Free Republic

Former congressman Trey Gowdy advised Attorney General William Barr's investigators, probing the Obama administration’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation, that the key lies in emails between Comey and Brennan.Ex-South Carolina Rep. Gowdy gave the tip during an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity in which he pointed investigators toward former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey.“So whoever’s investigating this, tell them to look for emails between Brennan and Comey in December 2016,” Gowdy said in an interview with Hannity.

(snip) -- I’ve seen the spreadsheet, Martha, I have seen each factual assertion listed in that dossier, and then I’ve seen the FBI’s justification. And when you’re citing newspaper articles as corroboration for a factual assertion that you have made, you don’t need an FBI agent to go do a Google search,” said Gowdy, who served on the House Intelligence Committee and is a Fox News contributor. “When the name Sidney Blumenthal is included as part of your corroboration, and when you’re the world’s leading law enforcement agency, you have a problem.” Gowdy did not further explain how the FBI...

he White House’s top lawyer told the House Judiciary Committee chairman Wednesday that Congress has no right to a “do-over” of the special counsel’s investigation of President Trump and refused a broad demand for records and testimony from dozens of current and former White House staff. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s letter to committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) constitutes a sweeping rejection — not just of Nadler’s request for White House records, but of Congress’s standing to investigate Trump for possible obstruction of justice. In his letter, Cipollone repeated a claim the White House and Trump’s business have begun making:...

House Democrats are "heading into a world of hurt" if they escalate their fight with Attorney General Bill Barr over access to the full Robert Mueller report, according to constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley. Turley, a George Washington University law professor, issued the warning during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. As lawmakers grilled him and other legal scholars on issues having to do with executive privilege and congressional oversight, Turley stated that while he generally tends to give weight to congressional power, they are sure to lose if they go to court for the purpose of holding...

The U.S. attorney reportedly appointed to investigate whether spying by the FBI on the Trump campaign was legal previously exposed a conspiracy between the bureau’s agents and mobsters to cover up for murders committed by mob informants. Attorney General William Barr tasked U.S. Attorney John H. Durham in Connecticut to investigate whether spying on President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 was adequately predicated, according to Reuters. The Department of Justice didn’t respond to a request to confirm the appointment. Durham will scrutinize the conduct of several current and former senior FBI officials, including former Director James Comey, former Deputy...

A high-level dispute over which senior government officials pushed the unverified Steele dossier amid efforts to surveil the Trump campaign has broken out into the open again, after it emerged that Attorney General William Barr appointed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if the FBI and DOJ's actions were "lawful and appropriate." Sources familiar with the records told Fox News that a late-2016 email chain indicated then-FBI Director James Comey told bureau subordinates that then-CIA Director John Brennan insisted the dossier be included in the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference, known as...

Judicial Watch Obtains DOJ Documents Showing Andrew Weissmann Leading Hiring Effort for Mueller Special Counsel Judicial Watch announced today the U.S. Department of Justice released 73 pages of records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) containing text messages and calendar entries of Mueller special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissmann showing he led the hiring effort for the investigation that targeted President Trump. The document production came in response to Judicial Watch’s June 7, 2018, lawsuit filed after the Department of Justice failed to respond to a December 15, 2017, FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No....

George Papadopoulos says that John Brennan the former CIA Director was lying when he told MSNBC this week that the agency does not spy against “domestic individuals.” “That’s the reason why I was flown to London, to be spied on, and why the British were also meeting with me and probing me on the same exact day that these two figures were paying me and spying on me and recording my conversation,” Papadopoulos said. “Yeah, usually the CIA doesn’t spy domestically, and that’s why they brought me to London to meet Stefan Halper and this informant,” he told MacCallum. “So...

John Durham, the prosecutor tapped by Attorney General William Barr to investigate how Trump-Russia allegations emerged and spread within federal law enforcement, has already been looking into whether the FBI’s former top lawyer, James Baker, illegally leaked to reporters. In fact, the U.S. attorney from Connecticut appears to have begun that work more than seven months ago, to judge from an underreported transcript of an October congressional interview with Baker. The Baker interview, at which Durham was not present, suggests that the prosecutor nevertheless has some people very worried.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump Jr. and the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee reached a deal on Tuesday for the president’s eldest son to sit for a private interview with senators in the coming weeks that will be limited in time, an accord that should cool a heated intraparty standoff.

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s comments Monday that Donald Trump Jr., should “plead the Fifth” during a testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee have sparked a social media campaign calling for the South Carolina Republican’s resignation. The hashtag “LindseyGrahamResign” trended on Twitter Tuesday after Graham told reporters Trump Jr.’s lawyer would “have to be an idiot” to permit the president’s eldest son to testify, adding that Trump Jr. should “just show up and plead the Fifth and it’s over with.” “This whole thing is nuts,” said Graham, who serves as the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman. “To me, it’s over.” On Sunday, Graham...

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Monday taunted top-level officials in former President Barack Obama’s FBI and CIA Monday, asking why they'd be nervous about President Trump’s Justice Department investigating leaks they made to media in an attempt to hurt Trump. “What is everyone afraid of?” Conway quipped during an appearance on "Fox and Friends." “What do you have to hide? How did this all start? Bill Barr, the attorney general, made clear that perhaps there is an investigation into at least eight of these leaks.” The “leaks” Conway are referring to are alleged communications between top Obama-era intelligence officials...

The man who nailed the FBI agents who helped mobster Whitey Bulger is heading the investigation of the origin of Obama's unconstitutional spying on Donald John Trump. The New York Times reported, "Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut to examine the origins of the Russia investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter, a move that President Trump has long called for but that could anger law enforcement officials who insist that scrutiny of the Trump campaign was lawful. John H. Durham, the United States attorney in Connecticut, has a history of...

The U.S. attorney appointed to examine the origins of the Russia investigation has been working on his review “for weeks,” a person familiar with the process told Fox News on Tuesday, to probe "all intelligence collection activities" related to the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. Fox News reported on Monday that Attorney General Bill Barr had assigned John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to conduct the inquiry into alleged misconduct and alleged improper government surveillance on the Trump campaign in 2016 as well as whether Democrats were the ones who improperly colluded with foreign actors.appointed to examine...

RUSH: Okay. Let me tell you the next thing to keep a sharp eye out for, folks, and that is people fleeing the country. If you see James Comey in Argentina or if you see James Clapper somewhere where they can’t be extradited, then you will know that we are getting close. When these people start leaving… I’m half joking. It hasn’t started yet, but man, are they nervous, because the attorney general has appointed a prosecutor to look into the investigation. And not only that, Fox News is reporting that their sources are telling them that John Durham —...

A federal judge on Tuesday gave lawyers for President Trump and Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee until the end of the week to make their final arguments on whether the court should uphold a subpoena requesting Trump’s private financial records. District Judge Amit Mehta, during the first court hearing in D.C. over the subpoena issued by Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) for records from the accounting firm Mazars, said he considers the matter to be “fully exhausted” after hearing arguments from attorneys on both sides. And he promised to quickly issue a ruling on the matter.

Former FBI General Counsel James Baker said on Monday he expects the Justice Department inspector general to find "mistakes" committed by the bureau in its handling of the Trump-Russia investigation. Inspector General Michael Horowitz is examining the Justice Department's and FBI's compliance with legal requirements as well as policies and procedures in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court related to onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Baker, who admitted last week the inspector general makes him "nervous," said the government watchdog will probably find some errors. "The inspector general is looking at everything we did," Baker said...

Attorney General John Yoo told Fox News's Laura Ingraham Monday night. And the reason why is, by appointing a U.S. attorney, Attorney General Barr is essentially signaling that he thinks it's possible that criminal violations occurred in the start of the whole investigation into any kind of Trump-Russian collusion. As Judge Barr said, there is already an inspector general investigation that's going to come to a conclusion. That's what you would do if you were just interested in reforming the way the department does things, the way decisions were made. But you wouldn't go with a U.S. Attorney like Durham,...

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) warned that America “came very close” to suffering its “first successful coup,” describing Robert Mueller’s operation — marketed as an “investigation” by authorities — as an attempt to usurp a duly elected president. He offered his remarks in a Friday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow. Gohmert said, “It’s time for Republicans to say, ‘Enough already. You have put this country through hell. You have let these ridiculous allegations that we now see are totally bogus get you the majority in the House.’ But if the American people will wake up, and...

President Donald Trump on Monday repeated unsubstantiated claims that efforts by law enforcement to investigate the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia were part of a "coup." The president's tweeted reference to a "coup" -- short for "coup d'etat," the French phrase for a government overthrow -- elevates claims from conservative voices including Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton and pro-Trump commentator Dan Bongino. The president also attacked the FBI as having "no leadership," an insult aimed at FBI Director Chris Wray, whom Trump nominated to replace former FBI Director James Comey. Wray testified before Congress last week that he wouldn't...