Free Republic

Podesta’s net worth has skyrocketed since his time in the Obama administration, financial disclosures show ... John Podesta, the powerful Democrat consultant who Joe Biden tapped to oversee a multibillion-dollar climate investment fund, discussed those investments with an environmental group that had him on the payroll just months before, according to a new financial disclosure. Galvanize Climate Solutions, a green energy investment firm founded by billionaire Tom Steyer, participated in an Oct. 31 meeting with Podesta and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to discuss how to best use the $369 billion in federal funds. Galvanize paid Podesta $84,000 in advisory fees...

Secretary of State Antony Blinken rolled out the red carpet Friday for Liu Jianchao, China’s leading envoy — and the architect of its global scheme to kidnap and silence anti-Communist dissidents. Liu’s “Operation Foxhunt” included setting up Chinese “police stations” including in New York, to find and extort dissidents. His trip to the US was capped by the reception at the State Department by Blinken on Friday morning, the day after he met President Biden’s deputy national security adviser Jon Finer. It had also included a visit to the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan, a reception with a...

A U.S. Navy service member was sentenced today to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay a $5,500 fine for transmitting sensitive U.S. military information to an intelligence officer from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in exchange for bribery payments. According to court documents, Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, 26, aka Thomas Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one count of conspiring with the intelligence officer and one count of receiving a bribe. “Mr. Zhao betrayed his solemn oath to defend his country and endangered those who serve in the U.S. military,” said Assistant...

I have no idea why the DOJ is putting out a press release about this. It seems more like the sort of thing to never mention again. A U.S. Navy service member was sentenced today to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay a $5,500 fine for transmitting sensitive U.S. military information to an intelligence officer from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in exchange for bribery payments. According to court documents, Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, 26, aka Thomas Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one count of conspiring with the intelligence officer and...

HONG KONG—For months now, I’ve been told that Hong Kong’s protests would end soon. They’ll end when school starts, I heard during the summer. School did start, but the protests wore on, only now I saw high-school students in crisp school uniforms joining the protesters’ ranks. Next, the mask ban of early October was supposed to slow protesters down, but the very first day after that ban, I watched streams of protesters in masks and helmets make their way to their usual haunts on Hong Kong Island. The government shut down many of the subway lines that day, a practice...

The Biden administration drastically simplified the vetting process for Chinese illegal immigrants in April 2023, according to an internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) email obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The April 2023 email, which was sent by a CBP supervisor to a “master list” of about 500 Border Patrol agents, instructs CBP officials to radically reduce the number of interview questions for Chinese migrants apprehended after illegally crossing into the country from roughly 40 to just five. The “headquarters guidance” came as border agents were overwhelmed with near-record numbers of illegal crossings. This scaling back of...

This weekend, a terrible study out of China back in 2018 gained some visibility on X when it was tweeted out by REDUXX and a few other accounts. There is no way to gild the lily on this one: this 'study' is absolutely horrific. The study related to research into developing 'neophalluses' for people wanting to change their sex and, we do have to warn you here, we are going to share some of the details. They could make you physically ill. We will refrain from sharing any photos; the descriptions alone are revolting enough. (We saw the photos; we...

PORTLAND, Maine — Illegal marijuana grows run by Chinese nationals have sprung up all across the state of Maine, and residents say law enforcement isn’t doing enough to stop their spread. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified 270 suspected Chinese illegal marijuana grow operations in the state that could be making an estimated $4.37 billion in revenue, which are often used for more criminal activities or are sent back to China, the DCNF exclusively reported in August.

Around the world, scientists are now beginning to examine samples of the virus with a significant question in mind: Could this strain of the disease cause a global pandemic? This international network of scientists keeps constant watch for good reason. In 1918 and 1919, a flu pandemic killed between 20 million and 40 million people, more than the total death toll of World War I, more in a year than the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. More recently, an H1N1 swine flu pandemic was blamed for more than 284,500 human deaths worldwide between April 2009 and August 2010. So...

Chinese President Xi Jinping warned President Biden last month that he intends to end Taiwan’s decades-long de facto independence — peacefully, if possible. Xi told the 81-year-old commander-in-chief that “Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China but that the timing has not yet been decided,” NBC News reported Wednesday, citing three current and former US officials briefed on the meeting. The White House didn’t deny the exchange, which occurred during a Nov. 15 summit outside San Francisco that was attended by a dozen US and Chinese officials. “I’m not gonna get into the specifics of the discussion between the two...

Regardless, China-Russia relations grew more strained than outsiders might imagine, with Russia finally taking a big gamble: It would drop an informational bomb on Beijing. The subject of that information was then Foreign Minister Qin, who had been tapped for the post by Xi. It's easy to see what might have motivated Russia. Being China's top diplomat, Qin would have been the person responsible for sending the Chinese delegation to Ukraine. Russia labeled Qin as pro-U.S. as he had served as ambassador to the U.S. for a short period before being tapped as foreign minister. So it "passed on internal...

Former high-ranking FBI official Charles McGonigal started tearing up Thursday as he was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison for colluding with a Russian oligarch to evade US sanctions. McGonigal, 55, was ordered to surrender by Feb. 26, 2024, made to serve three years of supervised release following his time behind bars, and was fined $40,000. After he exited the courthouse, McGonigal told onlookers, “Happy holidays.” McGonigal, who helmed the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York from 2016 to 2018, pleaded guilty to the charge back in August. “[McGonigal] well knew his actions violated those sanctions,” Manhattan federal judge...

In internal memo, Thomas DiNanno, then acting ass't secretary of @StateDept Arms Control, Verification, Compliance bureau documented his team was "warned...“not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.

I’ve seen a lot of this material before but never in such detail and concentration. This lengthy article walks though the behind the scenes machinations which led to the creation and publication of a scientific paper designed to dismiss the lab leak theory. That paper was then cited by Dr. Fauci and others as proof that COVID-19 had a natural origin (but Fauci didn’t reveal he had helped organize the effort to write the paper). What we’ve known for some time is that the academics who were recruited for this task had significant doubts about it. Again, you’ve probably seen...

Lab was reportedly on congressman's radar months before it was 'discovered' by a local code enforcement officerO’Keefe Media Group founder James O’Keefe recently confronted a congressional staffer for a California Democrat congressman and revealed he’d been caught on hidden camera making shocking remarks about a controversial Chinese biolab in The Golden State.O’Keefe Media Group founder James O’Keefe recently confronted a congressional staffer for a California Democrat congressman and revealed he’d been caught on hidden camera making shocking remarks about a controversial Chinese biolab in The Golden State.The lab, owned by a shady Chinese company, housed 900 genetically engineered mice designed...

In the new Sky News Australia documentary, “What Really Happened in Wuhan, the Next Chapter”, Sharri Markson reveals explosive new evidence about the origins of the pandemic that brought the world to a standstill in 2020. Speaking to officials from multiple US intelligence agencies as well as senior public health scientists involved in behind-the-scenes discussions, Sharri reveals how the lab-leak theory was intentionally suppressed, with a whistleblower claiming CIA analysts who favoured the lab leak theory were even bribed to change their position in order to take the focus off China and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., says the Biden campaign should not use TikTok for their 2024 campaign because of the national security threats it poses to the U.S., pointing out that the president banned TikTok on U.S. government devices. SEN. TOM COTTON: It's not just that governors have banned it [TikTok], Joe Biden has banned it. We passed legislation last year that banned TikTok on U.S. Government devices. Yet, Joe Biden's campaign is now thinking, apparently, about going on to TikTok. So just think about that. You have all of these senior aides at the White House who carry two phones,...

According to a new Pew report, a growing number of U.S. adults admit to regularly getting their news on TikTok. “This,” notes the report, “is in contrast with many other social media sites, where news consumption has either declined or stayed about the same in recent years.”This should concern all readers who care about the United States. As this piece clearly demonstrates, TikTok is an incredibly dangerous app that is most likely being weaponized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). More specifically, it's being used by the CCP to further divide a country that is already dangerously divided.The Pew report...

American cities and college campuses are being overrun by radical leftists protesting in favor of Hamas. These protests are not organic. They are being funded and organized and you’ll never guess who is helping to do it.It’s not George Soros, although no one would be surprised if he was involved in some way.No, this is being done by Code Pink activist Jodie Evans and her Marxist multi-millionaire husband.