Free Republic

Money laundering isn’t new — and neither is China’s role in it. Millennia ago, Chinese merchants developed schemes to “clean” the profits of commercial trade and avoid taxation. Today, their successors are doing much the same. Only now, they’re laundering billions through the U.S. financial system and fueling one of the deadliest fentanyl-fueled drug crises in American history. In a step in the right direction, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (known as FinCEN) issued a sweeping advisory on Aug. 28 warning that Chinese money laundering networks now represent “one of the most significant money laundering threat actors facing...

Newly uncovered internal documents shed fresh light on former President Joe Biden’s use of the autopen and alleged outsourcing of decision-making during his final year in office. The former president has insisted that he personally made all decisions regarding pardons, executive orders and proclamations, calling claims to the contrary “ridiculous and false.” However, internal memos and emails indicate that critical decisions — including clemencies — were quietly delegated to others, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, and it remains unclear whether Biden formally approved certain decisions, multiple outlets reported on Thursday. Biden aides initially insisted he personally sign by hand...

The new internal memos from the Biden White House are the first glimpse into the Trump administration’s probe into the former president’s mental decline and the abundant use of his autopen signature. Internal memos obtained by Just the News show President Joe Biden’s aides believed at the beginning of his administration that he had an obligation to personally sign official presidential actions, including pardons, and chronicle how the former president later outsourced clemency decisions to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The memos were gathered as part of a sweeping review by the Trump White House into Biden's use of autopen signatures...

Andrew Bates, a former senior deputy press secretary for President Biden, slammed the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigating his former boss on Friday in an opening statement he made to the panel. Bates is on Capitol Hill as one of multiple former Biden aides who have gone in-person before the panel for the committee’s investigation into Biden’s mental acuity and use of an autopen. He appeared voluntarily. The former White House official lambasted President Trump in his statement to the GOP-led panel. He said lawmakers were wasting taxpayer money to investigate Biden but turn a blind eye to...

A disgraced FBI official tipped off a Chinese company about a criminal investigation while Hunter Biden was pursuing lucrative deals with the CCP-linked business. The since-convicted FBI official who led counterintelligence efforts in New York leaked information to an affiliate of a Chinese company which was linked to Hunter Biden’s business efforts, according to a DOJ watchdog who concluded the leak tipped the Chinese conglomerate off about the bureau’s criminal investigation.Charles McGonigal, the former special-agent-in-charge of the FBI Counterintelligence Division in New York, leaked information to “Person B” – an unnamed businessman who worked for the Chinese energy conglomerate...

Ukraine expects to receive around 1.8 million artillery shells by the end of the year as part of the Czech ammunition initiative. The statement was made by Ukraine`s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha during a joint press conference in Kyiv with his Czech counterpart Jan Lipavský, Ukrinform correspondent reported on August 12. “Czechia is making practical contributions to our shared security and defense. Thanks to the Czech ammunition initiative launched in 2024, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are to receive about 1.8 million artillery shells by the end of this year,” Sybiha stated.

A package of U.S. cruise missiles is among the first shipments of purchases by NATO allies to be sent to the embattled country.Europe has begun buying American weapons for Ukraine in earnest, only weeks after President Trump struck a deal with NATO allies to do so.The latest sale, announced by the State Department on Thursday, will send 3,500 extended-range cruise missiles and GPS navigation kits to Ukraine once Congress formally approves it, as expected. They cost $825 million, paid for by Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, with some unspecified financial assistance from the Pentagon.The missiles can be fired from fighter...

Volodymyr Zelensky has, quite bravely, been playing the part of a military commander, but he’s never had a workable strategy for winning or even ending the war. Donald Trump’s pragmatism is forcing Zelensky to face reality, which may ultimately save Ukraine from having Russia seize it inch by inch in the coming years.In the Age of Chivalry, bravery won wars. At the Battle of St. Jacob an der Birs in 1444, Swiss freedom fighters suicidally fought a much larger French invading force, outnumbered 20-to-1, resisting down to the last man. This persuaded the French to stop waging war on the...

Sections of a so-called whistleblower’s complaint alleging President Donald Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 presidential race relies upon a self-described investigative journalism organization bankrolled massively by billionaire activist George Soros. The complainer admits, “I was not a direct witness to most of the events described.” Still, the so-called whistleblower goes on to allege that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. The transcript of the phone call authorized for release by President Trump evidences no such pressure or quid pro...

In February 2016, Donald Trump scandalized Republican Party elites at a CNN town hall event in Columbus, Ohio, when he dared to call George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq “a big fat mistake” and “the worst decision any one has made, any president has made, in the history of this country.” Trump’s assertion infuriated GOP insiders not because it was clearly mistaken or even easily disputable, but because it was all too true. A glance at the titles of major books on America in the Middle East written by authors across the political spectrum—Fiasco, Grand Delusion, Losing the Long Game,...

First lady Melania Trump is going after Hunter Biden for what she says are “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements,” the former first son made linking her to disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. On Aug. 6, Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, wrote to Biden demanding he retract the comments made in an interview with Andrew Callaghan. She will “pursue any and all legal rights and remedies available to her to recover the overwhelming financial and reputational harm that you have caused her to suffer," Brito wrote. Biden’s comments, falsely claiming Epstein introduced Melania to Trump, were widely circulated on...

Hunter Biden dismissed First Lady Melania Trump’s demand for an apology for his statements linking the former super model to Jeffrey Epstein. Hunter’s response, “F*** that! That’s not going to happen.” What a piece of trash.

One lesson from the ongoing scandal is that it lifted the curtain of foreign governments’ covert influence campaigns in the United States. Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop revealed much information, including Hunter’s shady business dealings in Ukraine and China, raising questions about the extent to which President Biden was involved in his son’s business activities. This ongoing scandal lifted the curtain of foreign governments’ covert influence campaigns in the United States. No government has conducted such influence campaigns more effectively than Communist China. To understand China’s influence campaigns on foreign soil, one has to get familiar with a secretive Chinese government...

Attorneys for First Lady Melania Trump threatened Hunter Biden with a $1 billion defamation lawsuit if he doesn’t retract his statements linking her to Jeffrey Epstein. Hunter Biden falsely claimed Jeffrey Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. During an interview with Channel 5 host Andrew Callaghan earlier this month, Hunter Biden claimed, “Jeffrey Epstein introduced Melania, and that’s how Melania and the first lady and the President met.” Melania met Trump at a Fashion Week party in New York City in 1998. Fox News reported:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, confirmed Friday that his committee’s review of Joe Biden’s pardons so far calls into question their legality. Biden granted more acts of clemency than any other president in U.S. history.. During just one term, he gave a total of 4,245, which included 4,165 commutations of sentences and 80 pardons. By comparison, Barack Obama issued 1,927 acts of clemency over two terms, and Donald Trump issued 238 during his first term. The vast majority of Biden’s pardons came during his final two months in office.. The pardon for his son,...

MEGA BOMBSHELL: Rep. Tim Burchett EXPOSES Biden White House Staffers for Taking HUGE Payoffs to Issue 8,000+ Autopen Pardons — While Their In-Laws HID $160M+ in Cayman Islands! 💰 Smoking Gun Proof They SOLD Pardons for Bribes? DOJ Must ACT NOW! Rep. Tim Burchett drops nukes: Biden White House staffers allegedly took HUGE payoffs for 8,000+ autopen pardons while Joe was "incapacitated." "Someone got rich off that" – pure BRIBES! Now, NEW REVELATION: CIA & DOGE uncover in-laws of TWO Biden staffers stashing over $80M EACH in Cayman Islands accounts! As their shady income gets probed, should DOJ subpoena these...

Hunter Biden revealed he started a new job working with a nonprofit homeless prevention and tenants' rights group in southern Los Angeles. The former president’s son made the announcement during an interview with "Channel 5" podcaster Andrew Callaghan, which was posted on Tuesday. "I just think there is such an opportunity to be of service right now – and not in, you know, some kind of melodramatic way – but I just, a lot of people that are, you know, getting the s--- beat out of them out there, right here in LA. And there is enormous opportunity for just...

THREAD EXPOSE 🚨 Tucker Carlson Deliberately Chose To Suppress the Hunter Biden Laptop Story In 2020 To Preserve His Friendship and Investment Relationships With Hunter Biden and The Biden Family 🚨 A Betrayal of Public Trust During the 2020 Election & How Tucker Helped Biden Get Away With Stealing The 2020 Election In the weeks leading up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, a bombshell of unprecedented magnitude was poised to reshape the political landscape: the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, a digital trove containing evidence of corruption, foreign influence, and illicit activities tied to the Biden family. This was not...

Your socks pick up microbes from every surface you step foot on. (Photo by K-FK on Shutterstock) ================================================================= Your feet are microbial hotspots. The area between your toes is packed with sweat glands, and when we wrap our feet in socks and shoes, we trap that moisture in a warm, humid cocoon that’s ideal for microbial growth. In fact, your feet may be home to a miniature rain forest of bacteria and fungi, with anywhere from 100 to 10 million microbial cells per square centimeter of skin surface. Not only do feet host a huge variety of microorganisms – up...