Free Republic

Five-and-a-half years after being convicted of providing material support for terrorism, terror lawyer Lynne Stewart finally received a sentence commensurate with her crime. She was resentenced last week to 10 years. But if George Soros had his way, she would be free today. Stewart made a career out of defending street criminals and terrorists, including Sammy "The Bull" Gravano (pleaded guilty), Weather Underground terrorist David J. Gilbert (convicted), and Larry Davis (acquitted of wounding six policemen and killing several others in 1986, only to be convicted of a later murder and killed in prison). It should have come as...

President Trump’s White House fired the inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Tuesday, a day after the watchdog office issued a report that was critical of the foreign assistance freeze, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill. USAID’s Inspector General Paul Martin was reportedly fired around 6 p.m. local time. No reason was given for his termination, the source added. Martin’s office published a 6-page report on Monday outlining how the recent State Department’s pause on foreign assistance programs and cutting down the USAID’s staff created “risks and challenges to the safeguarding...

Three senior Justice Department officials violated internal policies and engaged in “misconduct” when they leaked details about a non-public investigation to the media “days before an election,” the agency’s inspector general revealed Monday. The DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which has been run by Michael Horowitz since 2012, launched a probe after it received a complaint alleging that a “politically motivated” disclosure related to “information about ongoing matters” was made in the runup to an unspecified election. “The OIG investigation found that three then Senior DOJ Officials violated DOJ’s Confidentiality and Media Contacts Policy by leaking to select...

Can you imagine the danger to our republic if the Executive Branch could secretly, for months on end, and without any clear and compelling justification, surveil the very people in Congress conducting oversight of those agencies? That chilling constitutional nightmare transpired. And we’re only getting the details about the separation-of-powers-eviscerating, civil liberties-undermining, and transparency-imperiling activity seven years after it started. The revelations come in a recently released Justice Department Inspector General report. Like much of this corrupt activity, the story begins with Russiagate. In the spring and summer of 2017, the first year of the Trump presidency, CNN, The New...

(The Center Square) – Years after a watchdog group raised ethics questions about a former top Securities and Exchange Commission director, the agency's inspector general issued a report on the matter, but has yet to release it publicly. Empower Oversight, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving independent government oversight, raised questions about William Hinman, who served as director of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance from May 2017 to December 2020. Empower Oversight obtained documents that it said showed Hinman may have violated federal ethics rules regarding conflicts of interest. The group's investigation resulted in a referral of evidence to...

In a fiery letter to the Department of Defense Inspector General, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), Chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, exposed the “systemic failure” within the Pentagon on January 6, 2021. Loudermilk accused the DoD of intentionally delaying the deployment of the D.C. National Guard (DCNG) and of publishing an Inspector General report that “whitewashes” the events to protect top Pentagon officials. The letter, addressed to Defense Department Inspector General Robert P. Storch, challenges the findings of Report No. 2022-039, which the DoD Inspector General’s office had presented as a comprehensive review of the Department’s role during...

The inspector generals for the Central Intelligence Agency and Office of the Director of National Intelligence resigned from their oversight roles after former President Donald Trump's re-election victory. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Thomas Monheim and the CIA's Robin Ashton are the two IGs who resigned. Monheim and Ashton were nominated by President Biden in 2021 and confirmed by the Senate. “After more than 38 years of public service, I am retiring from the federal government at the end of this year. It has been the pinnacle of my rewarding career to serve alongside the dedicated officers...

Inspectors general for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) are heading for the exit before the new Trump administration takes power, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reported Monday. The departure of the agency watchdogs represents some of the first officials to remove themselves from the administrative state before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has vowed rid the federal bureaucracy of rogue and corrupt actors. To carry out those reforms, Trump nominated John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021, to lead the CIA. He also nominated...

*It's still unclear if the messages were deleted intentionally or by accident.* The Secret Service deleted text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after an internal watchdog requested them as part of a review of the department’s handling of last year’s Capitol riot, the watchdog said this week. A letter sent Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General to the heads of the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees, which was obtained by ABC News, said the messages were deleted “as part of a device-replacement program” despite the inspector general requesting such communications. "First, the Department notified...

A top Chicago police official’s car was stopped on the West Side during a drug arrest earlier this month, a police spokesman confirmed Wednesday. A Lexus registered to Yolanda Talley, chief of internal affairs, was pulled over Feb. 1 in the 500 block of North St. Louis Avenue and officers arrested Kenneth Miles, 34, on drug charges, according to an arrest report and police sources. Talley wasn’t in the car. Her niece was driving the Lexus, said Don Terry, a spokesman for the police department. According to a police report, officers in a gang investigations squad were targeting drug sales...

Another day, another Deep State participant outed. ICIG Michael Atkinson altered the whistleblower form to allow for second-hand information, which allowed suspected Schiff whistleblower Eric Ciaramella to present a bogus accusation on the President. Atkinson also oversaw the FBI lovers who altered the FISA warrant. This will soon be reported in the DOJ IG’s FISA Abuse report. Today we point out that Atkinson’s wife is connected to Fusion GPS. What a mess! Last weekend we learned from another leak to the Washington Post, that an individual in Obama’s FBI altered documents that provided support for a FISA Warrant obtained to...

(CNSNews.com) – The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction told lawmakers on Wednesday that his office has issued 11 reports and 600 audits since its creation in 2008, but that despite “all of the reports we’ve done, no one in the government has been held accountable.” “I always joke that the only person who’s ever going to get fired over Afghanistan is probably going to be me,” John Sopko told the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that deals with international development. “Nobody else,” he said. “Not the generals who came up [to the Hill] and spun and spun and spun, and...

The Witch Hunt continues against Trump supporters. Now, it’s the US Army targeting General Michael Flynn over the phony “emoluments” clause. The Washington Post reported: The Defense Department’s internal watchdog has concluded a long-delayed investigation into Michael Flynn, defense officials said Friday, sending its findings to the Army in a case that could bring tens of thousands of dollars in financial penalties for President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser. The investigation focuses on Flynn’s acceptance of money from Russian and Turkish interests before joining the Trump administration, a potential violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. With few exceptions, U.S....

The Transportation Department’s Inspector General made public on Wednesday a report that cites repeated examples of former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao allegedly using her staff and her office to help benefit her family and their business operations and revealed that staff members at the agency had raised ethics concerns. Elaine Chao is Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) wife, who notably resigned the day after the Capitol riot. The inspector general’s investigation detailed a series of instances in which Elaine Chao reportedly directed her staff to spend federal government time and resources to help with matters related to a family shipping...

The Transportation Department’s watchdog asked the Justice Department to criminally investigate Elaine Chao late last year after it determined she had misused her office when she was transportation secretary under President Donald Trump but was rebuffed, according to a report released Wednesday. The report said the Justice Department’s criminal and public integrity divisions declined in December to take up the case for criminal prosecution following the inspector general’s findings that Chao inappropriately used her staff and office for personal tasks and to promote a shipping business owned by Chao’s father and sisters. That company does extensive business with China. “A...

On Friday, Trump fired the inspector general of the State Department, Steve Linick. In accordance with the 2008 Inspector General Reform Act, which protects inspectors general from being fired without cause, Trump informed Congress in writing about the intent to fire Linick, expressing that he no longer had the “fullest confidence” in Linick, who was appointed to that position in 2013 by Barack Obama. Democrats naturally have come out of the woodwork to express their faux outrage, and to launch an investigation into the firing over allegations that Trump acted to protect Pompeo. But where were these Democrats in 2009...

Project Veritas Tuesday night released a video with USPS whistleblower Richard Hopkins asserting that he did not recant his allegations of election fraud, a lie that was published by the Washington Post. Additionally, James O’Keefe posted recordings of federal agents attempting to coerce and intimidate Hopkins into recanting. The tactics used to coerce and intimidate the USPS whistleblower is something you would see in a Communist country. Mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Election Day to be considered valid and counted, per US law. In the newly released recording, Agent Russell Strasser says that “I am trying to twist you...

USPS Whistleblower Richard Hopkins: 'I DID NOT RECANT' "Washington Post‘s Shawn Boburg and Jacob Bogage have been played by the same federal agents that are on the audio coercing the whistleblower to recant. AUDIO TAPES OF COERCION TO BE RELEASED..."- James OKeefe

Agent Strasser: “I am trying to twist you a little bit” “I am scaring you here”...” we have Senators involved...DOJ involved...reason they called me is to try to harness that storm.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has defended the firing earlier this month of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, telling "The Ingraham Angle" in an exclusive interview Thursday that "I regret that I didn't recommend to the president earlier that he be terminated. "He was acting in a way that was deeply inconsistent with what the State Department was trying to do," Pompeo told host Laura Ingraham. "His office was leaking information, we tried to get him to be part of a team that was going to help protect his own officers from COVID-19. He refused to be an active...