Free Republic

The FBI’s reputation problems have accelerated with the arrest on corruption charges of Charles McGonigal, the former chief of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office, one of the most powerful spy-hunters in the country - who also happened to be connected to Hunter Biden. In twin indictments last month, McGonigal was charged with taking secret cash payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer, holding secret meetings with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and attempting to remove top Kremlin oligarch Oleg Deripaska from a US sanctions list. The Albanians cited by prosecutors tie this scandal to Hunter Biden and...

Former high-ranking FBI official Charles McGonigal started tearing up Thursday as he was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison for colluding with a Russian oligarch to evade US sanctions. McGonigal, 55, was ordered to surrender by Feb. 26, 2024, made to serve three years of supervised release following his time behind bars, and was fined $40,000. After he exited the courthouse, McGonigal told onlookers, “Happy holidays.” McGonigal, who helmed the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York from 2016 to 2018, pleaded guilty to the charge back in August. “[McGonigal] well knew his actions violated those sanctions,” Manhattan federal judge...

Now that Republicans have narrow control of the House of Representatives, the GOP is investigating the Biden administration with gusto. Still, Republicans seem not to have noticed one major foreign policy scandal that's hiding in plain sight. As I recently reported , the rising scandal surrounding retired FBI senior official Charles McGonigal is perhaps the worst in the bureau’s history. Multiple sources have told me that McGonigal, while still serving with the FBI as head of counterintelligence in New York, shook down Balkan business people, most of them Albanian, in an audacious political corruption scheme worth many millions of dollars....

In Lawrence, Massachusetts, a whistleblower revealed a welfare scam that the Dominican community has been running for over a decade. Here is how it works: Dominican immigrants buy food with EBT cards or take it for free from food banks. They then load it into shipping barrels and send it to the Dominican Republic, where it is sold for profit in local bodegas. We tracked the entire pipeline, from corner stores in Massachusetts to shipping hubs in New York to bodegas in Santo Domingo that are stocked with food paid for by the American taxpayer. We are prepared to share...

MINNEAPOLIS – A man who authorities believe might have been part of an al-Qaida "sleeper cell" obtained a license to haul hazardous materials months after he was identified as a suspected terrorist by the FBI, officials said. The FBI identified Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi as a suspected terrorist before the attacks of 2001, the Star Tribune reported Wednesday, citing unidentified law enforcement officials. Yet Minnesota Department of Public Safety officials said they did not know that Elzahabi was suspected of having al-Qaida connections when he applied in early 2002 for a commercial license to drive a school bus and haul hazardous...

Failed Prosecutor John Durham’s report on the Hillary Clinton campaign plot to convince the American electorate and U.S. allies that Donald Trump was a stooge of Russia totally ignores the role that intelligence operatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Israel played in helping set the stage to provide the FBI with the pretext of predication for launching its now discredited Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump Campaign. Let me take you back to an article I wrote in May 2019. John Durham and his team failed to address any of the issues and leads I raised:...

A federal judge has denied terror suspect Mohamed Elzahabi's request for an acquittal or new trial. Elzahabi was convicted in August of possessing and using a fraudulent immigration document to get a job in Minnesota. Evidence submitted during the trial showed Elzahabi had paid an exotic dancer in Houston to marry him so he could obtain the green card. U-S District Judge John Tunheim wrote that a reasonable jury could find Elzahabi guilty. Elzahabi was arrested as part of a terrorism investigation. The F-B-I says he acknowledged that he attended a jihad training camp, fought in Afghanistan as part of...

A violent suspect who was arrested trying to shut down a pro-Daniel Penny rally in Manhattan was out on bond for a leftist domestic terrorism case in Atlanta. Teresa Yue Shen, 31, of Brooklyn, was one of several far-left militants charged with domestic terrorism in January in Atlanta, following a deadly shooting incident at an Antifa-linked autonomous zone occupation at the heart of the “Stop Cop City” movement. Shen’s $20,000 bond was fronted by far-left activist Daniel Hanley. The Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a project of 501(c)(3) nonprofit Network For Strong Communities, has been raising cash for Antifa and domestic terrorism...

On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Weeknight,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass responded to a question on whether the LAPD should tip off neighborhood leaders if they know ICE enforcement is coming by saying that “the problem is, is that they don’t. They don’t have any idea. And so, they cannot be helpful in that way. They are excluded. They’re just as in the dark as we are.” Co-host Alicia Menendez asked, “Mayor Bass, to your point about L.A. being an experiment, you had the president today saying that he wants to step up deportation efforts in many Democrat-run cities....

The markets are responding positively to a vast shift in the direction of the Trump economic policy direction (a little change that I’ve been calling for since well before Liberation Day). I’m very happy about it as well. There’s a reason that’s vitally important: Right now, the Republicans have a lot of running room, and one of the reasons they have a lot of running room is because the Democrats continue to be insane. I don’t just mean they’re insane in terms of their policy preferences, although many of those policy preferences are quite crazy. I mean, culturally speaking, the...

The Political Prisoners are being liberated.

They almost caught him with his pants down. An illegal immigrant from Venezuela with suspected ties to the Tren de Aragua gang has been arrested outside a New York City migrant shelter after allegedly breaking into a Manhattan prosecutor's apartment, pleasuring himself and robbing her, according to a new report. Brandon Simosa, 25, followed the unidentified 38-year-old woman into her apartment building near the intersection of 44th Street and Ninth Avenue around 2 a.m. Sunday, according to the NYPD. Once inside, he demanded cash and stole credit cards and a cellphone from her purse. Then, he allegedly "performed a lewd...

FBI agents have arrested a Florida man in connection with an alleged plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange, according to charging documents unsealed on Wednesday. South Florida resident Harun Abdul-Malik Yener was charged with attempted use of an explosive to damage or destroy a building used in interstate commerce, according to court documents filed in the U.S. District Court Southern District of Florida. The FBI began investigating Yener in February after receiving a tip he was storing bomb-making schematics in an unlocked storage unit in Coral Springs, Florida. Agents obtained a search warrant and found numerous watches with...

If you were thinking that those large pro-Palestine protests popping up everywhere seem awfully organized, you’re not wrong. Today the Free Press points out that at least four rallies, including one in New York which was later denounced as too extreme by AOC, were co-organized by a group called The People’s Forum.Based in Midtown Manhattan, The People’s Forum calls itself a “movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad.” But a review of public disclosure forms show that multimillionaire [Neville Roy] Singham and his wife [Jodie] Evans have...

They should be treated the exact same way that Ashli Babbitt was treated. in response to Hamas supporters in NYC have surrounded Grand Central Station and are attempting to breach the outer doors to reach police officers sheltering inside.

FBI agents seized the New York mayor’s cell phones and other devices in an escalation of a federal investigation into campaign fundraising, U.S. media reported Friday. The seizure appears to be part of a corruption investigation into whether Eric Adams’ 2021 campaign conspired with Turkey’s government, according to The New York Times, which broke the story.

A Northeast Ohio native pleaded guilty to terrorism charges after investigators say he tried to help terrorists ambush and kill U.S. troops overseas. Cole Bridges, 22, of Stow, pleaded guilty to trying to offer material support to the Islamic State group and trying to murder U.S. soldiers. Bridges faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the two charges he admitted to. He will be sentenced on Nov. 2. According to court records, Bridges, also known as Cole Gonzales, joined the U.S. Army around September 2019. In the same year, court documents say he started researching online propaganda...

'We were led to believe about 40 people should have been on that bus. Only 14 got off,' Adams told a woman organizing the convoy on Friday, in a conversation overheard by The New York Post. 'Because of the fear that something was going to happen to them if they came to this location, people got off earlier,' he speculated. 'And we are concerned about that because we don't want people being dropped off [just] anywhere.'

Ko Im always thought she would live in New York forever. She knew every corner of Manhattan and had worked hard to build a community of friends. Living in a small apartment, she found her attitude shifting early in the pandemic. After her brother accepted a job in Seattle in the summer of 2020, she decided to move there too. “It was fine until it wasn’t,” said Im, 36. “The pandemic really changed my mindset about how I wanted to live or how I needed to live.” Eight of the 10 largest cities in the U.S. lost population during the...

Call this suicide by Democrat. We have suicide bombers in the White House. We have suicide bombers in our governor's mansions. Worst of all, we have suicide bombers directing the U.S. economy. This is the Titanic. This is the Hindenburg. We are headed for disaster. New York City now demands vaccine passports to go into any restaurant, bar, nightclub, gym -- even retail store. Los Angeles followed suit. So did San Francisco and New Orleans. How many more will follow? Las Vegas, my home, the entertainment capital of the world, isn't far behind. You now need proof of vaccination to...