Free Republic

A key prosecutor on the classified documents case against President Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a congressional interview Wednesday, .... Jay Bratt had been subpoenaed to appear before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee for a closed-door interview but did not answer substantive questions because of his Fifth Amendment constitutional right to remain silent. Bratt spent more than three decades at the Justice Department before retiring in January, just weeks before President Donald Trump took office. He was a key national security prosecutor on special counsel Jack Smith’s team, which in 2023 charged Trump with illegally...

A Brooklyn teen was busted for allegedly making multiple threats to schools across Texas and Florida – even personally targeting a relative of one of the victims of the 2022 Uvalde school massacre on TikTok, authorities announced this week. The 16-year-old boy was picked up May 1 at his Brooklyn home and charged with one felony count of making terroristic threats, the Uvalde Police Department said Wednesday. In addition to the threats to the Uvalde shooting victim’s family, he is accused of making multiple “swatting” – or false report – calls and sending threats to the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School...

resident Donald Trump announced Thursday evening he is appointing Ed Martin to be an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice with two jobs, Pardon Attorney and Director of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Weaponization Working Group. The appointment comes just hours after Trump withdrew Martin’s nomination to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he has capably served as interim U.S. Attorney under Trump for the past several months, in the face of Republican opposition over his support for J6ers that was led by Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. The new positions do not require...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 🚨BREAKING: President Trump directs the DOJ to free Gold Star mother Tina Peters from Colorado prison. 7:35 PM · May 5, 2025

Western governments undermine elections, religious freedom, free markets, and free speech. The same Western leaders who speak endlessly about “protecting Democracy” continue to rig elections, outlaw political parties, and prosecute candidates. Germany has declared Alternative for Germany — now the country’s most popular party — an “extremist group” on par with domestic terror organizations. The European Union helped Marxist globalists in Romania invalidate a presidential election and ban the winner from office. France and Brazil have followed the U.S. example of bringing ludicrous criminal charges against popular anti-Establishment politicians, and while President Trump overcame the sham prosecutions targeting him, Marine...

If you watched Donald Trump's cabinet meeting on Wednesday, you may have seen Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins hold up a photo of the Maude family of South Dakota. I'd heard a little bit about the fifth-generation ranching family before that, but I decided to learn more because I couldn't believe the story Rollins told about how the Joe Biden administration treated them. It's unbelievable. Or maybe it's not, given all we're learning about the last four years. ... Trump Admin is reversing Biden-era failures in 100 days! The U.S. Gov has dropped charges against the Maude family, victims of...

Fifth-generation ranchers Charles and Heather Maude make their living raising cattle and hogs on the wide plains of western South Dakota. Since 1907, Charles’s family has been on the land where they now farm thousands of acres.

The people of Colorado are flooding their governor’s office with calls for the release of Tina Peters.She is the former Mesa County clerk and recorder who is serving a nine-year sentence for election interference. In office, she was responsible for maintaining election systems in her county.The Denver Post calls the ruling “persecution” and an “example of [a] weaponized justice system.Like many Americans in 2020, she had questions about election integrity. During an election software update, she gave someone else’s election security credential to a man she trusted. This individual took pictures of source codes, which should be open anyway, and...

Democrats in Connecticut’s House will weigh a bill this week that would allow citizens to sue gun manufacturers, marketers, and dealers over the criminal use of firearms. The CT Insider noted that the legislation is being pushed as a way to create state-level options for filing lawsuits that are barred federally by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). State Rep. Steve Stafstrom (D) believes PLCAA has given too much legal immunity to people in the firearms industry: “What it has done is provide untoward protections to gun manufacturers and has deprived victims of their rights to seek...

Ranchers and their elected representatives have won a major battle. The federal government dropped criminal charges against Charles and Heather Maude of Caputa, SD. Ben Patterson, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Federal District Court in the Western Division of South Dakota signed a motion to dismiss the indictment against Charles Maude and Heather Maude, dated April 28. South Dakota ranchers Charles and Heather Maude were indicted separately nearly a year ago on charges of theft of federal property stemming from a fenceline dispute about a fence built before either were born. Wyoming Congresswoman Harriet Hageman is pleased with the news...

To grasp the malevolence of Black Lives Matter and its sympathizers, consider that the family of Austin Metcalf has so far been swatted three times: * April 24, 2025: Frisco police responded to a false report of a shooting at a home linked to the Metcalf family. The call turned out to be a swatting incident. * April 17, 2025: A swatting call was made to an address linked to the Metcalf family, resulting in a police response to a false report of a gunshot. * April 8, 2025: The first swatting incident occurred, with police responding to a false...

‘Congress should not be operating as business as usual… Colleagues of mine should not be able to go to church or to go to the neighborhood gas station…’ While plotting upcoming protests, Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., urged demonstrators to target congressmen at church. “Folks, colleagues of mine should not be able to go to church or to go to the neighborhood gas station — if they pump their own gas, because I work with a lot of billionaires,” Ramirez said. “They should not be able to, without seeing community asking them ‘What the hell are you doing [for] my Social...

Miracles occurred – prayers were answered. On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit shared this article from JoeHoft.com about how an Obama Judge denied Nevada Judge Michele Fiore a new trial. Fiori was targeted because of her actions during the Bundy Ranch Standoff years ago. On Thursday, Judge Fiore was pardoned by President Trump after he reportedly read this article. Here is Judge Fiore's pardon: Judge Fiore shared the following message: PUBLIC STATEMENT FROM JUDGE MICHELE FIORE “No weapon formed against me shall prosper.” — Isaiah 54:17 Today, I stand before you — not just as a free woman, but as a...

A disturbing surge of swatting attacks has struck media personalities, conservative influencers, and me too. The FBI is investigating. FBI Director Kash Patel has said, “This isn’t about politics—weaponizing law enforcement against ANY American is not only morally reprehensible but also endangers lives, including those of our officers. That will not be tolerated.” “Swatting” is the crime of making calls to report fake emergencies in order to provoke armed police responses. The calls often claim a shooting, hostage situation, or bomb threat—to dispatch heavily armed police, typically SWAT teams, to a victim’s address. As federal and local authorities scramble to...

The left-wing cofounder of a group that received gushing coverage for its efforts to “defund” conservative media will step away from the advocacy organization at the end of next month, The Post can reveal, following a legal challenge and attempts to rebrand in the wake of President Trump’s return to the White House. Nandini Jammi — whose Check My Ads Institute seeks to yank advertiser funding from right-wing figures and outlets purportedly spreading “disinformation” — announced on her LinkedIn “with enormous pride” that she was “stepping down.” The move comes on the heels of a funding shortfall amid impending legal...

June 2005 They come from different backgrounds with the same story. But the countries they are in — Canada and Australia — refuse to believe them or publicly acknowledge what they are saying. Why? Because both administrations have huge and influential money ties with China which has never been closer. The latest diplomatic crises involving Chinese spies overseas is playing out in Australia after a Chinese First Secretary Chen Yonglin applied for asylum in Sydney. Chen has alleged there are 1,000 Chinese spies in Australia and that abductions sponsored by the Chinese Government take place Down Under. He said he...

The celebrated deal that would have ensured that blind dissident Chen Guangcheng would stay in China began to dissolve publicly with a tweet: “GUANGCHENG TALKED TO ME. WHAT MEDIA REPORTED IS WRONG.” The unsettling Twitter message from Beijing activist Zeng Jinyan began a firestorm of debate over whether Chen had been coerced into the deal with threats to his family, an alarming idea that gutted the most important promise behind the agreement -- that Chen would be kept safe.

Two men working on behalf of the Chinese government’s Ministry of Public Security attempted to bribe an IRS agent in a scheme intended to further Beijing’s harassment of Falun Gong believers, the Justice Department revealed in a criminal complaint unveiled today. The defendants were arrested today in California on charges including acting as unregistered foreign agents, money laundering, and bribery. “The Chinese government has yet again attempted, and failed, to target critics of the PRC here in the United States,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement this afternoon. “The Justice Department will continue to investigate, disrupt, and prosecute...

A large group of U.S. House Republicans sent a letter on Friday questioning Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the presence of a Chinese Fuzhou police service station in New York City.“We are writing to express our grave concern over reports of the law enforcement presence of the People’s Republic of China in New York City,” begins the letter from 21 lawmakers, including Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.).The letter states, “The Public Security (Police) Bureau of Fuzhou, China, announced in January 2022 that...

McMahon and his accomplice Zhu Yong conducted surveillance to harass and intimidate Americans on behalf of China