Free Republic

The Justice Department has agreed to settle claims by former senior FBI special agent Peter P. Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who had filed lawsuits accusing the government of violating their privacy rights by leaking their politically charged text messages criticizing Donald Trump. Strzok’s attorneys say he will receive a $1.2 million settlement. Terms for Page were not disclosed. Strzok and Page said they were illegally targeted for retribution by the Trump administration after the FBI investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Strzok, a former top counter-intelligence expert, was fired by the FBI in 2018 after news...

Law enforcement officers have uncovered a major embezzlement scheme involving Hr 138 million ($3.3 million) allocated from the state budget for the needs of Ukraine's Armed Forces, the Prosecutor General's Office announced on July 19. The investigation identified 30 suspected officials, including employees of housing and maintenance departments and representatives of commercial structures across Ukraine. According to prosecutors, 15 of these individuals were members of organized criminal groups. The charges include embezzlement and misappropriation of funds related to the procurement of fuel wood, electricity, natural gas, furniture, and construction work on military infrastructure at inflated prices. Some suspects are also...

𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆: @actblue is matching donations for the@KamalaHQ campaign by up to 900 PERCENT! The Harris campaign has revealed that donations have topped $100M since Biden's exit from the race… They also announced that in this record 24-hour period of fundraising, $81M… https://t.co/Ipq0F1Qaod pic.twitter.com/tzCHXf8Cwt— legislation (@legislationpage) July 23, 2024

A federal appeals court today said Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and a liberal super PAC crossed federal election lines when they flaunted their coordination in a multimillion-dollar effort to defend the Democrat in her losing bid against Donald Trump. In the landmark decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Clinton and the super PAC Correct the Record improperly used an “internet exemption” to sidestep other restrictions to set up a “Benghazi Hearing War Room” and conduct a witch hunt of critics without reporting it as a campaign expense. Neither Clinton nor Correct the Record...

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has sent millions of dollars to law firms that are intimately involved in an “unprecedented lawfare” campaign against former President Donald Trump, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records reviewed by the Daily Caller. The DNC has paid close to $2 million since August of 2021 to Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP for “legal services,” according to the DNC’s FEC filings. Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP founding partner Roberta A. Kaplan represented E. Jean Carroll in her sexual assault and defamation suits against Trump. The New York Times previously reported that Reid Hoffman, the billionaire...

Joe Biden and First Lady Jill have been using their homes as an ATM, taking out multiple mortgages and refinancing their Delaware properties an astonishing 35 times, a DailyMail.com investigation has revealed. The president has lived in two houses in his home state since 1975, when he bought his first property in Wilmington that he later sold in the late 1990s. But records obtained by DailyMail.com show the couple have had a habit of negotiating a new mortgage or credit deal on both homes every 17 months

The United Nations chief says that “total lawlessness” and “chaos” in Gaza is preventing the distribution of humanitarian aid within the enclave, which is why an immediate ceasefire is needed.

Los Angeles-based affiliates of the Sinaloa cartel, the organization once helmed by infamous drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, have partnered with underground banks in China to launder more than $50 million, authorities say.

“The investments that Russia had have matured. So Russia’s funds are sitting in cash, but they’re generating income for the institution which Russia has no claim on,” she concluded. The G7 agreed on the American proposal Thursday during a summit in Italy. The move allows the world leaders to tap into the interest being accumulated at European banking institutions from the frozen assets to the tune of $50 billion. Yellen added that the G7 has made it clear to Moscow that the actual assets will remain frozen until Russia agrees to pay for the damages Ukraine has sustained over the...

Vice President Kamala Harris announced a $1.5 billion aid package for Ukraine in its war against Russia at the Summit for Peace Saturday in Switzerland. “This war remains an utter failure for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” Harris, said during a meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. “I am here in Switzerland to stand with Ukraine and the leaders from around the world in support of a just and lasting peace,” she added. “As we look forward to that peace and work toward that, the United States is committed to helping Ukraine rebuild.” Of the new aid total, $500 million of...

If you take a step back and look at things from a different angle, everything starts to make a lot more sense. Instead of just seeing Hunter Biden as some perverted crackhead who grew up with a silver crack pipe in his mouth, what if we saw him as something more sophisticated, like a well-groomed CIA asset? This twist adds a whole new layer to the long-standing drama around the Biden crime family. Mike Benz, the director of the Foundation For Freedom Online, has been all over this idea. He’s been suggesting for a while that Hunter might be more...

Chicago's Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson spent more than $30,000 of campaign funds on hair and makeup since launching his bid for office last year, according to a new report. Johnson, who defeated incumbent mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2023, reportedly used funds donated to his Friends of Brandon Johnson campaign fund by political supporters to cover the cost of his makeup and hair appointments, the Chicago Sun Times reported. The outlet cited election board records, which revealed that the progressive mayor spent more than $30,000 on personal grooming in the past year. Almost all the money paid makeup artist and self-described...

A former Atlanta city attorney who was sentenced to seven years in prison over a massive $15 million pandemic loan fraud donated to Trump prosecutor Fani Willis’s campaign after applying for the government handouts, records show. Shelitha Robertson, 62, used some of her ill-gotten windfall for lavish purchases — including a massive 10-carat diamond ring and a Rolls Royce, according to federal prosecutors. But, she also donated $1,000 to Willis’s Democratic primary election campaign around the time she got the massive payouts from the Paycheck Protection Program, Georgia campaign filings show. **SNIP** A judge ruled that the relationship did not...

California owes the federal government tens of millions of dollars for incorrectly claiming medical care reimbursements for noncitizens, a federal audit found. The Golden State must repay nearly $53 million to the federal government after it “improperly” claimed reimbursements from the Medicaid program for illegal immigrants and other noncitizens, according to a recent report by the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The findings emerge as California grapples with a massive budget deficit in the tens of billions of dollars. ... The issue surrounds how California officials calculated federal reimbursements for noncitizen...

The chief financial officer of conservative global news outlet The Epoch Times was arrested and charged with leading a yearslong scheme to launder at least $67 million in illicit funds. The alleged scheme by Weidong Guan and others involved cryptocurrency, prepaid debit cards, fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits and stolen personal identification information, according to federal prosecutors. The money laundering scheme caused tens of millions of dollars to be transferred to bank accounts linked the media company, prosecutors alleged.

As President Trump’s trial enters it’s 6th week in New York City, I have discovered that New York Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul (another Trump hater) is a client of New York Judge Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, who is the President of the Democrat Consulting Firm Authentic Campaigns Yesterday, when President Trump held a rally in the Bronx, NY, Governor Hochul went on CNN with Fake Tapper and called Trump supporters who showed up to the #Bronx rally “clowns”. According to records in the New York State Board of Elections database, Hochul has sent $689,974.35 to Loren Merchan’s personal home address...

A backroom Washington deal brokered two years ago is undercutting a key part of President Joe Biden’s policy to grow the national high-tech manufacturing base — pushing more than $3 billion into a secretive national-security project promoted by chipmaker Intel.In recent weeks, Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have been taking victory laps for the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, a law intended to create jobs and fund innovation in a key global industry. It has already launched a series of grants, incentives and research proposals to help America regain its cutting-edge status in global semiconductor manufacturing.But quietly, in...

The U.S. needs all three legs of its nuclear triad, including the land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles maintained by the Air Force, as well as the sea-based weapons that are the domain of the Navy. In a nuclear conflict where adversaries launch a first strike, it's possible they might render U.S. ground-based and air-launched systems unusable. But the U.S. still maintains deterrence though sea-based systems, which guarantee a second-strike capability— the ability to strike back. "If you think about it from the adversary's perspective, anything that they may think they could do as an initial strike, that...

Russian central bank assets. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said the move will hand Ukraine up to €3 billion (about $3.3 billion) this year. "We have approved in the EU using revenues from Russia's central bank's frozen assets to help Ukraine," wrote Lipavsky on X, formerly Twitter. "Up to €3B only this year, 90% goes for Ukraine's military. Russia must pay for its war damages." The financial assets were frozen shortly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Reuters reported this month that the EU has estimated that by 2027, windfall profits from Russia's central bank...

LONDON, May 21 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said there was a possibility Group of Seven nations would support Ukraine by as much as $50 billion using loans linked to seized Russian assets, Sky News reported on Tuesday. "I believe it's important for the G7 to work together to show a united front and to show that we can generate meaningful resources to support Ukraine over the next several years," she told Sky News.