Free Republic

A total of 15 Republican state attorneys general, led by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, filed an "amicus" brief in support of former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Monday, Fox News has learned. The filing stated that the court needed to grant the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the case without commentary immediately “because such punditry disrobes the judiciary of its cloak of impartiality.” The short brief also elaborated on the problems that the court created by “inserting itself into the Justice Department’s exercise of prosecutorial discretion.” On the recommendation of U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, who served as an FBI...

House Democrats told the Supreme Court on Monday that they are again in the midst of an "ongoing presidential impeachment investigation" as part of their "weighty constitutional responsibility" – and, the Democrats argued, redacted grand-jury material from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s now-completed Russia probe must be turned over as a result. Top Democrats have repeatedly suggested since President Trump was acquitted on two articles of impeachment in February that they might initiate new impeachment proceedings. In their brief with the Supreme Court, which seeks testimony, exhibits and transcripts, the Democrats promised that leaks won't be a problem, owing to their...

Catch-22 With Brady Exculpatory Evidence Powell notes that the prosecution refused to provide Flynn with the Brady material before he accepted the plea deal because he was not a defendant until he was formally charged. But then they claimed they didn’t need to provide him with the material after he had accepted the plea deal — since the guilty plea erased the obligation. It was a catch-22 that defeats the purpose of the Brady requirement. Powell charges FBI lawyer Lisa Page with altering the FD-302 write-up of Flynn’s interview. Peter Strzok, an FBI agent at the time and Page’s extramarital...

Have we all forgotten when Obama was caught on an open mike telling the #2 Russian leader, Medeyev, that he (Obama) would work with Putin to reduce European capabilities to defend themselves against Russian IRBM and ICBM attacks? Medeyev then promises Obama that "I will tell Vladimir" (Putin), then claps Obama on arm and promises him "I will stand with you." These are not claims! This is videotape from less than 5 years ago!!!

WASHINGTON — A key former F.B.I. official cast doubt on the Justice Department’s case for dropping a criminal charge against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during an interview with investigators last week, according to people familiar with the investigation. Department officials reviewing the Flynn case interviewed Bill Priestap, the former head of F.B.I. counterintelligence, two days before making their extraordinary request to drop the case to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan. They did not tell Judge Sullivan about Mr. Priestap’s interview. A Justice Department official said that they were in the process of writing up a report...

An FBI agent's newly released testimony undercuts top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr's denial of a conflict of interest between his Trump-Russia efforts and his wife’s work for Fusion GPS, producer of the discredited Steele dossier. The agent, Michael Gaeta, told congressional probers that Ohr had pressed him to make sure the FBI was “doing something” with the dossier. According to Gaeta, Ohr pushed Steele's collection of memos alleging nefarious ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in part because Ohr’s wife Nellie worked for the same company that had hired ex-British spy Christopher Steele. Gaeta's testimony was released last...

By the height of the Watergate scandal in 1974, virtually every major newspaper in America had called for President Richard Nixon's resignation. During the investigation and impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, more than 100 newspapers called for him to resign. But President Donald J. Trump? He could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody... and not a single major daily newspaper would call for his resignation..... After three years of political and actual carnage under Trump, including Robert Mueller's description of acts that amounted to, he told Congress, obstruction of justice; Trump's "fine people on both...

Now that the Justice Department belatedly has admitted that the entire investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was a sham, it is time to turn to the bigger picture.On August 2, 2017, acting attorney general (for all matters involving the Trump-Russia collusion hoax) Rod Rosenstein signed a memorandum expanding the jurisdiction of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Almost a year after Mueller released his report, the expanded jurisdiction memorandum remained a secret until Wednesday. A third jurisdiction memorandum remains secret.It is unclear why the Department of Justice says it kept this memo secret until now or why it...

Fox News host Jesse Watters said sources are telling him Attorney General William Barr has received "smoking gun" documents that will cast aspersions on the Russia investigation. In his opening monologue on Watters' World, which was taped Friday but aired Saturday evening, the host said these records could reveal that former President Barack Obama had a significant role in the investigation into the Trump 2016 campaign's ties to Russia, which President Trump and his allies have deemed a "witch hunt." "Sources are telling Watters' World that Attorney General Bill Barr was just given a trove of smoking gun documents that...

On Friday Fox News host Tucker Carlson said that Schiff should resign over the “elaborate and intentional” Russia hoax that alleged that President Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to help him win the 2016 presidential election. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller found, after a lengthy investigation, that there was no evidence to support that theory. But for the better part of a year Schiff said that there was evidence that he had seen that would prove there was collusion. That evidenced was never seen. “On Thursday the House Intelligence Committee … finally released 57 transcripts of testimony delivered...

With the release of the new material from the case of Michael Flynn, an array of experts came forward to assure the public that it was all standard procedure for investigators to conclude that there was no criminal conduct uncovered and then prosecutors creating a crime (including the use of a clearly unconstitutional law never used to convict anyone since the start of the Republic). Many of these same experts who have been espousing untethered (and ultimately rejected) theories for criminal and impeachment charges for years. Yet, what was most striking is how many also rejected any claim that the...

<p>Shortly after my colleague Sara Carter and I began reporting in 2017 on the possibility that the FBI was abusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Americans during the Russia investigation, I received a call. It was an intermediary for someone high up in the intelligence community.</p>

The laughable collective known as the House Judiciary democrats have sent a letter to Michael Horowitz, the DOJ Inspector General, demanding an investigation into Attorney General William Barr’s respect for the law and protection of the falsely accused. NEW: House Judiciary Cmte. Democrats write to DOJ inspector general calling for investigation into AG Barr’s “improper political interference into several ongoing criminal matters against President Trump's allies.” pic.twitter.com/TbZBikNbAJ— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) May 8, 2020 Then last night an audio was “leaked” to Michael Isikoff. You might remember Isikoff- he is the go to leak reporter when something helpful to democrats is needed....

The Justice Department’s closing of its criminal case against President Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on Thursday came as new red flags emerged from recently released documents revealing the FBI’s handling of the matter. Former FBI agents and federal prosecutors tell RealClearInvestigations that the documents show suspiciously irregular handling and editing of Flynn’s FD-302 form, the official document used to record what happens in FBI interviews. That form served as a key record used to charge Flynn with lying to federal agents. He pleaded guilty to that charge in December 2017 but had been trying to withdraw the...

Two possibilities arise from the guilty plea of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn’s plea marks the beginning of the end of the Trump administration. Flynn’s plea marks the end of the desperate hope that America will be delivered from the Trump presidency by impeachment and removal from office on the grounds that his campaign colluded with Russia to win him the 2016 election. There are other ancillary events one can easily imagine. For example, Trump could fire independent counsel Robert Mueller and/or pardon Flynn and others. But those moves would eventually make the end of his administration...

The DOJ decision would appear to put an end to that process. Earlier Thursday, the top prosecutor on the case, Brandon Van Grack, abruptly withdrew from the case, without explanation, in a brief filing with the court. Breadcrumbs were being dropped in the days preceding the decision that his case could be reconsidered. Documents unsealed a week ago by the Justice Department revealed agents discussed their motivations for interviewing him in the Russia probe—questioning whether they wanted to“get him to lie” so he'd be fired or prosecuted, or get him to admit wrongdoing. Flynn allies howled over the revelations, arguing...

Smiling alongside John Kerry at their elite New Hampshire boarding school, this is Robert Mueller decades before before he began investigating Donald Trump's election campaign. The contrast with Trump's childhood is stark - although it is the difference not between wealth and poverty, but between the son of a scrappy self-made man from Queens and the son of an establishment insider.

The chilling words contained in the newly released handwritten notes of William Priestap, the assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division at the time of the FBI's January 24, 2017 interview with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, confirm the worst suspicions of Flynn’s defense team. Flynn’s lead defense attorney Sidney Powell believes with good reason that the retired three-star general was set up for a perjury trap by senior officials at the FBI. The handwritten notes and other released FBI documents provide her with more ammunition for the defense team’s motion to dismiss the case against Flynn. The motion...

New documents in the Michael Flynn case cemented that a small cadre of high-level FBI agents set a perjury trap for President TrumpÂ’s then-national security advisor. The unsealing last week of a series of documents in the Michael Flynn criminal case cemented the reality that a small cadre of high-level FBI agents set a perjury trap for President TrumpÂ’s then-national security advisor. Beyond exposing the depth of this despicable personal and political hit job on a 30-year military veteran, the newly discovered documents hold great legal significance. HereÂ’s your legal primer.The Russiagate special counselÂ’s office charged Flynn with violating 18...

The U.S. Code makes it a felony offense, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, to knowingly alter or falsify an entry in a document with the intent to influence a federal investigation. This is comparatively a more serious offense than the false statement charge that Michael Flynn pled to, which carries a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison. Newly revealed text messages between federal agents Paige and Strzok discussing the Michael Flynn case, dating February 10, 2017, show the cheaters discussing rewriting a 302 written by another agent, trying to disguise their edits as the author's own...