Free Republic

August in Washington can be the political equivalent of an elephant graveyard: One good rain can wash away the dirt and expose the bones of scandals past. And this August did not disappoint. Thanks to the relentless investigative work of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), we are learning that the Hillary Clinton email case may not really be settled. A staff memo updating the two senators’ long-running probe discloses that the FBI — the version run in 2016 by the now-disgraced and fired James Comey, Andrew...

The mainstream press has been totally silent on the criminal trial of Greg Craig, the former Obama Administration official who is facing charges “connected to a Ukraine-related legal project.” “Craig served in 2009 as President Barack Obama’s first White House counsel, was a key figure in Obama’s first presidential bid and had previously joined President Bill Clinton’s White House to defend him against impeachment,” POLITICO said. “Craig is charged with scheming to conceal material facts during a Justice Department inquiry into his Ukraine work and whether it required him to file under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.” Part of the...

Another win for Judicial Watch! Judicial Watch was in court Thursday fighting to force Hillary Clinton to answer questions under oath about her private server. Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee on Thursday granted Judicial Watch additional discovery and Hillary Clinton has 30 days to oppose to their request to question her under oath. Judicial Watch has four more months to conduct the discovery that Judge Lamberth just granted them, according to JW attorney Ramona Cotca. TOM FITTON: Court gives Judicial Watch additional discovery and witnesses on Clinton emails — wants Judicial Watch to “shake the tree” on newly uncovered...

Progressive activists crashed an award ceremony honoring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) at a San Francisco hotel on Wednesday night, demanding she support the introduction of articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. Armed with signs that read “We can’t wait,” demonstrators stood on chairs while shouting, “Which side are you on, Pelosi? Impeach!” inside the InterContinental hotel, where the San Francisco Democrat Party members honored the longtime California lawmaker with a lifetime achievement award.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) is asking four other top committee leaders to share any documents or materials they think could be related to his committee’s investigation into possible obstruction and potential abuses of power by President Trump. In a letter on Thursday, Nadler wrote to Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Oversight and Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) to ask them to provide such information as Nadler's committee weighs whether to introduce articles of impeachment against the president. "I am writing to request information, including documents...

Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates testified in federal court Thursday against Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig about the ex-counsel's Ukraine-related work for Paul Manafort, Politico reported. Gates was a top lieutenant to Manafort, a former Trump campaign chairman, for approximately 10 years. During that time, Manafort supervised a 2012 review conducted by Craig of the abuse-of-power trial of ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, according to Politico. While the review was presented as an independent probe of the trial, it was commissioned by Manafort's primary client, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and bankrolled by Victor Pinchuk, a steel oligarch and...

More than two and a half years after President Donald Trump assumed office, focus on actions taken during the 2016 presidential campaign is starting to shift toward the CIA and its former director, John Brennan. While some observers, including this publication, have pointed out for more than a year that Brennan appears to have played a key role in the scandal that’s become known as Spygate, actions taken by Brennan and the CIA now appear to have become a central focus of investigators. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that Justice Department (DOJ) Inspector...

I know we’ve been waiting a long time for the Department of Justice’s inspector general on the alleged FISA abuses that occurred under the Obama administration. It was supposed to be released this summer. Now, it’s due out in early September. The contents might not send anyone from the Obama DOJ to jail, but it will reaffirm what we have been saying for quite some time: that the FBI was allegedly spying on Trump officials, that the meddling of the most concern was really coming from the J. Edgar Hoover Building, and that the Trump dossier was known to be...

They just cannot leave him alone. They cannot let 2016 go. They cannot let the fact that Hillary Clinton will never be president go. House Democrats are now in full impeachment mode. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now in the minority regarding this move, a majority of her caucus now supports proceedings to impeach Trump because he won an election. It’s sad. It’s pathetic. But this is what they were elected to do. House Democrats went sent to D.C. to impeach Trump, to stop him, and to derail his agenda that has created over three million new jobs, sunk unemployment...

There really is nothing new under the sun. The infamous Salem Witch Trials started with a group of young girls claiming they were doing bad things because they were possessed. They then said that it was witches who caused them to be possessed, naming them without providing any evidence. The “witches” were then summarily executed. Well, eight in total, over just a few months. According to History.com: “The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women...

Of all the tiresome falsehoods from the so-called “resistance,” the narrative that Democrats lose elections because they are just too decent and fair is among the most ridiculous. If only they would put aside their genteel political ways, this self-serving theory goes, and do what is necessary instead of what is civil, they would force the American people to finally see the truth of Donald Trump’s evil. Columnist Juan Williams (who, it should be noted, does have a reputation for civility) is the latest to propagate this assessment of Democrats as being too fair to their opponents in the Trump...

A Republican strategist and former 2016 presidential campaign spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) laid out three things that the GOP must do to ensure President Donald Trump is reelected next year, including some surprises — such as, he believes California a sign of things to come for the GOP without a plan to address it. In an op-ed for The Hill, Ron Nehring writes that while “California has become a running joke” for his party, it’s really “the canary in the coal mine, not an outlier.” That is, the state is a massive warning sign for the Republican Party....

Former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis predicted the Justice Department inspector general's report on alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses will be "hard-hitting," with multiple recommendations for prosecution. During an interview Monday on Fox News, Lewis said he used to work with Inspector General Michael Horowitz at the Justice Department and called him as "tough as a nail." Lewis added, "He’s tough, he is smart, and I think the report will be a blockbuster." He expects Horowitz's findings to make special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election "look like a sixth grade book report." Asked to...

Shortly after Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn joined the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in February of 2016, someone began contacting reporters spinning a tale about having seen General Flynn being courted by a female Russian spy. This person alleged to several media reporters that he suspected Flynn had been successfully compromised by the Putin government. Sveltana Lokhova is a lecturer and author at Cambridge who specializes in Soviet intelligence studies who ended up being dragged against her will into the center of one of the biggest political scandals of all time. The person responsible for dragging Lokhova into the middle...

To date the investigation into the Fusion GPS-manufactured collusion scandal has focused largely on the firm itself, its allies in the press, as well as contacts in the Department of Justice and FBI. However, if a sitting president used the instruments of state, including the intelligence community, to disseminate and legitimize a piece of paid opposition research in order to first obtain warrants to spy on the other party’s campaign, and then to de-legitimize the results of an election once the other party’s candidate won, we’re looking at a scandal that dwarfs Watergate—a story not about a bad man in...

We first reported in late July that Texas businessman Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit where he outed reporter Ellen Ratner as his source for information on Seth Rich. The DNC operative was murdered in the summer of 2016 in Washington DC. His murder was never solved. According to the lawsuit Seth Rich provided WikiLeaks the DNC emails before the 2016 election, not Russia. This totally destroys the FBI and Mueller’s claims that Russians hacked the DNC to obtain these emails. Butowsky claims in his lawsuit: Ms. Rattner said Mr. Assange told her that Seth Rich and his brother, Aaron, were...

A federal judge has ordered the FBI to search for and produce all documents related to the bureau’s one-time asset, former British spy Christopher Steele, who produced the long-discredited “Russia dossier” fired FBI Director James Comey and others used to obtain surveillance warrants against the 2016 Trump campaign. U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, in issuing his ruling, said that the public’s interest outweighed Steele’s privacy rights and ordered the FBI to complete the search within 60 days. Steele, who was dismissed by the bureau for unauthorized contact with the media, nevertheless produced the infamous dossier that was central to...

Democrats got catfished. Robert Mueller was supposed to be a towering, commanding figure — the man whose hard-nosed investigative diligence would produce a tidal wave of momentum for impeachment. Democrats expected startling revelations from Mueller that would send Members of Congress clamoring to the House floor, crawling over each other to impeach President Trump. Instead, they found themselves squirming with disbelief, as an intellectually disheveled Mueller stumbled through answers, often appearing clueless about the claims made in his own report. The live-action Mueller Report was a flop. Democrats expected a blockbuster but found themselves wishing they could walk out of...

Several hundred emails from former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton sat unprotected in a private Gmail account for more than two years and remained there about two weeks before then-FBI Director James Comey exonerated her for criminal mishandling of national secrets. The Epoch Times reported that the emails came under scrutiny by GOP lawmakers because of the account name — carterheavyindustries@gmail.com — which was very similar to that of a Chinese firm, Shandong Carter Heavy Industry Machinery CO., Ltd. The sameness of the account name and the Chinese company gave Republicans some concern that a...

Cambridge professor and reported FBI informant Stefan Halper, who is being sued by a Russian-born academic for allegedly smearing her and former national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of a government conspiracy to bring down the Trump administration, declared in a recent court filing that he is entitled to legal immunity ordinarily afforded to federal agents – even if the lawsuit's allegations are true. Halper did not explicitly admit to being an FBI informant in asking an Alexandria, Va. federal judge to throw out the case, and his filing followed legal rules that require defendants to assume that plaintiffs'...