Free Republic

WASHINGTON — A key former F.B.I. official cast doubt on the Justice Department’s case for dropping a criminal charge against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during an interview with investigators last week, according to people familiar with the investigation. Department officials reviewing the Flynn case interviewed Bill Priestap, the former head of F.B.I. counterintelligence, two days before making their extraordinary request to drop the case to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. They did not tell Judge Sullivan about Mr. Priestap’s interview. A Justice Department official said that they were in the process of writing up a report...

An FBI agent's newly released testimony undercuts top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr's denial of a conflict of interest between his Trump-Russia efforts and his wife’s work for Fusion GPS, producer of the discredited Steele dossier. The agent, Michael Gaeta, told congressional probers that Ohr had pressed him to make sure the FBI was “doing something” with the dossier. According to Gaeta, Ohr pushed Steele's collection of memos alleging nefarious ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in part because Ohr’s wife Nellie worked for the same company that had hired ex-British spy Christopher Steele. Gaeta's testimony was released last...

By the height of the Watergate scandal in 1974, virtually every major newspaper in America had called for President Richard Nixon's resignation. During the investigation and impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, more than 100 newspapers called for him to resign. But President Donald J. Trump? He could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody... and not a single major daily newspaper would call for his resignation..... After three years of political and actual carnage under Trump, including Robert Mueller's description of acts that amounted to, he told Congress, obstruction of justice; Trump's "fine people on both...

Now that the Justice Department belatedly has admitted that the entire investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was a sham, it is time to turn to the bigger picture.On August 2, 2017, acting attorney general (for all matters involving the Trump-Russia collusion hoax) Rod Rosenstein signed a memorandum expanding the jurisdiction of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Almost a year after Mueller released his report, the expanded jurisdiction memorandum remained a secret until Wednesday. A third jurisdiction memorandum remains secret.It is unclear why the Department of Justice says it kept this memo secret until now or why it...

Fox News host Jesse Watters said sources are telling him Attorney General William Barr has received "smoking gun" documents that will cast aspersions on the Russia investigation. In his opening monologue on Watters' World, which was taped Friday but aired Saturday evening, the host said these records could reveal that former President Barack Obama had a significant role in the investigation into the Trump 2016 campaign's ties to Russia, which President Trump and his allies have deemed a "witch hunt." "Sources are telling Watters' World that Attorney General Bill Barr was just given a trove of smoking gun documents that...

On Friday Fox News host Tucker Carlson said that Schiff should resign over the “elaborate and intentional” Russia hoax that alleged that President Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to help him win the 2016 presidential election. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller found, after a lengthy investigation, that there was no evidence to support that theory. But for the better part of a year Schiff said that there was evidence that he had seen that would prove there was collusion. That evidenced was never seen. “On Thursday the House Intelligence Committee … finally released 57 transcripts of testimony delivered...

With the release of the new material from the case of Michael Flynn, an array of experts came forward to assure the public that it was all standard procedure for investigators to conclude that there was no criminal conduct uncovered and then prosecutors creating a crime (including the use of a clearly unconstitutional law never used to convict anyone since the start of the Republic). Many of these same experts who have been espousing untethered (and ultimately rejected) theories for criminal and impeachment charges for years. Yet, what was most striking is how many also rejected any claim that the...

<p>Shortly after my colleague Sara Carter and I began reporting in 2017 on the possibility that the FBI was abusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Americans during the Russia investigation, I received a call. It was an intermediary for someone high up in the intelligence community.</p>

The laughable collective known as the House Judiciary democrats have sent a letter to Michael Horowitz, the DOJ Inspector General, demanding an investigation into Attorney General William Barr’s respect for the law and protection of the falsely accused. NEW: House Judiciary Cmte. Democrats write to DOJ inspector general calling for investigation into AG Barr’s “improper political interference into several ongoing criminal matters against President Trump's allies.” pic.twitter.com/TbZBikNbAJ— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) May 8, 2020 Then last night an audio was “leaked” to Michael Isikoff. You might remember Isikoff- he is the go to leak reporter when something helpful to democrats is needed....

Susan Rice's bizarre Inauguration Day email about that meeting helps explain the campaign of leaks, lies, and obstruction that followed. Information released in the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case it brought against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn confirms the significance of a January 5, 2017, meeting at the Obama White House. It was at this meeting that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming...

The Justice Department’s closing of its criminal case against President Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on Thursday came as new red flags emerged from recently released documents revealing the FBI’s handling of the matter. Former FBI agents and federal prosecutors tell RealClearInvestigations that the documents show suspiciously irregular handling and editing of Flynn’s FD-302 form, the official document used to record what happens in FBI interviews. That form served as a key record used to charge Flynn with lying to federal agents. He pleaded guilty to that charge in December 2017 but had been trying to withdraw the...

Two possibilities arise from the guilty plea of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn’s plea marks the beginning of the end of the Trump administration. Flynn’s plea marks the end of the desperate hope that America will be delivered from the Trump presidency by impeachment and removal from office on the grounds that his campaign colluded with Russia to win him the 2016 election. There are other ancillary events one can easily imagine. For example, Trump could fire independent counsel Robert Mueller and/or pardon Flynn and others. But those moves would eventually make the end of his administration...

The DOJ decision would appear to put an end to that process. Earlier Thursday, the top prosecutor on the case, Brandon Van Grack, abruptly withdrew from the case, without explanation, in a brief filing with the court. Breadcrumbs were being dropped in the days preceding the decision that his case could be reconsidered. Documents unsealed a week ago by the Justice Department revealed agents discussed their motivations for interviewing him in the Russia probe—questioning whether they wanted to“get him to lie” so he'd be fired or prosecuted, or get him to admit wrongdoing. Flynn allies howled over the revelations, arguing...

Smiling alongside John Kerry at their elite New Hampshire boarding school, this is Robert Mueller decades before before he began investigating Donald Trump's election campaign. The contrast with Trump's childhood is stark - although it is the difference not between wealth and poverty, but between the son of a scrappy self-made man from Queens and the son of an establishment insider.

The chilling words contained in the newly released handwritten notes of William Priestap, the assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division at the time of the FBI's January 24, 2017 interview with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, confirm the worst suspicions of Flynn’s defense team. Flynn’s lead defense attorney Sidney Powell believes with good reason that the retired three-star general was set up for a perjury trap by senior officials at the FBI. The handwritten notes and other released FBI documents provide her with more ammunition for the defense team’s motion to dismiss the case against Flynn. The motion...

New documents in the Michael Flynn case cemented that a small cadre of high-level FBI agents set a perjury trap for President TrumpÂ’s then-national security advisor. The unsealing last week of a series of documents in the Michael Flynn criminal case cemented the reality that a small cadre of high-level FBI agents set a perjury trap for President TrumpÂ’s then-national security advisor. Beyond exposing the depth of this despicable personal and political hit job on a 30-year military veteran, the newly discovered documents hold great legal significance. HereÂ’s your legal primer.The Russiagate special counselÂ’s office charged Flynn with violating 18...

Federalist co-founder Sean Davis joined Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” Wednesday to weigh in on the news that FBI agents under James Comey plotted a perjury trap for former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. “It’s clear now that James Comey will go down in history as the most corrupt FBI director in American history,” Davis said. “He has destroyed the FBI’s reputation through his actions, his arrogance, and his corruption.” Davis said federal prosecutors have told him Comey has made it more difficult for U.S. attorneys and FBI agents across the country to get convictions. “That will forever...

US Attorney General Bill Barr told Fox News host Laura Ingraham there was ‘no basis’ for the FBI’s ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation into then-candidate Donald Trump. Recall, FBI counter-intel chief Peter Strzok opened a CI investigation into Trump’s campaign in July of 2016 dubbed ‘Crossfire Hurricane,’ based on bogus claims his camp was working with the Russians. Barr said what happened to Trump was one of the greatest travesties in American history. Even more alarming was the pattern of events after the campaign to sabotage Trump’s presidency. “I think what happened to him [Trump] was one of the greatest travesties in...

More evidence confirms more FBI and Mueller gang lies and cover ups. This time a Deep State Anti-Trump former Assistant US Attorney claimed under oath that the FBI did examine Seth Rich’s computer and that she met with an FBI Agent and prosecutor from the Mueller gang. This indicates the meeting should have been recorded in a form 302 but the FBI continues to claim no records related to Seth Rich are available! Previously we reported that after getting caught lying to the Courts and claiming there were no documents related to Seth Rich, emails between FBI Deep State lovers...

The Democratic National Committee’s legal team, bolstered by Obama White House lawyers, moved to dismiss a lawsuit from onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, arguing the "gist" of British ex-spy Christopher Steele's controversial dossier was true. In January, Page filed a lawsuit against the DNC, powerhouse law firm Perkins Coie, and its lawyers Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann, alleging they maliciously engaged in a defamatory conspiracy in 2016 that cast false light on his character and interfered with his ability to make a living. “The Defendants are private actors who used false information, misrepresentations, and other misconduct to direct the...