Free Republic

Suspects were 'holdovers' from Obama administration.. The federal government is being sued for the details of an alleged CIA scheme to "get rid" of President Trump. Officials with government watchdog Judicial Watch confirmed in a statement they are pursuing a Freedom of Information Act case against the Defense Department over reports from a military officer "to his superiors regarding an alleged conversation." That reportedly happened around January 2017 and involved CIA analysts Eric Ciaramella and Sean Misko. And it concerned a plan to "get rid" of then-President Trump. ... seeking access to "any and all reports submitted by a U.S....

Richard V. Spencer, President Trump’s ousted former Navy secretary, endorsed on Friday the opposing White House campaign of Democratic candidate Michael R. Bloomberg. Mr. Spencer, who was asked to resign in November amid a dispute involving retired Navy SEAL and convicted war criminal Edward R. Gallagher, stumped for Mr. Bloomberg during a campaign event held in Virginia shortly after his support was announced on the candidate’s official website. Speaking near a naval base in Norfolk, Mr. Spencer touted the billionaire media mogul and former New York City mayor for having characteristics crucial to running the country. We need a leader...

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Wednesday that the actions taken by the bureau to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page were “unacceptable” and “cannot be repeated.” During his first congressional appearance following the release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s FISA review last year, Wray vowed to reform the FISA system by implementing “specific procedures and safeguards.” “The failures highlighted in the inspector general report are unacceptable, period. And they cannot be repeated,” Wray testified before the House Judiciary Committee. “I have already ordered more than 40 corrective actions to our...

Eric Ciaramella, the alleged Ukraine whistleblower, was long suspected of deliberately attempting to damage President Trump's foreign policy from the inside and had access to policy information far beyond his regional expertise, according to former National Security Council officials. Ciaramella, 33, a career CIA analyst, was Ukraine director on the NSC toward the end of the Obama administration and stayed there during the first few months of the Trump administration, when he was acting senior director for European and Russian affairs and then special assistant to Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who was Trump's national security adviser, until he left the...

A State Department intelligence official who was blocked by the White House from submitting written congressional testimony on climate change last month is resigning from his post. Rod Schoonover — who worked in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s Office of the Geographer and Global Issues — spoke before the House Intelligence Committee on June 5 about the security risks the United States faces because of climate change. But White House officials would not let him submit the bureau’s written statement that climate impacts could be “possibly catastrophic,” after the State Department refused to cut references to federal scientific findings...

President Trump on Monday refused to say whether he had confidence in FBI Director Christopher Wray, while acknowledging the two officials have disagreed on some key issues, including whether the president’s campaign was a victim of spying. In an interview, Trump was quizzed on his level of confidence in the FBI boss. “Well, we’ll see how it turns out,” he told The Hill, before discussing Wray’s previous claim that he would not use the word “spying” to describe the bureau's surveillance of figures linked to the Trump campaign in 2016. “I mean, I disagree with him on that and I...

Over a year ago, I asked in this space whether U.S. attorney John Huber could impartially and fully investigate FISA court abuses and other matters in which his boss, Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein, was up to his eyeballs.  In "Can Huber Investigate His Boss Rosenstein?," I asked: While it is reassuring to note that A.G. Jeff Sessions has climbed down from the back side of the milk carton, where his missing visage had been hiding, long enough to appoint Utah U.S. attorney John Huber to independently investigate claims of FBI abuses in surveilling the Trump campaign and other matters, one question...

Two House committees want an accounting from U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber of his investigation into whether the Justice Department and the FBI abused its authority in their probes of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Donald Trump's election campaign. The Republican ranking members of the House Government Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Huber on Monday seeking an update of his work. "Your investigation has been ongoing for over nine months," wrote Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the top GOP members of the Oversight and Judiciary committees,...

A holdover from the Obama administration who helped broker the Iran nuclear deal continues to work in the Trump State Department as a member of the “policy planning staff,” according to her biography on the agency website. “Prior to joining the Policy Planning Staff, she served as a Director for Iran and Iran Nuclear Implementation on the National Security Council Staff from 2014-2016,” Sahar Nowrouzzadeh’s bio states. “Sahar also previously served as a Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. Department of State and a Team Chief and Senior Analyst at the Department of Defense.” In an October 2016, Nowrouzzadeh was...

This is Lois Greisman. She’s an Obama holdover over at the FTC. She is strategically targeting any payment processing company that donated $ to @realDonaldTrump. Her congressional hearing is on the 26th! She must be fired!!

A September 11 commission co-chairman talks about the damage done by the latest New York Times leak. By Byron York Thomas Kean, the co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, was briefed several weeks ago about the Treasury Department’s terrorist-finance program, and after the session, Kean says, “I came away with the idea that this was a good program, one that was legal, one that was not violating anybody’s civil liberties…and something the U.S. government should be doing to make us safer.” Kean tells National Review Online that the New York Times’s decision to expose the terrorist finance effort — Kean...