Free Republic

The FBI released a new batch of records about its Capitol Hill uprising investigation on Monday, revealing that investigators identified a “person of interest” in its Jan. 5/6 pipe bombs investigation within days of the incident. The record about the FBI’s person of interest is a Jan. 10, 2021, report that summarized the bureau’s J6 investigation up to that point. The extremely faded report is difficult to read, but it appears to state: “FBI WF and USCP have identified a person of interest who may be a match to the description of the individual placing the bombs, and continue efforts...

George Washington University on Tuesday suspended a student group that projected pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic images onto the school's library. Just one day later, the group's leader defied the suspension, spearheading a campus protest that targeted the school president's home.Lance Lokas, a junior at the university who as of February served as president of its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, wielded a megaphone as he led scores of anti-Israel protesters on a Wednesday afternoon march through campus, the Washington Free Beacon witnessed while on the scene. Protest attendees—including students who have been photographed at past Students for Justice in Palestine...

Hundreds of federal government officials have signed a dissent letter in rebellion against Democrat President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Four hundred government officials from 40 departments and agencies within Biden’s administration signed the letter. They are opposing the president’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war and demand a “ceasefire.” The Tuesday letter was first reported by the New York Times. It includes officials from Biden’s State Department, White House, National Security Council, and the Department of Justice (DOJ). The signatories of the letter remained anonymous to protect against professional retaliation. The letter reads, in part: “We call on...

A number of State Department staffers joined with staffers from the Agency for International Development — 100 in total — in criticizing President Joe Biden’s response to the war between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. Israel declared a state of war with Hamas after terrorists breached the border on October 7, slaughtering 1,200 Israelis – most of them civilians – and kidnapping more than 200, taking them into Gaza. According to an Axios report published on Monday, a five-page internal memo referred to as a dissent cable was “organized by a junior diplomat” and accused Biden of failing to...

Metro said Monday afternoon that it was suspending train service between Metro Center and Foggy Bottom after a person was struck by a train at Farragut West. Metro Transit Police said the person died and that video of the incident indicated the person purposely entered the tracks as a train was coming. Further details about the incident were not immediately available. Metro said on its Twitter account shortly after 3:30 p.m. that it is no longer single-tracking between Foggy Bottom and McPherson Square, but to expect residual delays on the Blue and Orange lines. MORE AT LINK

As House Democrats invited Ivy League shrews to publicly grind their Trump-hating axe during Wednesday’s disastrous impeachment charade, President Trump returned home after confronting our allies again about their lagging financial support of NATO. The stale pact turns 70 this year and like too many Boomers these days, NATO is out of fresh ideas and still listening to worn tracks of “Back in the U.S.S.R.” while the rest of the world is listening to Drake. Also like so many Boomers, NATO members have made financial promises they won’t keep, stacking up IOUs for someone else to pay and hoping no...

Yesterday I caught a bit of the impeachment theatre en route to a lunchtime speaking engagement. To be honest, if they'd come round and performed it live in my hotel room, I'd still have fled. If universally respected eminent lifelong career foreign-service bigshots Bill Taylor and George Kent are Adam Schiff's star witnesses, their chief purpose seems to be to get Democrats pining for the charisma of Bill de Blasio and the self-effacement of John Kerry. In a functioning system, the head of the government sets foreign policy and the diplomats enact it. So naturally there's not a chance of...

Local officials in a Washington neighborhood have voted to rename a street outside Saudi Arabia’s embassy in honor of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. If approved by the city council, the advisory commission’s measure means a stretch of road going past the expansive embassy building in the upscale Foggy Bottom neighborhood would be ceremonially renamed “Jamal Khashoggi Way.” Khashoggi, a US resident, was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October. […] According to CNN, the idea to change the street’s name started about a month ago following an online petition. …

The State Department is hiding a classified report on Palestinian refugees that insiders say could be a game changer in how the United States approaches the situation and allocates millions in taxpayer funds to a key United Nations agency, according to multiple sources briefed on the situation. As the United States moves forward with a decision to slash funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency responsible for providing education and support to some five million Palestinian refugees, officials on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have been pressuring the State Department to declassify a report that is...

After the New York Times on Saturday printed a story headlined “Republican Attacks on Mueller and F.B.I. Open New Rift in G.O.P.,” WikiLeaks couldn’t stand it anymore. In a late-night post on Twitter, WikiLeaks revealed that a Times reporter used to feed State Department email updates of the stories the paper would be publishing DAYS before the stories appeared.

The U.S.’s ranks of diplomats are losing key leaders at a “dizzying speed” as the State Department struggles to recruit talent amid a hiring freeze and sinking morale in the Trump administration, according to a new letter from a top ambassador. Sixty percent of the agency’s career ambassadors, the highest rank for diplomats, have retired or quit since January. Nearly half of career ministers — the next level down and equivalent to the military’s three-star generals — are gone too, down to 19 from 33. The next-level minister counselors have seen their numbers drop by 62 diplomats since Labor Day...

President Trump is in front of the rhetorical brinkmanship with North Korea, but it’s Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson who has the tough behind-the-scenes role of managing fallout from the administration’s first genuine international crisis, sparked by reports that Pyongyang may now have a nuclear bomb small enough to fit on a missile that could hit the U.S. mainland. The standoff is a defining moment for America’s top diplomat six months into his tenure at Foggy Bottom. Meanwhile, many key leadership posts — including ambassador to South Korea — remain unfilled, fears of budget cuts and reorganizations are high,...

State Department Lawyers Removing References to ISIS ‘Genocide’ Against Christians, Other Religious Minorities.. full title. ... Obama holdovers in State Department's legal office are responsible, critics say. The State Department's top lawyers are systematically removing the word "genocide" to describe the Islamic State's mass slaughter of Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria from speeches before they are delivered and other official documents, according to human rights activists and attorneys familiar with the policies. Additionally, Democratic senators are delaying confirmation of Mark Green, Trump's pick to head the U.S. Agency for International Development who has broad bipartisan...

Obama holdovers in State Department's legal office are responsible, critics say The State Department's top lawyers are systematically removing the word "genocide" to describe the Islamic State's mass slaughter of Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria from speeches before they are delivered and other official documents, according to human rights activists and attorneys familiar with the policies. Additionally, Democratic senators are delaying confirmation of Mark Green, Trump's pick to head the U.S. Agency for International Development who has broad bipartisan support. These efforts guarantee that Obama-era policies that worked to exclude Iraq's Christian and other minority...

Obama officials and the establishment media continue to wave the scalp of resigned National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, trying to squeeze every last drop of anti-Trump narrative from the matter.As I had said privately, Flynn was not long for remaining as NSA. It's not because he's a bad guy, and accusations that he was compromised by Russian intelligence are as absurd as the Trump dossier BuzzFeed published last month. It's just that Flynn wasn't ready for prime time; hopefully his replacement will be.So here's the latest.The New York Times published a report last night claiming "Trump associates" had repeated contacts with...

According to almost every media report, President-elect Donald Trump has selected Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as the nominee for Secretary of State.  The announcement is anticipated to take place this morning.  Here’s our previous outline anticipating T-Rex: It has also been reported that former Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, would be utilized as Tillerson’s deputy at the State Department. Suffice to say, anyone who has followed politics for any substantive amount of time knows the inherent issue with an operational entity, The U.S. State Department, whose entire mission has been at the epicenter of left-wing globalist advocacy. If...

More than 50 State Dept. officials want strikes on Assad Fifty-one State Department officials have signed an internal memo calling for the U.S. to take military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a bid to force regime change in the country. Signed by officials working on U.S. Syria policy, the "dissent channel cable" makes repeated references to "targeted military strikes" against the Damascus government, according to multiple reports published on Thursday. “Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as ISIL, even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield,” the cable...

The Smoking Crater, of our once precious civil liberties, from Hillary's tenure as Secretary of State: The Government will be just a department of her personal corruption proprietorship. Any assets owned by the people of the United States will be for sale to the highest bidder.

"For the most part, the Obama administration has successfully avoided bad publicity, but it's now being faced with a string of scandals at the worst possible time" The Obama administration has largely been heralded as the most scandal-free in modern history. But now, right in the middle of an election year, President Obama is being saddled with a string of embarrassing — and potentially damaging — incidents. Most recently, The Los Angeles Times released photos of U.S. soldiers posing with the corpses of Afghan insurgents. While the revelation was deeply troubling, that scandal has mostly reflected poorly on the military....

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda operatives slaughtered nearly 3,000 Americans in an operation that marked the second major attack by violent jihadists against the World Trade Center. There wasn’t much mystery about who had carried out these atrocities — unless you were Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Marayati warned Americans not to conclude that the suicide hijacking attacks were the work of Muslim terrorists. “If we are going to look at suspects,” he told a Los Angeles radio station, “we should look at groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I...