Free Republic

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has stunned court-watchers by selecting David Kris -- a former Obama administration lawyer who has appeared on "The Rachel Maddow Show" and written extensively in support of the FBI's surveillance practices on the left-wing blog Lawfare -- to oversee the FBI's implementation of reforms in the wake of a damning Department of Justice Inspector general report last year. The development on Friday, first reported by independent journalist Mike Cernovich, has roiled Republicans who have demanded accountability at the FBI. House Intelligence Commitee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told The Daily Caller that Kris' appointment...

David Kris served as Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice under President Obama and Attorney General Holder. He drew on his prestige as a former senior official in the Department of Justice to disparage Rep. Devin Nunes in his exposure of the FBI’s misconduct in the Russia haox and assure anyone who would listen to him that all was in order. He is an apologist for FBI misconduct who gives the Department of Justice Inspector General report on the FBI’s FISA misconduct the stupidly credulous reading that absolves the FBI of political bias in the matter. Who better...

An email proves disgraced ex-FBI Director James Comey personally approved an FBI effort to have the wild and unsubstantiated “golden showers” claim about President Trump included in material to be considered for publication in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s official report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Comey email, which has not received media attention until now, was revealed inside the Justice Department’s recently released 476-page Inspector General report on the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation. The IG report further discloses a separate email in which Andrew McCabe, who served under Comey as the FBI’s deputy director, specifically...

An email proves disgraced ex-FBI Director James Comey personally approved an FBI effort to have the wild and unsubstantiated “golden showers” claim about President Trump included in material to be considered for publication in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s official report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Comey email, which has not received media attention until now, was revealed inside the Justice Department’s recently released 476-page Inspector General report on the FBI’s Russia collusion investigation. The IG report further discloses a separate email in which Andrew McCabe, who served under Comey as the FBI’s deputy director, specifically...

President Trump asks: “Are these “dirty cops” going to pay a big price for the fraud they committed?” However, the only person who can honestly answer that question is the person in the mirror when President Trump brushes his teeth. Perhaps forgotten… In the spring of 2018 a group of congressional reps led by Devin Nunes, Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Lee Zeldin and Bob Goodlatte, asked President Trump to declassify a series of documents so the public could see how former officials in the DOJ & FBI abused their offices and conducted political surveillance. In September...

Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, wants disgraced lawyer Michael Cohen to face the possibility of more criminal charges for allegedly lying to Congress and he’s seeking the help of new committee chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. To kick off the first full Oversight Committee hearing of the year, Jordan Thursday re-upped his request for a criminal referral for President Trump’s former attorney. In a letter obtained by Fox News, Jordan cites new evidence he says shows Cohen’s dishonesty during his dramatic testimony under oath to the Oversight Committee last year. “In light of a...

Bruce Ohr, the highest-ranking Obama Justice Department official to involve himself in distributing the anti-Trump dossier, carried out his freelancing through numerous meetings, phone calls and emails as a link between the FBI and Hillary Clinton forces. He told a colleague that the Russia election scandal reached the top — Donald Trump. It was his “duty as a citizen” to spread the unverified allegations around town, he said. During all of Mr. Ohr’s maneuverings, from the summer of 2016 to Mr. Trump’s election to the fall of 2017, he hid the operation from his bosses. When Mr. Ohr’s name surfaced...

The House Judiciary Committee believes it has evidence that President Trump asked Matthew Whitaker, at the time the acting attorney general, whether Manhattan U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman could regain control of his office’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and his real-estate business, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Berman, a former law partner of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani who in 2016 donated to the Trump campaign and whom the president personally interviewed for the U.S. attorney job, last year had recused himself from involvement in the matter. He didn’t give a reason, but legal experts said his...

Michael Cohen may regret selling his soul, prosecutors told a judge Thursday — but that doesn’t mean he should be granted a reduced sentence. President Trump’s former fixer last week begged a judge to reduce his three year sentence to a year and a day, claiming he’d spent some 170 hours with government agencies providing cooperation. Yet prosecutors write that Cohen was nothing more than a shoddy witness and a liar, whose so-called snitching led absolutely nowhere within their office.

The [new IG Report] reveals that Comey told Obama and other officials at a White House Situation Room meeting...that "the FBI was trying to determine whether any U.S. person had worked with the Russians" and that they were looking into "four individuals with some association or connection to the Trump campaign." Others present at the meeting [were Rice, Clapper, and Brennan], none of whom were interviewed for [the new IG Report]. Incredibly, Comey claimed that no one at the meeting "responded or followed up with any questions" (p. 110).

Regardless of whether you would support or not support the vigorous defense of Michael Flynn, I would hope we would all agree a fulsome discovery of all relevant background material is a cornerstone of justice appropriately applied. With that in mind it is concerning how Attorney General Bill Barr would prefer to keep DOJ conduct against Flynn hidden from public review. Consider… ♦Would it be valuable for Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan to know the FBI was discussing how to “lock in” charges against [Flynn] in a “formal chargeable way”? Would it be valuable for Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan to consider...

President Donald Trump again challenged James Comey on Sunday, demanding an apology from the former FBI Director after he admitted he “was wrong” to defend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant for the surveillance of former Trump foreign-policy adviser Carter Page. So now Comey’s admitting he was wrong. Wow, but he’s only doing so because he got caught red handed. He was actually caught a long time ago. So what are the consequences for his unlawful conduct. Could it be years in jail? Where are the apologies to me and others, Jim? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15,...

Send it back until it is done right!!!

Revelations that the FBI committed serious errors in wiretapping a former Trump campaign aide have spurred bipartisan calls for change to the government's surveillance powers, including from some Republicans who in the past have voted to renew or expand those powers. Anger over the errors cited in this week's Justice Department's inspector general's report of the Russia investigation has produced rare consensus from Democrats and Republicans who otherwise have had sharply different interpretations of the report's findings. The report said the FBI was justified in investigating ties between the campaign and Russia, but criticized how the investigation was conducted. The...

Former FBI Director James Comey sparred with Fox News's Chris Wallace on Sunday over the Justice Department inspector general's (IG) report on the bureau's investigation into President Trump's campaign and whether the probe cleared the FBI of wrongdoing. Wallace pressed Comey on "Fox News Sunday" on whether the "victory lap" he said the former FBI director had taken since the report's release was justified. While Comey has claimed the report by Justice Department IG Michael Horowitz vindicated the FBI, Horowitz in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week said that "the activities we found don’t vindicate anybody who touched...

The FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller repeatedly kept alive a damning narrative that investigators knew to be false: namely, that a junior Trump campaign aide as a favor to the Kremlin had “gutted” an anti-Russia and pro-Ukraine plank in the Republican Party platform at the GOP’s 2016 convention. Federal authorities used this claim to help secure spy warrants on the aide in question, Carter Page, suggesting to the court that he was “an agent of Russia” – even though investigators knew that Page was working for U.S., not Russian, intelligence, and that they had learned from witnesses, emails and...

One section of the Justice Department’s Inspector General (IG) report that hasn’t gotten as much attention highlights how the FBI not only altered evidence against one-time Trump campaign aide Carter Page, but also ignored exculpatory evidence to continue obtaining FISA warrants against him. The FBI had believed Page was a foreign agent working with the Russians to help Donald Trump steal the 2016 election. In reality, Page had previously worked with an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency dealing with Russians for years at the beginning of the Obama administration. After the FBI started surveilling Page, he made several public statements about...

Christopher Steele, the British ex-spy and author of the anti-Trump dossier, was reportedly told that the Justice Department will release information about him that was previously blacked out in the department’s internal watchdog report on the investigation into President Trump’s 2016 campaign due on Monday. The New York Times, citing two individuals with knowledge of the situation, reported that Attorney General William Barr approved the release of the previously redacted information in Michael Horowitz’s 400-page report. The report called Steele’s heads-up unusual and said he was not given any indication of whether the information would benefit or hurt him. An...

The House of Representatives can enforce subpoenasseeking eight years of President Trump’s financial records, an appeals court ruled Tuesday. The majority decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals clears the way for the Democrat-controlled House to seek documents, including tax returns, for Trump and other third-party individuals and entities. The House previously served subpoenas on Deutsche Bank and Capital One for the records, yet Trump immediately sued to block their release. Deutsche Bank previously revealed that, while it has tax returns for some of Trump’s children, it is not in possession of the president’s.