Free Republic

Some of the democracy-building experts President Donald Trump fired this year from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department are now reapplying the skills and knowledge they built up over decades to undermine Trump’s power. For years, these officials were stationed across the globe actively supporting opposition movements in autocratic nations. Now they’ve got time, a network of former colleagues and a growing sense of moral indignation. “Take it from those of us who worked in authoritarian countries: We’ve become one,” said a currently employed federal official, who spoke to NOTUS on condition of anonymity. “They were...

The tables have turned. Had everything gone according to plan, Donald Trump would be on trial right now in South Florida for hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago ocean estate after leaving the White House. The politician, still licking his wounds from his New York conviction, would be desperately fighting to stave off a humiliating distinction: becoming the first former president to be branded a two-time felon. Instead, a very different trial of sorts will be underway this Friday at a tiny federal courthouse in the sunny beach city of Fort Pierce—one that will awkwardly put the Department of Justice...

The MAGA-friendly federal judge who keeps siding with Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago classified records case has forced prosecutors to make a stark choice: allow jurors to see a huge trove of national secrets or let him go. U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ultimatum Monday night came as a surprise twist in what could have been a simple order; one merely asking federal prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers for proposed jury instructions at the upcoming trial. But as she has done repeatedly, Cannon used this otherwise innocuous legal step as yet another way to swing the case wildly in favor...

Subpoenas went out Wednesday to local election officials and a former Republican Party chair in a rural Georgia county, with attorneys seeking to find out how a covert team of 2020 election conspiracy theorists were able to improperly access and copy a voting system server last year. The eight subpoenas, issued by attorneys representing voting rights activists in an ongoing lawsuit, were greenlit by U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg. She expressed “great concern” last week about the unauthorized access of a voting system server following an investigation by The Daily Beast that revealed details about who was involved in this...

In September, a judge gave the Trump Organization an ultimatum: Comply with the New York Attorney General’s two-year-old subpoenas, or hire an outside digital forensics company to gather the evidence. The Trump Organization chose the second option. But with a deadline for the information fast approaching, it’s becoming clear that the Trump family only hired the company to do some of the job—and what is coming will still take plenty more time. It turns out, the digital forensics company that the Trump Organization chose, HaystackID, wasn’t hired to actually get everything investigators wanted. “Haystack has not been engaged to perform...