Free Republic

I recently watched a German-made political movie, The Lives of Others, which was released back in 2006. Every American should take the opportunity to watch this movie, for it portrayed the destructive consequences for the people and a society living under what was formally an all-powerful East German police state. The East German state police agency, the Stasi, was granted virtually unlimited power to monitor and spy on the lives of their citizens with the objective of maintaining absolute control over all aspects of the personal and professional lives of its people. The Stasi was renowned for being highly proficient...

---SNIP--- What becomes clear is that the special counsel used a number of rhetorical devices to couch evidence and craft a narrative so that a document that ultimately clears the president can also be read as an indictment. The first thing to note about the Mueller report is just how contentious it is. It isn’t a set of findings so much as an assertion of what the findings might have been if only there had been more evidence. It is like a closing argument in a criminal case already dismissed for lack of evidence but in which the prosecutor is...

Rep. Devin Nunes said there is something "weird" going on with the media's coverage of the Russia investigation, even after special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation came to a close. In an interview with Fox News, the California congressman was asked to react to a Washington Post report this week focusing on Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud, the man who told former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos the Russians had damaging information about Hillary Clinton and effectively set in motion what would become the Russia investigation. The report critically assesses what Trump allies such as Nunes have claimed about Mifsud, including that...

Trump associates who believe they were unfairly maligned in Robert Mueller’s Russia report want lawmakers to ask one question - why? - when the former special counsel testifies July 17. They also allege that Mr. Mueller knew there was no Trump-Russia conspiracy months before the March 22 completion date of his investigation but stayed quiet. Why? They say the report contains pejorative narratives of innocent conduct for which no one was criminally charged. Michael Caputo, media adviser for the Trump campaign, asked on his “Still Standing” podcast, “When did Bob Mueller actually know there was no Russian collusion? “That matters...

Text messages between former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page debating how much information to share with the Justice Department about a London meeting -- days after the bureau opened its initial Russia investigation -- are drawing fresh scrutiny as alleged surveillance abuse and the probe’s origins are investigated by three separate probes, Fox News has learned. On Aug. 3, 2016, Strzok wrote, "I think we need to consider the lines of what we disclose to DOJ. For example, the last stipulation notes we will not disclose [the] identifies outside the FBI. I think you might argue the unauthorized...

Sometimes it is the quiet, elusive ones who come back to haunt you. And for ex-special prosecutor Robert Mueller, one of those might be a Russian billionaire named Oleg Deripaska. The oligarch who once controlled Russia’s largest aluminum empire has been an international man of intrigue in the now-completed and disproven Trump collusion investigation. Deripaska was a disaffected former business client of Donald Trump’s fallen campaign chairman Paul Manafort. He also was a legal research client of Trump-hating, Clinton-aiding British spy Christopher Steele. In his spare time, he was an occasional friendly cooperator with the FBI and its fired deputy...

July 2, 2019: Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton appeared on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on the Fox Business Network to discuss the latest on the Clinton email scandal. Read more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUUHGuNdwwA&feature=youtu.be

Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe said Monday that the Justice Department inspector general has finished his investigation into whether the FBI abused the surveillance court system during its investigation of the Trump campaign. In an interview on Fox News, Ratcliffe said that he met in June with the inspector general, Michael Horowitz, to discuss the timing, but not the content, of the release of the report. “He related that his team’s investigative work is complete,” said Ratcliffe, a Republican member of the House Intelligence and House Judiciary Committees. “They are now in the process of drafting the report. I would...

When Democrats heard last week that Robert Mueller would testify before the House judiciary and oversight committees on July 17, they were as giddy as a 72-year-old Jerry Nadler waiting to question Hope Hicks. But unless committee Republicans botch the hearing—something entirely possible—the left’s strategy of placing Mueller center stage in their continued attempts to underdo the results of the 2016 presidential election will backfire bigly. Why? For the simple reason that Mueller’s 400-plus page report presented the worst the special counsel could muster against Trump, so any new revelations will play to the president’s advantage. So, what should Republicans...

Texas Republican congressman and House Freedom Caucus stalwart Louie Gohmert called former special counsel Robert Mueller an “anal opening” Monday as Mueller prepares to testify before Congress after finding no Russian collusion on the part of President Trump. “He’s done some irreparable damage to some things and he’s got to answer for them. It reinforced the anal opening that I believe Mueller to be,” Gohmert stated to Politico.

He is using the office he holds to advance his extraordinary lifetime project of assigning unchecked power to the president. Buried behind our president’s endless stream of lies and malicious self-serving remarks are actions that far transcend any reasonable understanding of his legal authority. Donald Trump disdains, more than anything else, the limitations of checks and balances on his power. Witness his assertion of a right to flout all congressional subpoenas; his continuing refusal to disclose his tax returns, notwithstanding Congress’s statutory right to secure them; his specific actions to bar congressional testimony by government officials; and his personal attacks...

Peter Strzok was one of the most senior FBI agents. In fact, a congressman has described him as one of the top counter intelligence agents on the planet. He was having an affair with Lisa Page, one of the FBI’s most senior lawyers. Along with bitching about work, they also worried and plotted to scupper the Trump candidacy and then his presidency of the United States. In private text messages, they discussed starting the investigation into Donald Trump’s supposed ties with Russia before the election as an “insurance policy” in case he was elected. Strzok also pledged to stop Trump...

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power may share an unflattering stage with a text-loving FBI agent and his Donald Trump-hating paramour from the bureau. Fired agent Peter Strzok and ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page are infamous today for texting on FBI phones their anti-Trump sentiments while allegedly having an affair. They played key roles in the now-debunked Russia collusion investigation. It turns out that Power — the diplomat whose authority inexplicably was used to unmask hundreds of Americans’ names in secret intelligence reports during the 2016 election — engaged in similar Trump-bashing on her official government email, according...

Rep. Adam Schiff joined MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Wednesday to discuss breaking news that Robert Mueller has agreed to testify before Congress in July. (snip) MITCHELL: Congressman, is he going to go beyond the four corners of his report? SCHIFF: Well that is certainly what we're going to ask of him. We're going to be asking questions. He has to go to what's in the report, but we're going to be asking questions that are outside the report. The attorney general has made it clear that he feels completely free to discuss matters not in the report. In fact, the attorney...

RUSH: Mueller is testifying. Mueller has responded to the subpoenas. He’s gonna testify before Nadler’s committee. He’s gonna testify before Pencil Neck’s committee. Let me ask you a question. Nadler’s committee, has it done anything but been one gaffe after another? Jerry Nadler can’t run a committee hearing. He doesn’t know how to keep order. He doesn’t know how to keep his own party, his own side in control. This thing is gonna be a cluster you-know-what. But let me tell you something. The Democrats are not thinking about this. The Republicans are gonna get a chance to ask Mueller...

We are familiar with the pattern. Leak details about fake documents like the Steele dossier to the media, then use the media reports as a second source “corroborating” the unverified report when using it to justify your illegal actions. More evidence of the deceitful and arguably illegal actions by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller has popped up, this time regarding Paul Manafort’s “black cash ledger” allegedly documenting criminal financial moves on his part and it parallels the criminality of the use of the Steele Dossier by the FBI to lie to the FISA court to authorize the surveillance of Team...

Democrats will regret issuing a subpoena to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who agreed to testify later this summer, according to Alan Dershowitz. Mueller cannot refuse to answer questions from Republicans not covered by "privilege," Dershowitz claimed on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle." "I'm trying to stop them from shooting themselves in the foot," he said.

WASHINGTON — Former special counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to testify in public about his two-year Russia investigation at a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee and Judiciary Committee on July 17, which comes after the chairmen of the two panels issued a subpoena compelling his testimony. In a press release issued late Tuesday, Judiciary Committee Chairmen Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said that Mueller had agreed to testify next month. “Pursuant to subpoenas issued by the House Judiciary and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence tonight, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III has agreed...

The M.B.s [Muslim Bros] are a true Nazi-era jihad organization, and the three young jihad sympathizers in Congress today — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and that Tlaib person — are outspoken enemies of the United States. Today, Ocasio-Cortez is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee — presumably reading top national security documents. Pelosi and Schumer can't possibly be ignorant of that. Now imagine Robert Mueller slithering his way up the greasy pole when Bill and Hillary were co-presidents and making it to the top in the Obama years. Mueller is not stupid, and he saw the winds shifting against traditional...

President Trump on Monday refused to say whether he had confidence in FBI Director Christopher Wray, while acknowledging the two officials have disagreed on some key issues, including whether the president’s campaign was a victim of spying. In an interview, Trump was quizzed on his level of confidence in the FBI boss. “Well, we’ll see how it turns out,” he told The Hill, before discussing Wray’s previous claim that he would not use the word “spying” to describe the bureau's surveillance of figures linked to the Trump campaign in 2016. “I mean, I disagree with him on that and I...