Free Republic

The FBI’s electronic case management system, Sentinel, allows agents to hide the existence of relevant investigative reports from other authorized users of the federal database. And during the Russia collusion hoax, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team used that functionality to keep potentially relevant documents hidden from other FBI agents investigating whether a Fusion GPS contractor lied to Congress. The significance of these two facts cannot be overstated: Now in question is whether the federal government complies with the constitutional mandate in criminal cases to provide defendants all material exculpatory and impeachment evidence as well as its discovery obligations in civil...

"Every time I watch The View, I become even more misogynistic." — Laura Loomer. Saint Jake Tapper.Bad as it was, “Joe Biden,” the figment president, was merely one manifestation of a nation made mad by power-seeking demons, real-live, ill-intentioned human beings driving a runaway political machine, the party of hoaxes, hustles, and hatred. The country is just now struggling to exit a convulsion of mass mental illness. The demons are still there, though, and still hard at work trying to drag you all back into mass formation. A central mystery is how the news media made itself the enemy of...

Swiss authorities in Zurich put Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian businessman widely noted for his Kremlin ties, on a flight bound for the U.S. on Saturday, ending a months-long extradition fight that cast a pall over this summer’s Putin-Biden talks in Geneva. Swiss reporters first confirmed Klyushin’s extradition Saturday night; the U.S. Justice Department on Monday said the 41-year-old, a top official at Moscow-based IT firm called M-13, would stand trial on charges of insider trading, citing information allegedly “stolen from U.S. computer networks,” netting “tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits.” The charges carry potentially decades’ worth of prison...

A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues. Now, three scientists argue that distinctive chemicals found in the dried anthrax spores — including the unexpected presence of tin — point to a high degree of manufacturing skill, contrary to federal reassurances that the attack germs were unsophisticated. The scientists make their case in a coming issue of the Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense. F.B.I. documents...

[Catholic Caucus] Cardinal Müller: We need a ‘successor of Peter’ not of one man’s ‘private ideas’Speaking to LifeSiteNews, Cdl. Müller firmly rejected the notion of trying to 'change doctrine' since the Church's teaching is for the care of souls, stating, 'doctrine is also a medicine.' Cardinal Gerhard Müller has warned that cardinals are called to elect the “successor of Peter” rather than a man who will continue “the private ideas of any previous pope.”Addressing the congregation at his titular church of Sant’Agnese in Agone in Rome on Sunday, Müller delivered his final pre-conclave thoughts to the outside world.A conclave, he...

President Donald Trump issued an executive order Tuesday targeting Chicago law firm Jenner & Block. The firm also has an office in Washington, D.C. Jenner and Block has been an active part of the legal challenges against Mr. Trump's executive orders, including successfully securing a preliminary injunction against an order from the administration that reduced health care access for transgender youth.That case is still pending in a Maryland-based federal court.This executive order instructs officials to review and revoke firm members' security clearance, identify any good, property, material and services provided by the federal government and stop providing them, terminate any...

When Attorney General William Barr stated "spying did occur" against the 2016 Trump campaign, most attention was focused on the FBI's surveillance of former junior foreign policy aide Carter Page. But the spying Barr was thinking of, and which he said may or may not have been legally authorized, is more likely to be that carried out by Stefan Halper, a former Republican operative and White House aide who became a foreign policy academic with close ties to both American and British intelligence. One could be forgiven for believing Halper was a creation of the spy novelist John Le Carré....

Convicted child sex offender George Nader visited the White House at least 13 times to meet with President Trump’s then-chief strategist Steve Bannon, records indicate, raising questions about possible gaps in security and judgment. Nader first visited Bannon in the White House in February 2017. His dozen subsequent visits stretched through August, when Bannon was fired after seven months on the job. It's unclear if Nader visited the White House after Bannon left. The Lebanese American businessman, a past consultant for military contractor Blackwater, was known for his links to Saudi and Emirati leaders and secured a $100,000 speaking fee...

Fugitive on run for 16 years wanted in 19 murders, inspired film 'The Departed' LOS ANGELES — James "Whitey" Bulger, a notorious Boston gangster on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list for his alleged role in 19 murders, has been captured near Los Angeles after living on the run for 16 years, authorities said Wednesday. The FBI tweeted his capture along with his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, early Wednesday morning. Santa Monica Police Sgt. Rudy Flores said the agency informed him of the arrest. Bulger, 81, was the leader of the Winter Hill Gang when he fled in January 1995 after...

Fugitive mobster was spotted in London in September, FBI says 01/04/2003 Associated Press BOSTON - The fugitive mobster brother of University of Massachusetts President William Bulger was sighted in London a few months ago, sporting a tan and a gray goatee, the FBI said Friday. A British businessman who had met James "Whitey" Bulger years ago spotted him in September - the most reliable tip on his whereabouts in three years, Boston FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz said. The mobster, a longtime FBI informant, fled in 1995, just before his indictment on charges of racketeering, extortion and drug trafficking. Mr....

Boston mob boss James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, 89, was murdered by a fellow inmate with ties to the mafia in a West Virginia federal prison shortly after he was transferred there. According to one congressman, Mueller and those serving under him in the FBI aided Bulger in eliminating mob competitors and recently Mueller turned over an alleged scheme to pay off women to fabricate sexual assault allegations against him to the FBI. The murder occurred outside of the field of vision of security cameras where Bulger was beaten with a lock in a sock and had his eyes gouged out. The...

What’s another 25 years when you’re already serving a life sentence? Fotios “Freddy” Geas — the ex-Mafia enforcer already serving a life sentence — was given an additional 25 years by a judge Friday for bludgeoning notorious New England crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger to death inside a federal prison in 2018. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and assault resulting in serious bodily injury for the brutal attack on Bulger. Geas had been behind bars since 2011 for multiple crimes, including the 2003 killing of Genovese crime boss Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno. Prosecutors said Geas repeatedly battered the 89-year-old...

Former Attorney General Bill Barr did not improperly pressure prosecutors to reduce sentencing recommendations for political activist Roger Stone, according to a new government watchdog report. The exoneration of Barr came more than four years after a deluge of media reports alleging wrongdoing. However, J.P. Cooney, a Justice Department official now serving as Special Counsel Jack Smith’s top deputy, cultivated a politically toxic environment, disseminated baseless conspiracy theories about Trump and his political appointees, and engaged in unprofessional conduct as he oversaw the team making sentencing recommendations, according to the same report. Cooney is mentioned (as the “Fraud and Public...

<p>Two years ago, Robert Philip Hanssen, 59, a former very senior FBI official with 27 years of service, was sentenced to life in prison. Hanssen had been spying for the Russians and betrayed American intelligence sources and electronics secrets from as early as 1979.</p>

In 2007, Orlando residents were furious to discover that an FBI informant had organized a neo-Nazi rally through one of the city’s mostly black neighborhoods a year earlier. “To come into a predominantly black community, which could have resulted in great harm to the black community? I would hate to be part of a game,” Orlando City Councilwoman Daisy Lynum said at the time, calling for a “full-scale investigation” into the matter. However, an FBI agent testified that his informant participated in the event, but didn’t organize it. The city’s uproar passed without a public investigation, full-scale or otherwise—until now....

Minnesota’s Senate majority leader on Monday called for Education Commissioner Heather Mueller to resign for what he described as “dishonest” statements she made about her agency’s efforts to prevent an estimated $250 million in pandemic fraud. Minnesota’s political world was turned upside down Tuesday when U.S. Attorney Andy Luger announced charges against 48 Minnesotans for allegedly defrauding the federal government’s child nutrition programs of $250 million in a little over 20 months. “These 48 defendants engaged in a brazen scheme of staggering proportions,” Luger said during a press conference, describing the $250 million total as just the “floor” because the...

John “Zip” Connolly is apparently one of those hoodlums who cares what his obituary says about him after he’s dead and gone. At age 82, the infamous ex-FBI agent seems obsessed with clearing at least one indelible stain off his remarkably squalid (even by Boston G-man standards) underworld career. He’d prefer not to have “Mob hitman” in the first sentence of his death notice. There’s not much he can do about the racketeering conviction, or all his tawdry connections to the Bulger Crime Family. But “Mob hitman” is a bit much. Sadly, Zip has failed yet again to remove “assassin”...

MIAMI — A Florida appeals court has overturned the murder conviction for a former FBI agent linked to mobster Whitey Bulger. The 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that former agent John Connolly was improperly convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison for his role in the 1982 slaying of a gambling executive. A hit man testified that he killed World Jai-Alai President John Callahan after ex-agent Connolly tipped Bulger and others that the executive would implicate them in another death. In the court's new ruling, a panel of judges determined in a 2-1 vote that Connolly's second-degree...

Attorney General Merrick Garland is in trouble. Not just with Republicans, but with Biden. While Republicans are unhappy that AG Garland had been going after Trump and other conservatives, Biden and other Democrats are unhappy at his ineffectiveness. A Politico report from last month cited White House insiders claiming that if Biden wins, Garland won’t get a second term because he didn’t do enough to insulate the Biden family from investigations and that he didn’t move the Trump investigation along fast enough. Biden’s people wanted a Trump trial before the election and Garland failed to give them one. In response...

There’s no way in hell they shouldn’t tell all’.. The FBI is closing the book on the agency’s “corrupt” handling of James “Whitey” Bulger — forever. The feds are refusing to make any further installments of Bulger’s case file public, saying the records are “investigative” and no longer subject to the Freedom of Information Act. “The records responsive to your request are law enforcement records; there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings. Therefore, your request is being administratively closed,”...