Free Republic

Suspects were 'holdovers' from Obama administration.. The federal government is being sued for the details of an alleged CIA scheme to "get rid" of President Trump. Officials with government watchdog Judicial Watch confirmed in a statement they are pursuing a Freedom of Information Act case against the Defense Department over reports from a military officer "to his superiors regarding an alleged conversation." That reportedly happened around January 2017 and involved CIA analysts Eric Ciaramella and Sean Misko. And it concerned a plan to "get rid" of then-President Trump. ... seeking access to "any and all reports submitted by a U.S....

Journalist Paul Sperry is not going quietly into the night — as we reported, he’s been calling out the effort by Rep. Adam Schiff’s office to silence him, to get him suspended from Twitter as well as to shut down his reporting about things that Schiff didn’t want to be exposed. In articles for RealClearInvestigations, I outed his anonymous “whistleblower” from the first impeachment of President Trump. It was Eric Ciaramella, a Democrat who had worked in the Trump White House as an Obama holdover. I also exposed Ciaramella’s prior relationship with one of Schiff’s top staffers on the impeachment...

What’s with all the Obama holdovers who can still be found throughout the Trump administration? It is now just a little over three months before the 2020 presidential election, and despite an alarming amount of evidence of Obama holdovers still in the Washington bureaucracy, working hard to block Trump policies, all too many of these saboteurs are still in place. One of them is an appeaser, capitulator, and Muslim Brotherhood stooge named Eric W. Treene. The Justice Department’s “Religious Freedom in Focus” is “a periodic email update about the Civil Rights Division’s religious liberty and religious discrimination cases.” It lists...

A Department of Defense adviser resigned, effective immediately, from the military's science board citing what he believed to be a violation of conduct from Defense Secretary Mark Esper. In his resignation letter, James Miller Jr., the former under secretary of defense for policy from 2012 to 2014, recalled that he swore an oath of office to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States ... and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same," similar to what the defense secretary had done before he took office. "On Monday, June 1, 2020, I believe that you violated that oath,"...

WASHINGTON – The State Department watchdog whom President Trump fired last Friday had been looking into whether Secretary Mike Pompeo had ordered a staffer to perform personal errands including walking his dog, making dinner reservations and grabbing dry cleaning, a source familiar with the investigation told Fox News on Sunday. Still, Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees already had requested, through public letters, records of any open inspector-general matter dealing with the Office of the Secretary. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Paul told Politico, "It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure speech. Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people. This is dangerous and politically biased. Nowhere in my speech did I accuse anyone of being a whistleblower, nor do I know the whistleblower’s identity." YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said, "Videos, comments, and other forms of content that mention the leaked whistleblower’s name violate YouTube’s Community Guidelines and will be removed from YouTube. We’ve...

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis went on record Tuesday to defend Glenn Fine, the Pentagon inspector general relieved of his duties by President Trump earlier in the day. “Mr. Fine is a public servant in the finest tradition of honest. Competent governance,” Mattis wrote in an email to Yahoo News. “In my years of extensive engagement with him as our Department of Defense’s acting Inspector General, he proved to be a leader whose personal and managerial integrity were always of the highest order.” Mattis, 69, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, served as defense secretary from January 2017 to January...

President Trump recently fired Intel Community IG Michael Atkinson and he’s reportedly gearing up to fire several more Deep State IGs in one fell swoop. The IGs Trump is looking to fire were appointed by Barack Obama or beforehand. “President Trump wants his own people in those positions now.” Breaking: Trump is firing 7 IGs in one fell swoop, sources confirm to @RealClearNews. Most likely will be the IGs that were appointed by Pres. Obama or beforehand. He wants his own people in those positions now. Trump during his briefing said he has “put in 7 names” for IGs. —...

The U.S. recession is here. How long it will last will depend on the course of a viral pandemic that could still kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, and has most of the country under lockdowns aimed at slowing the infection's spread. But how quickly the world's biggest economy will recover will depend on how much aid the government gives it, and how effectively it can be used to stem what are already millions of job losses, Fed officials said on Thursday. "One thing we know from 2008, when you had millions and millions and millions of Americans losing their...

Former Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland said Friday that the FBI -- under the purview of the Mueller investigation -- tried to set up her up in a "perjury trap." Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with host Brian Kilmeade, McFarland -- who served under former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn -- explained that her life "went to hell" at the beginning of the Russia probe because investigators were convinced she was President Trump's to the Russians. "The FBI showed up at my house unannounced. I was all by myself. They come in and I said, 'Do I need a...

President Trump is making good on his promises to “drain the swamp” and cut Obama-era holdovers from his staffs, especially the critical and recently controversial National Security Council. Officials confirmed that Trump and national security adviser Robert O’Brien have cut 70 positions inherited from former President Barack Obama, who had fattened the staff to 200. Since entering the White House, Trump has relied on staffs smaller than previous administrations and has noted how prior president’s had a much smaller NSC team.

A year after Ukraine official and alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella left President Trump’s White House, a picture of him shaking Barack Obama’s hand was published on a close friend's wedding website. The Oval Office photograph, obtained by the Washington Examiner, is circulating among Trump allies who consider it evidence that the alleged whistleblower is biased against Trump and had partisan motivations when he filed an Aug. 12 complaint that sparked impeachment proceedings. In the photograph, a smiling Ciaramella, then Ukraine director on the National Security Council at the White House, is shown shaking Obama's hand. They are standing in front...

Obama White House photographer says photo of Trump watching deadly strike on ISIS leader Baghdadi was STAGED because time stamp suggests it was taken two hours later Pete Souza expressed suspicion about the photo of Trump in the Situation Room in a tweet on Sunday He noted that the timestamp indicated it was taken at 17.05pm on Saturday - over 90 minutes after the 3.30pm raid reportedly took place Many people shared support for Souza's speculation that the photo was posed The chief official White House photographer for former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama has suggested that a snap...

Former national security adviser John Bolton told a former aide to President Trump on Russia to call White House lawyers to warn them about a pressure campaign on Ukraine, House investigators were reportedly told Monday. Bolton told Fiona Hill, the senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs, to contact the lawyer for the National Security Council and say that the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was involved in the efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Democrats, the New York Times reported Monday night. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton told Hill...

China’s efforts to lure its scientists back from overseas institutions have been paying off militarily, with more than a little help from the United States. Military projects they have been involved in include China’s development of hypersonic weapons capable of penetrating missile-defence systems and the design of new submarines able to patrol quietly along the US west coast, researchers familiar with the programmes told the South China Morning Post. For more than a decade, China has been ramping up efforts to lure back talented scientists working at laboratories in the US linked to America’s nuclear weapons programme and other military...

Prosecutor in 2019 Epstein Case Is Maurene Comey, Daughter of Fired FBI Director James Comey -- Who Participated in 2017 Pussy Hat March. ( Full title). ... A team of federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, along with some in the public corruption unit, have been assigned to the case. Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, is one of the prosecutors, ... Maurene Comey is a Assistant US Attorney in New York state. Maurene Comey has been an assistant US attorney in the SDNY office since 2015. ... Maurene Comey with her mother...

BREAKING: US Office of Special Counsel Recommends Kellyanne Conway Be Removed From Office For Hatch Act Violations.. ( Full title).. The US Office of Special Counsel said in a report given to President Trump on Thursday that his counselor Kellyanne Conway has repeatedly violated the Hatch Act and recommended her removal from federal service. The Hatch Act bars federal employees from engaging in political activity. “The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) calls on President Donald J. Trump to remove Ms. Conway from her federal position immediately,” the agency wrote in a letter to the White House. “[K]ellyanne Conway violated...

Sally Yates’ Justice Department had no legitimate reason to believe Michael Flynn was either compromised or susceptible to compromise, yet they carried on as if it were so. In late January 2017, President Obama’s deputy attorney general Sally Yates made a couple of urgent trips from the Department of Justice building to the White House, carrying information she believed to be critical to U.S. national security. Yates was aware, likely through intercepts of Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s communications, that the newly seated national security advisor, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, had discussed with Kislyak Russia’s response to the Obama administration...

In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation. The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence. The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr....

For this week's Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten podcast, I had Sean Bigley, a national security attorney who prosecutes intelligence community whistleblower retaliation cases on to discuss the stunning and chilling demise of his client Adam Lovinger. Lovinger, a highly regarded Pentagon analyst, has found his career ruined, allegedly due to whistleblower retaliation -- first losing a prominent position in the Trump NSC, then his security clearance and finally being suspended without pay altogether while trying to litigate four separate cases against the officials who targeted him. The various probes and allegedly baseless allegations raised against Lovinger come from Obama...