Free Republic

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday took the extraordinary step of firing his embattled investigations commissioner, Mark G. Peters, the culmination of a fierce rivalry between the two powerful men. It was a rare and consequential action by a mayor to remove an investigations commissioner: The position is understood to come with a large degree of independence that allows impartial scrutiny of all areas of government, including the executive branch.

Former FBI official Peter Strzok has reacted to his firing from the FBI, saying on a newly-created Twitter account that he was “deeply saddened” by the decision. Strzok, the former deputy chief of counterintelligence, was fired Friday following an investigation into anti-Trump text messages he exchanged with his mistress, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. “It has been an honor to serve my country and work with the fine men and women of the FBI,” Strzok wrote, linking to a Go Fund Me page that has been set up to raise money on his behalf. Deeply saddened by this decision. It...

On the eve of the release of a potentially explosive new report, Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the termination of the FBI’s top two former executives and warned that the forthcoming report on the FBI's handling of the Hillary Clinton probe could result in more people being fired.

In what can only be seen as a dubious political stunt, Andrew McCabe, through his attorney Michael Bromwich, is suing the DOJ and Inspector General for documents relating to his firing. Apparently the 39-page IG report, documenting the reasoning, along with the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) isn’t enough for McCabe.

An ongoing staffing purge being conducted by White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has thrown the West Wing into chaos, according to more than half a dozen Trump administration insiders who told the Washington Free Beacon that McMaster has been targeting long-time Trump loyalists who were clashing with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration. The purge is part of a larger drama unfolding inside the administration, between veteran Trump staffers committed to the president’s campaign vision of “draining the swamp”‘ in Washington and entrenched bureaucracies seeking to maintain control over policy decision-making, according to these sources,...

Oh, what a tangled web the unindicted co-conspirators in the Deep State coup to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House have woven.  When you tell the truth, the adage goes, you never have to remember anything.  But when you lie, you have to remember the lies you told to cover the earlier lies, and you certainly have to keep your story in line with your other co-conspirators. That Andrew McCabe, in his response to his firing, failed miserably on this score, implicating former FBI Director James Comey, is the conclusion of George Washington University...

McCabe is not fired

It's coming...just wait for it. Any minute now, the press will declare President Trump's ouster of secretary of state Rex Tillerson as "chaos" and "disarray." Such baloney. Tillerson was a good man, and he ably served the country in getting the Saudi Arabians to turn hard toward the West as the Iran threat loomed. That's a real achievement. The result we now see – from Saudis allowing women to drive to Saudis changing their stance toward Israel in a friendly direction to Saudis putting the screws to the local billionaire princeling financiers of Osama bin Laden and other lunatic forces,...

An Attorney for President Trump has vehemently denied rumors that special counsel Robert Mueller will be fired over revelations of politically motivated malfeasance by the FBI towards Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump, including disturbing text messages which were sent between top FBI investigators implying the Trump-Russia investigation may have been launched as an "insurance" policy in the event Trump won the 2016 election. Furthermore, GOP lawmakers have asserted that FBI top brass relied on a salacious and unverified "dossier" to launch the Trump-Russia investigation. Also noted by critics is the fact that Robert Mueller's "right hand man," Aaron Zebley...

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said Friday that "rumors" on Capitol Hill suggest President Trump could fire special counsel Robert Mueller before Christmas, after Congress leaves Washington for the winter recess. “The rumor on the Hill when I left yesterday was that the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week. And on Dec. 22, when we are out of D.C., he was going to fire Robert Mueller," Speier told California's KQED News.

A man in Australia was sacked after he relied on a 180-year-old scientific discovery to help prevent his colleagues discovering his whereabouts while he played golf during work hours. Tom Colella, a 60-year-old electrician in Perth, lost his job after an anonymous letter to his firm claimed that he left work to play golf at least 140 times over the last two years. Australia’s Fair Work Commission, a workplace tribunal, heard that Mr Colella blocked his whereabouts by storing his personal digital assistant, a phone-like device that has a GPS inside, in an empty foil packet of Twisties, a puffy...

News broke Monday afternoon that President Trump removed Anthony Scaramucci as White House Communications Director. Scaramucci was reportedly escorted from White House grounds after being removed as Communications Director by President Trump at the request of Chief of Staff Kelly.    Like clockwork, the hateful Never Trumpers are gloating over another shake-up in the Trump White House. Never Trumpers hate the President and they hate the American people who voted against the Deep State which has a grip on D.C. Bill Kristol, who has the amazing ability to be wrong about almost everything, took to his Twitter account to attack the Trump administration...

The only trial during which Preet Bharara sat at the prosecutor’s table while serving as Manhattan U.S. Attorney did not go smoothly — despite the presence of the high-profile lawman. Judge J. Paul Oetken vacated a conviction last week from the jury trial of John “JJ” Pauling, assailing prosecutors for using “misleading” charts and alleging the defendant conspired to distribute at least 100 grams of heroin — without adequate proof.... Bharara, 48, who was fired from his post by President Trump on March 11, did not make arguments to jurors or question witnesses.

Less than a week after former FBI Director James Comey was fired by President Donald Trump, Comey is reportedly ready to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, but he has one important condition that must be met if he is to testify: The hearing needs to be held in public. The New York Times reported on Friday “a close associate” of Comey told reporters for the Times Comey is willing to testify, but he wants the hearing to be conducted in public. Comey rejected an invitation offered by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday to testify in a closed-door session....

President Trump is grappling with the gravest controversy of his presidency as the storm kicked up by his firing of FBI Director James Comey rumbles on. An atmosphere of crisis enveloped Washington in the first full day after the firing, which was announced Tuesday. Cable news shows were thick with talk of a constitutional crisis and comparisons to the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s that brought down President Richard Nixon. On Capitol Hill, the fissures in the Republican Party over the episode were plain, with some prominent GOP lawmakers hitting Trump’s actions and others backing him up. Democrats, meanwhile,...

Trump and his representatives also fail to adequately focus on the facts that President Clinton fired his FBI Director Sessions after a shorter period of time The only justified criticism of President Trump’s firing of FBI Director Comey is the president’s failure to focus on the strongest and most obvious defenses of the timing of the firing. Comey has been criticized by Democrats as well as by Republicans since he got involved in the Hillary email investigation, but the main criticism of President Trump focuses on the timing of the firing. The actual main explanation is that the FBI Director...

Middle America wants to pop a beer and listen to sports talk, they don't want to be lectured about why Caitlyn Jenner is a hero, Michael Sam is the new Jackie Robinson of sports, and Colin Kaepernick is the Rosa Parks of football. ESPN made the mistake of trying to make liberal social media losers happy and as a result lost millions of viewers.

Fox News Channel ditched Bill O’Reilly on Wednesday following the revelation of a series of sexual harassment allegations. His accusers—including Juliet Huddy, Andrea Tantaros, and Gretchen Carlson—also tellingly no longer work at Fox News. But the women who never worked at Fox News strike as the ultimate victims. Those who share the chromosomes of the aggrieved parties but not a CV that includes girl-next-door looks, or a rock-star boyfriend, or a Miss America crown don’t, generally, get hired in cable news. Strangely, the ladies that cable news regards as bringing viewers the most articulate, insightful opinions, cogent analysis, and trusted,...

With the focus on political talk shows in the wake of the BOR episode, it's a good time to consider another format, one that Buckley kept alive 33 years.

In March 1993, Janet Reno began her tenure as President Bill Clinton’s attorney general by summarily firing United States attorneys for 93 of the 94 federal districts (one, Michael Chertoff, was retained in New Jersey, at the request of Democratic Senator Bill Bradley). That is more than twice as many as Trump attorney general Jeff Sessions fired on Friday. Indeed, there were only 46 Obama-appointed U.S. attorneys left for Sessions to relieve because Obama appointees fully understood that this is the way things work. Many of them had already moved on, in the expectation that the president elected in...