Free Republic

Two former senior FBI officials were taken into custody Friday after being charged with making false statements to Congress about their roles in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden. Nikki Cole Floris, 46, and Bradley Benavides, 56, both face one count of making false statements in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2). The charges stem from their 2023 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in which they allegedly denied their involvement in the FBI’s Hunter Biden investigations, despite evidence to the contrary. The FBI’s affidavit alleges the pair were “actively...

We got a perfect example of the biter-gets-bit scenario late this week featuring the larger-than-life crusader against fascism Elissa Sllotkin. We’re told that Slotnick served as an analyst for the CIA, which means that this case is a twofer, informing us what’s wrong with the Senate today and what's been wrong with the CIA for the past twenty years. Slotkin, as readers will know, made the news earlier this week with the release of a clip showing her at some sort of University of Chicago conclave threatening legal persecution for young people who took jobs in the Trump administration: "I...

House Democrats are preparing an ambitious 100-days agenda focused on delivering their campaign promises — making life more affordable and conducting vast oversight of the Trump administration — if the party seizes majority control in next month’s elections. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is in line to become House speaker if the party wins power, said the Democrats will be united “right out of the gate” on reinstating Affordable Care Act tax breaks, reversing Republican Medicaid cuts, holding votes against the Iran war and undoing President Donald Trump’s tariff regime. They expect to launch the agenda in the first 100...

Ex-special counsel Jack Smith obtained personal information on 639,000 Republican donors, voters and supporters — including some who contributed as little as $1 or bought “red MAGA hats” — according to subpoena returns obtained by a Senate Republican committee. In a Wednesday memo, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) disclosed the details of data Smith’s office received, denouncing the former prosecutor of President Trump for “abuse of authority.” More than 148,000 rows on spreadsheets containing the findings, including donors from 2005 to 2021. Dates of birth, home addresses, email addresses, Republican party registration, information about credit cards or employment...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Following this week's DHS raid on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's home, Democrats warned President Donald Trump that using law enforcement to target political opponents could set a dangerous precedent. Omar, who is reportedly under investigation for immigration fraud, angrily denounced the "lawfare" targeting her and cautioned that Republicans could one day find themselves on the receiving end of similar raids. "This is an incredibly dangerous escalation. Sending law enforcement into the homes of people in the party currently out of power? Republicans are playing with fire," said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. "Crossing this line threatens the very...

All Americans will bear the brunt of elected officials’ failure to justly punish Jack Smith and others who weaponized the federal government against conservatives. In exposing Jack Smith’s lawless, corrupt, and tyrannical effort to criminalize the MAGA movement, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed jarring new details about the extent of the Jan. 6-justified lawfare campaign. Smith’s partisan team carried out a fishing expedition on behalf of the Biden administration and Democrat Party that went beyond obtaining the text messages of more than 40 members of Congress despite the weaponizers knowing it likely violated the Constitution’s speech and...

...The theory of the case is simple: the intelligence community and deep state tactics used for regime change abroad were turned inwards and weaponized against President Trump. Think impeachments, paid protests, propaganda, surveillance, and bogus indictments. And he just admitted to this. ... Obama’s legal hatchet man and color revolution extraordinaire Norm Eisen. Look here https://x.com/nataliegwinters/status/1861572979848609868?s=46 and here. https://x.com/nataliegwinters/status/1891878562451333333?s=46 .

Conservatives have yet to build the institutions, infrastructure, and legal capacity needed to counter lawfare before it destroys more lives.Lawfare grows more dangerous with every operation. This week’s disclosures about Jack Smith’s operation show how far that machinery reached.

Lawfare is the strategic use of legal proceedings to intimidate, distract, defame, or destroy an opponent. Over the past decade, the Left has built a powerful, well-funded network that is carrying out Lawfare against our advocate class. The Left raised at least $183 million last year. To examine lawfare, we must consider the current context, which is this: we are at war, a cold civil war, against a domestic regime which wants to overthrow America. It is correct to call it a “war,” and not just an unusually wide divide, because the contest is between two moral orders. From a...

Former Trump staffer Michael Caputo endured a decade of lawfare that he says forced him out of his home and gave him cancer from all the stress. But just when he thought the Russiagate nightmare was over, he was slapped in the face this month with a lawsuit cooked up by a former DOJ lawyer from the “national security” unit that hounded him and other Trump associates over alleged foreign agent violations without laying a single charge. It’s a simple $100,000 contract dispute case, but Jack Korba, formerly a prosecutor in the small national security section of the District of...

Despite the abrupt departure of Joe diGenova as lead prosecutor in the “grand conspiracy” case against Trump lawfare perps, the Justice Department appears to be moving full steam ahead. Well, that didn’t last long. After less than five months on the job, Joe diGenova resigned from the Department of Justice last week; diGenova, a longtime ally of President Trump, took on a senior advisory role at the DOJ in April and was quickly dispatched to southern Florida to take the reins of an ongoing “grand conspiracy” investigation into perpetrators of the decade-long lawfare operation against the president. Todd Blanche, then...

Prosecutors alleged the former three-star general lied about his contacts with a Russian diplomat. Retired General Michael Flynn, whose life was turned upside down by the Russia collusion investigation, told Just the News he would never have accepted his 2018 plea deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller had he known the full FBI evidence in his case. “Had I seen that evidence that you have broken, no way in the world,” Flynn told the Just the News, No Noise television show on Wednesday night hours after President Donald Trump’s administration declassified the fully unredacted versions of the FBI’s 2017 handwritten...

British police said Wednesday that they have opened a criminal investigation into allegations that anti-immigration party Reform UK broke rules barring foreign donations. Last week, Channel 4 broadcast an undercover investigation in which two senior Reform UK officials appeared to discuss ways money from an American financier could be channeled through his U.K.-based son to get around the rules. U.K. electoral law says parties can only accept donations from British voters or U.K.-registered businesses .... The party suspended Dan Jukes, a longtime adviser to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and party policy chief James Orr, after the documentary was aired....

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham is expected to announce a trade ban on Israeli settlements tomorrow, an official familiar with the matter confirmed to i24NEWS. Foreign Minister Ed Miliband will announce them tomorrow morning following a cabinet meeting. Following the announcement, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich reacted by calling for the immediate expulsion of the British ambassador and denouncing the British government as antisemitic. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for Israel to recognize the Falkland Islands as Argentine in response to the announcement. He said the islands were 'illegally occupied' by Britain and that Israel should sanction the UK until...

Non-lawyer commenters at this site often express befuddlement at the doctrine in the federal courts known as “standing.” Where did that come from? In practical application, the “standing” doctrine seems like a tool of left-wing control. Left-wing litigants seeking an expansive role for the government seem to always succeed in establishing this “standing,” and thus they are always granted access to the federal courts to have their claims adjudicated; and if they can find their way to a friendly judge, they can get whatever policies they are challenging of the Trump administration (or other Republican administration) overturned. Meanwhile, right-wing litigants...

The United Nations has decided that Britain has not grovelled enough. After years of toppled statues, boarded-up war memorials and official lectures about “colonialism,” a UN human-rights committee now wants the country that ended the Atlantic slave trade to fill its public squares with statues of “people of African descent,” The globalist body also suggests Britain should rewrite what children are taught, and treat historic slavery as a live brief for migration policy and hate-speech enforcement. This comes in the form of formal “reparatory justice” guidance from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, published six months after...

A major theme of President Trump’s critics is that he is corrupt. As a couple of examples, here is Elizabeth Warren on July 26 calling Trump “the most corrupt president of the United States any time in American history”; and here is a piece from the Guardian on August 11 calling Trump’s second term “the most openly corrupt” presidency ever. There are hundreds more where those came from. But is there anything to this? As long time readers here are aware, my view is that politics is inherently corrupt. In this way, politics differs from business, because in business it...

An attorney defending the Alaska Division of Elections against a lawsuit argued in state court Friday that candidates for state office are not obliged to disclose their finances when they file for office. If that argument is upheld in court, it would upend existing practices and could end voters’ ability to examine political candidates’ personal finances in the early stages of a primary election. The lawsuit in court on Friday was filed by the Alaska Democratic Party, which is challenging the eligibility of Jose Roel Tagle to run for Alaska House District 22. Tagle, a Republican, is the only challenger...

Panel says it will give Trump administration two weeks to seek Supreme Court reviewWASHINGTON—A federal appeals court on Friday halted aboveground construction on President Trump’s planned White House ballroom, setting up a potential showdown at the Supreme Court over one of the president’s favored projects.In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that only Congress, not the president acting alone, can approve demolitions or design changes to the White House. Trump hasn’t secured congressional approval for the proposed 90,000-square-foot project. The panel upheld a lower-court decision.Advertisement“We are aware of...

JUST IN: Indian animal abuser Shri Thanedar, who defrauded investors and drove his first wife to suicide after using her for a green card, has been crushed in his primary. Best known for repeatedly filing frivolous impeachment articles against President Trump and for the small mammal that lives atop his head, Thanedar now joins Jasmine Crockett, Eric Swalwell, Al Green, Dan Goldman, and others in the unemployment line. Denaturalize and deport this loser now.