Free Republic

The Justice Department’s assertions this week that a longtime FBI informant was seeking to “spread misinformation” designed to hurt President Joe Biden after speaking to Russian intelligence operatives has put a new spotlight on an old debate: To what extent, if any, has the Russian government manufactured or amplified unproven allegations of corrupt Ukraine dealings by Joe and Hunter Biden? In a request to revoke his bail, prosecutors said that former informant Alexander Smirnov, charged last week with lying to the FBI in 2020 when he said Joe Biden had received a $5 million bribe, “is actively peddling new lies...

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” NBC News Justice and Intelligence Correspondent Ken Dilanian argued that the signatories of the Hunter Biden laptop letter have “been proven correct” by the indictment of Alexander Smirnov because “we know now that Russian intelligence, at least according to the statements of this informant, bolstered somewhat by this indictment, were feeding him information, false information” even though the laptop’s contents “weren’t” made up and “Many of them have been now corroborated.” Dilanian stated, “[T]hose 51 former intelligence officials, they paid a steep price for signing that letter. The House Republicans conducted an investigation....

As we reported, Catherine Herridge was fired from CBS during a bloodbath of them cutting hundreds of employees. Her firing got the most attention because of her excellence in reporting and the suggestion that it was more than just a layoff when it came to her being let go, just after she'd been reporting on the Hur Report. That suspicion grew louder when it was learned that CBS had also seized Herridge's files, computers, and records, which included her "privileged sources." According to George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley: "The timing of Herridge’s termination immediately raised suspicions in Washington. She...

When U.S. news outlets' lucrative peddling of Chinese propaganda was exposed in 2019 and 2020, it was a scandal. Human rights groups condemned the practice, and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal swore off Chinese Communist Party money. In the years since, however, a number of major U.S. newspapers and magazines have kept at it—accepting hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for publishing content by China Daily, a state-owned English-language paper. China Daily's Foreign Agents Registration Act filings show that between October 2020 and October 2023, the CCP mouthpiece paid...

Google has Usurped DemocracyWe hear a lot about “election integrity” or lack thereof, particularly around the issues of counting the vote and the ballot box. But the truth is that elections are more likely to be stolen via search engine manipulation effects (SEME).What is SEME?SEME is an abbreviation for the search engine manipulation effect. In a series of randomized controlled experiments, it has been shown that more than 20% of undecided voters can be manipulated into voting one way or the other, by simply manipulating the rankings of search engine results.These studies were published in an article titled “The search...

Members of the established media in recent weeks defended President Joe Biden’s “poor” memory by claiming the president’s health is “acute” and that any speculation to the contrary is “ageist” and a “right wing media” conspiracy theory. The media’s defense is the latest effort to support Biden, who is trailing in national 2024 polling to former President Donald Trump. The media apparently felt compelled to defend Biden before and after special counsel Robert Hur described the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory” in his report on Biden’s classified document scandal: Hur described Biden as not competent to...

New York Times headline, Feb. 20: “A Big Opportunity to Define Trump as Unacceptable.” The short item by Times Deputy Opinion Editor Patrick Healy follows up on an unintentionally hilarious focus group session the paper conducted last week, wherein 11 out of 13 voters who supported Joe Biden in 2020 say they now support Trump. Among the switching voters was a man who said he would support Trump even though he believed him to have committed “sexual abuse” and two others who said criminal convictions in any of the charges against him would not change their minds. Healy: “But I...

Peeling back the layers of the Obama era is like opening Pandora’s box and finding out it’s deeper than we thought. Obama might have slithered out of the White House without a flashy “legacy” tag, but he sure did leave a mess. It’s as if he was the Dems and Deep State’s MVP, playing a long game we’re still trying to wrap our heads around. He wasn’t just about making policy changes; he was on a mission to infiltrate every corner of our sacred institutions and flip them inside out for his—and their—advantage. Just look what he did by weaponizing...

Joe Biden is old. Like each of us, he comes from a particular place in history, in his case the LBJ years. And that’s one big reason why his first term has been so full of accomplishment: His age, often cited as the greatest obstacle to his reelection, is actually his superpower. The first presidential election in which Joe Biden was eligible to vote featured Lyndon Johnson beating Barry Goldwater. History remembers LBJ’s presidency as chaotic because of his tragic adventuring in Vietnam, but in other respects it was remarkable. His Great Society echoed Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal (FDR was...

A long-awaited report by special counsel Robert Hur will be made public in the coming days after a yearlong investigation into how classified documents found their way to President Joe Biden’s home and office, according to a senior law enforcement official familiar with the matter. The imminent release of a public report confirms that, as expected, no criminal charges will be filed. It is unclear to what extent the report will criticize Biden or aides regarding their handling of classified material. The Washington Post first reported that the Justice Department is set to release Hur's report shortly. Biden advisers have...

Nikki Haley faced no major challenger Tuesday in Nevada’s presidential primary. She still lost, according to NBC News projections. Nevada voters in the state-run primary had a choice to reject all the candidates on the ballot, and they did just that — with more people choosing to vote for “none of these candidates” than for Haley. It was a stinging rebuke of the former ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina governor — and one that some party leaders had encouraged. The outcome in Nevada was Haley's third consecutive loss in an early state primary contest.

Disinformation poses an unprecedented threat to democracy in the United States in 2024, according to researchers, technologists and political scientists. As the presidential election approaches, experts warn that a convergence of events at home and abroad, on traditional and social media — and amid an environment of rising authoritarianism, deep distrust, and political and social unrest — makes the dangers from propaganda, falsehoods and conspiracy theories more dire than ever. The U.S. presidential election comes during a historic year, with billions of people voting in other elections in more than 50 countries, including in Europe, India, Mexico and South Africa....

We recently discovered that Google’s ad-serving network is blocking its ads from appearing on a story we published almost exactly three years ago. Google declared that the article violated its terms of service because it contained “Dangerous or derogatory content,” which it defines as anything that: - incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization. - harasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of...

On Friday, District Judge Aileen Cannon issued a new order in the Donald Trump classified documents case adding to the mountain of evidence that she is firmly in the former president’s pocket. Trump appointed Cannon in 2020 and the Senate confirmed her appointment in the days after he lost the 2020 election. It’s deeply offensive to the rule of law for judges to bend the law to benefit those who put them on the bench. Sadly, Cannon does just that.

The candidates' late slogging through the snow may not have mattered Strong conservatives, older voters, MAGA fans, 2020 election deniers and less-educated Iowa Republicans piled in to help Donald Trump win Iowa's Republican caucuses on Monday night amid punishingly cold weather and depressed overall turnout, according to an analysis of entrance poll results. The former president -- despite spending relatively minimal time in the state, despite past indications that the base was considering other options and despite notable challengers, who spent months campaigning against him -- had by far the widest margin of victory in any meaningfully contested Iowa Republican...

Former President Donald Trump’s huge win in the Iowa caucuses on Monday enshrines one of the most astonishing comebacks in American political history. Losing one-term presidents almost never mount subsequent successful primary campaigns, much less pull off landslides that demonstrate utter dominance of their party. Trump transformed the GOP in his populist, nationalist, nihilistic image in 2016. By claiming 50% of the vote in the biggest win in caucus history, putting him on course to his third consecutive nomination, he showed that eight years after his outsider presidential victory, the current GOP is entirely his party. “The big night is...

MSNBC and CNN refused to air former President Donald Trump’s Republican Iowa caucus victory speech Monday evening, while airing fellow candidates’ speeches. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow announced on-air that Trump had just began giving his speech but that the network decided not to air it because it did not want to knowingly broadcast “untrue things.” She said: At this point in the evening, the projected winner of the Iowa caucuses has just started giving his victory speech. We will keep an eye on that as it happens. We will let you know if there’s any news made in that speech if...

Among those being mentioned for Trump’s defense secretary are Christopher Miller, who served temporarily during his administration, Michael Flynn and Mike Pompeo. WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is sparking fears among those who understand the inner workings of the Pentagon that he would convert the nonpartisan U.S. military into the muscular arm of his political agenda as he makes comments about dictatorship and devalues the checks and balances that underpin the nation’s two-century-old democracy. A circle of appointees independent of Trump’s political operation steered him away from ideas that would have pushed the limits of presidential power in his last term,...

Instagram removed this video of Joe Biden discussing the laws his very own son broke. They removed it with 5 seconds of it being posted. I know it’s embarrassing but come on. Let’s make this viral so folks actually can judge for themselves.

Former President Donald Trump's businesses received millions of dollars from foreign entities located in 20 different countries during his presidency, according to a new report released Thursday by Democrats on the House Oversight committee. The top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, released the report and provided documents from Trump's former accounting firm that show that 20 governments, including China and Saudi Arabia, paid at least $7.8 million during Trump's presidency to business entities that included Trump International Hotels in Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas, and Trump Towers in New York. The 156-page report by House Democrats is...