Free Republic

With the recent revelations that the FBI paid an informant who inserted himself into Denver racial justice protests in 2020 and encouraged protesters to commit crimes, COINTELPRO is back in the spotlight. So is the Church Committee, the group of senators who investigated that FBI program, now that Representative Jim Jordan has compared it to his own committee looking into how President Joe Biden treats Republicans. The FBI's Counterintelligence Program — COINTELPRO — ran from 1956 to 1971 and targeted advocacy groups associated with political and social movements that the FBI viewed as a threat to American stability. The goal...

Jason Reitman’s 2018 film, “The Front Runner,” has been playing a lot on cable recently. It’s the dramatization of Sen. Gary Hart’s brief 1988 presidential run, with Hugh Jackman playing the role of Senator Hart. The film is striking for 2020 due to its portrayal of Hart as a policy-focused candidate, someone uninterested in the “frippery” of campaign politics.  Striking, because the 2020 campaign seems to be much-less about the serious contrasts between this season’s “front runners” when it comes to policy than it is about image and style.It was starkly summed up by “The Late Show Host” Stephen Colbert’s post-DNC...

If reason ruled in politics, the Democratic party would urge its presidential candidates to eliminate the vitriolic posturing from their campaign, and would then begin to concentrate on the only question that matters: Who can beat Reagan? That is different from asking whether Walter Mondale would make a better chief executive than Gary Hart, or whether Hart’s “new ideas” are preferable to Mondale’s old-line liberal values. What troubles me is that, given the rising nastiness, this campaign begins more and more to resemble the terrible script written in 1972, when another new face, George McGovern, was buried by Richard Nixon’s...

Hollywood's a bit inconsistent when the topic is the press. It was a righteous guardian of the truth against the Catholic Church in "Spotlight" and against Richard Nixon in "The Post." But now, in the new movie "The Front Runner," it is painted as the villain -- when its target was Gary Hart. He was expected to be the Democratic nominee in 1988 before those photos surfaced of him on the yacht Monkey Business with Donna Rice sitting on his lap. They surfaced after he challenged reporters to tail him and see he wasn't cheating on his wife. No matter....

Hugh Jackman has been cast as former George McGovern campaign manager, Colorado senator, and failed Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart in director Jason Reitman’s upcoming political drama The Frontrunner. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 48-year-old Logan star will play Hart, who was widely considered the frontrunner to secure the Democratic nomination for president in 1988 before news reports alleging an extramarital affair between the Colorado senator and Donna Rice sank his campaign. In May of 1987, Hart famously told the New York Times to “follow me around” after rumors had surfaced about the candidate’s alleged affair; the Miami Herald...

The prospect of a billion-dollar Clinton campaign “ought to frighten every American,” the two-time Democratic presidential candidate said......The post-Citizens United campaign finance environment has sullied the presidential process, benefiting establishment politicians who cater to financial backers. He pointed to his own experience; he and his wife mortgaged their home for $50-$75,000 — which made a significant difference in his 1984 primary campaign where he finished Hart finished second to Mondale. “If you need a billion dollars, how many people can do that? Only the Clintons and the Bushes and one or two others,” he said. Hart is alarmed by current...

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and his allies are taking new steps toward launching a presidential campaign, including interviews with dozens of potential staffers and hiring a pollster and national fundraiser, according to a person close to the Democrat.He’s already launched a political action committee that allows him to raise money nationally and hired his 2014 campaign manager, Brad Komar, to run it. Since the PAC was formed in September, Komar has done 80 interviews with possible campaign staffers, the person said. Of those, Hickenlooper has conducted or participated in 30 interviews. The operation has hired Democratic veteran Anna Greenberg as...

I was transfixed by the Gary Hart movie The Front Runner: It has a lot of levels, and it’s a failure on every one of them. Mistake gets piled atop error atop cliché atop banality. It’s a skyscraper of wrong, an hour-and-53-minute lesson in how not to make a movie. Vigorously borrowing from The Candidate, Nashville, and The West Wing, The Front Runner covers the three weeks of Colorado Senator Hart’s 1988 presidential campaign, which ended in humiliation shortly after reporters staking out his D.C. apartment discovered a mistress, who turned out to be Donna Rice. Watching the co-writer and...

In the spring of 1990, after he had helped the first George Bush reach the presidency, the political consultant Lee Atwater learned that he was dying. Atwater, who had just turned 39 and was the head of the Republican National Committee, had suffered a seizure while at a political fund-raising breakfast and had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. In a year he was dead. Atwater put some of that year to use making amends. Throughout his meteoric political rise he had been known for both his effectiveness and his brutality. In South Carolina, where he grew up, he...

Full Title: Sen. John McCain's pallbearers to include Warren Beatty, Joe Biden, Gary Hart, plus billionaire Michael Bloomberg and FedEx CEO while his ushers include health and telecom execs McCain's office announced his pallbearers and other aspects of three days of services for hero Actor Warren Beatty will be among those serving as pall bearers Vice President Joe Biden, a friend from the Senate, also will be there Former Sens. Gary Hart, Phil Gramm, and Russ Feingold will join, as well Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Among those paying tribute to McCain at his memorial services will be Jeff Flake, Joe...

We don't know what Bill Clinton did or didn't do in company with Jeffrey Epstein. But we certainly know what Epstein did and, almost as outrageously, what he got away with doing. Some of the most shocking allegations against Epstein surfaced only after the conclusion of an FBI probe, in civil suits brought by his victims: for example, the claim that three 12-year-old French girls were delivered to him as a birthday present. ... Sex crimes of the kind Roberts alleges took place typically carry a term of 10 to 20 years in federal prison. Yet when all was said...

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has asked a Ted Cruz super PAC to explain why it gave $500,000 to another super PAC supporting one of his Republican rivals. According to financial disclosures from June, Keep the Promise I - one of four separate committees backing Cruz - gave half a million dollars to CARLY for America, the political action committee supporting Carly Fiorina. Super PACs are legally allowed to give money to other super PACs - they are only prohibited from donating directly to any political campaign. But it's unusual for one of these groups to give money to an...

Let's look into Sarah Isgur Flores shall we? It is inferred by current reporting that she is at least one of the 8 or 9 women Cruz has had an affair with recently. (excerpted) The ($500K, excerpted) money from the Fiorina campaign was laundered through a company called MLJ Consulting. Nearly half of the money spent on ads, over $251,795, was paid to MLJ Consulting. On top of that, MLJ Consulting received an additional $271,152 for services described in FEC reports as “Political Strategy Consulting/Staff Management” or “Political Strategy Consulting/Travel.” (The FEC is currently requesting coordinating information on the payments...

About the author Bryan Crabtree. He is a radio personality in Atlanta: "Atlanta's live/local show on business & current events. "My goal is to inspire greatness in the people who like & listen." 4-6p biz1190; 9-11pm AM920 M-F" He wrote around 10pm last night: bryan crabtree ‏@bryancrabtree 7h7 hours ago A source 'deep inside' the @tedcruz campaign says Cruz, may in fact have had affairs. Some say Heidi Cruz pushes for all-male campaign staff 238 retweets 195 likes Reply Retweet 238 Like 195 More No further elaboration at this time. Doesn't sound like he is the source for the...

After the Washington Times quickly disassociated from him "for saying a scandal may be true", Johnson seemed to still be a class act. He tweeted that he respected them and had enjoyed working with them. He did not understand though why they would do this via Twitter instead of a phone call or even an email. However, now there are attempts to smear and discredit him, claiming they have not had a relationship with him in over a year which he soon replied to providing proof of being paid just last month.

Washington Times Fires Writer For Confirming Cruz Scandal March 26, 2016 Conservative news paper The Washington Times has fired one of its writers after he confirmed that the Ted Cruz mistress bomb is partially correct. “COMING CLEAN: From what I know, at least 2 of the women named as Cruz mistresses by the National Enquirer are accurate,” tweeted Drew Johnson yesterday, in response to the explosive mistress bomb scandal rocking the presidential campaign of Republican Ted Cruz.

Donald Trump has denied any connection to the National Enquirer story released yesterday claiming Ted Cruz has had 5 mistresses: I have no idea whether or not the cover story about Ted Cruz in this week’s issue of the National Enquirer is true or not, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it, did not know about it, and have not, as yet, read it. Likewise, I have nothing to do with the National Enquirer and unlike Lyin’ Ted Cruz I do not surround myself with political hacks and henchman and then pretend total innocence. Ted Cruz’s problem...

Still Report # 736 - Enquirer: 3 More Cruz Babes According to an update by the National Enquirer, three new Ted Cruz lovers have spoken out, bringing the total to 8. This confirms earlier rumors that much more was to come.

Conservative radio host Michael Savage is threatening to withdraw his support for Donald Trump unless he disavows the "assassination by innuendo" of Sen. Ted Cruz in a National Enquirer story – and the CEO of the tabloid's owner.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) blamed “Donald Trump and his henchmen” for planting a National Enquirer story that accused him of extramarital affairs. Vehemently denying the story as “garbage” and “complete and utter lies,” “It became clear as the campaign went on that Donald was a whole lot of sizzle without any substance,” said Cruz. “When he’s scared, when he’s losing, his first and natural resort is to go to sleaze and to go to slime.” Friday on CNN, a Trump supporter, Boston Herald columnist and radio host Adriana Cohen accused a former Cruz staffer, Amanda Carpenter, of being one of...