back channel between the Kremlin and the Trump transition team. George Nader testified last week to the Mueller grand jury. Mr. Nader is an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates. According to The Times, Mr. Mueller...

The founder of the Blackwater private security firm and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is pitching a risky plan to “privatize” the war in Afghanistan, and officials are increasingly worried that POTUS Donald Trump will embrace the plan. After 17-odd years, and following surges and withdrawals — and surges and withdrawals — of U.S. troops through the years, Blackwater founder Erik Prince says the president is “frustrated” by the lack of progress to date, even as he’s given the Pentagon what it has requested to ‘win’ the war there. As such, he has been shopping a new operation to...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is increasingly venting frustration to his national security team about the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and showing renewed interest in a proposal by Blackwater founder Erik Prince to privatize the war, current and former senior administration officials said. Prince's idea, which first surfaced last year during the president's Afghanistan strategy review, envisions replacing troops with private military contractors who would work for a special U.S. envoy for the war who would report directly to the president. It has raised ethical and security concerns among senior military officials, key lawmakers and members of Trump's national security...

A $40 million yacht owned by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was reportedly untied from the dock at a northern Ohio marina and set adrift. The captain of the 163-foot yacht, named "Seaquest," called the Huron Police Department early Sunday morning when the crew realized the boat was floating in the Huron Boat Basin, The Toledo Blade reported. The yacht hit a dock, causing between $5,000 and $10,000 in damage, the newspaper added, citing a police report. Investigators are hoping surveillance footage will show who untied the yacht from the dock. It is one of 10 boats owned by DeVos and...

Erik Prince, the founder of private security company Blackwater, has found himself embroiled in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. During the campaign, Prince reportedly met at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., operative George Nader, and social media specialist Joel Zamel to discuss a potential pro-Trump social media influence operation. He also met with Russian sovereign wealth fund manager Kirill Dmitriev during the transition period—a meeting reportedly planned to set up a backchannel between the Trump administration and Russia. Those revelations raise questions about his relationship to the Trump administration—questions...