Free Republic

Blake Lively has hired a PR crisis manager with deep government ties as her legal battle with Justin Baldoni escalates. The actress, who is suing and being sued by her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star, is quietly working with Nick Shapiro, the CIA’s former deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to former director John Brennan. Shapiro is not without controversy. He was one of a group of 51 former senior intelligence officials who signed the widely cited and subsequently criticized 2020 open letter stating that the Hunter Biden laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian...

DNI hints new declassification coming soon. Some want it to be a congressional complaint to the CIA inspector general questioning the Obama intelligence assessment on Russian intentions. By his own admission, ex-CIA Director John Brennan chafed at being questioned earlier this month by federal prosecutor John Durham about the Obama administration's intelligence assessment that Russia’s meddling in 2016 election was designed to help Donald Trump. Brennan "questioned why the analytic tradecraft and the findings of the ICA are being scrutinized by the Department of Justice, especially since they have been validated by the Mueller Report and the bipartisan Senate Select...

John Brennan’s long-time advisor Nick Shapiro put out a statement yesterday at the conclusion of Brennan’s eight-hour interview with John Durham and his investigators. It might all be true. All I have are opinions on the text and circumstances. But I also know that the CIA is an institution designed to engage in manipulation using lies and deception — in a good way. It’s how they accomplish their mission in defense of the country. John Brennan is an embodiment of the CIA — it’s all he’s ever known. Its ethos oozes from his pores. John Brennan wanted to send a...

Then-Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid released a letter in the heat of the 2016 election alleging Trump-Russia collusion even though the CIA director at the time urged him not to, according to a person familiar with their conversation. Mr. Reid’s Aug. 27 letter to the FBI appears to mark the first time a Democrat officially accused President’ Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russian government to hack his party’s computers. The letter has come to represent for conservatives the “deep state” — Obama loyalists leaking unproven allegations to the press against Mr. Trump and his people to ruin the campaign,...