Free Republic

Former Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle shared details of a meeting she had with then-Republican candidate Donald Trump during the 2024 election cycle in a speech delivered at the NH Liberty Forum this past month. McArdle also discussed her experience with the campaign and her role in securing a pledge from Trump to pardon Ross Ulbricht. McArdle recounted the events in a mainstage keynote address at the annual gathering, which is hosted by the Free State Project. Local media estimated that around 300 attendees participated in the full forum. McArdle’s talk, titled “The Heart of the Deal,” covered her...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to announce he will cancel former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley’s security detail and clearance — and direct the Pentagon’s acting investigator general to launch an investigation into whether the retired soldier should be demoted in rank, Fox News reported Tuesday. Despite retiring from the Army in September 2023, the Secret Service has continued to protect Milley due to Iranian threats of retaliation on him for his role in the drone strike ordered by Trump in 2020 that killed Tehran’s Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Trump last week removed the protective...

Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has become the latest ex-official from President Trump’s first term to lose their security detail, according to a report. The Pentagon revoked Esper’s taxpayer-funded security detail on Tuesday night, CBS News reported on Wednesday. Esper’s security detail had been provided by the Department of Defense as a result of threats he’s received from Iran since the 2020 US airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment. Esper, 60, served as Trump’s secretary of the Army from November 2017 to July 2019, before he...

The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges for individuals involved in a thwarted Iran-backed plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump before the election. Three people were charged in the alleged Iran-backed murder-for-hire plot on Trump's life. Shakeri, 51, still remains at-large in Iran while Carlisle Rivera, 49, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, were arrested in New York. The criminal complaint filed in Manhattan on Friday alleges an unnamed official in the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed a contact in September to put together a plan to surveil and kill Trump, according to the Associated Press. The court filing states that the contact,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges Friday in a thwarted Iranian plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump before this week’s presidential election. A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan alleges that an unnamed official in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed a contact this past September to put together a plan to surveil and ultimately kill Trump.

As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House after scoring a spectacular victory in the US presidential election, Iranians wonder what his second term could mean for their country. The results of the "elections are an opportunity to review and revise the wrong approaches of the past," Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said, according to Iranian media. "We have very bitter experiences with the policies and approaches of different US governments in the past," Baghaei said. Relations between the United States and Iran have been extremely tense for nearly four decades. Sources of contemporary tension include Iran's nuclear...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a message to the Lebanese people on Tuesday, urging them to “take back your country” from Hezbollah and from Iran, which arms and funds the terrorist organization. Netanyahu spoke on a day when Israel took control of the border town of Maroun al-Ras, formerly a Hezbollah stronghold from which the terror organization had fired on Israeli communities — and which had featured a statue of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani pointing toward Israel. (Soleimani was killed in an airstrike in Iraq ordered by then-President Donald Trump in 2020.) Israel’s advance is seen as a major...

An Israeli security source on Saturday confirmed to Sky News Arabic that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's successor, Hashem Safieddine, was eliminated in a Friday night strike. According to Al Hadath, commanders from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were eliminated together with Safieddine. On Friday, Israel estimated that Safieddine was injured in the strike, since those who were with him in the underground area which was struck could not have escaped the site alive. In addition, it is estimated that alongside Safieddine, senior Hezbollah intelligence officials were also present at the site and were also injured. Safieddine, 60, is a cousin of...

The Hezbollah Shura Council on Sunday chose Hashem Safieddine as Secretary General to replace Hassan Nasrallah, who was eliminated in an Israeli airstrike on Friday, Saudi news outlets Al Hadath and Al Arabiya reported. Safieddine currently serves as the head of Hezbollah's Executive Council. He is Nasrallah's cousin from his mother's side. His brother, Abdullah, is Hezbollah's envoy to Iran. In addition, Safieddine is one of six clerics currently serving on Hezbollah's Shura Council. His son, Said Ridah, is married to Zayneb Soleimani, the daughter of former Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, who was eliminated in 2020. Hezbollah denied the...

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is seeking Majid Dastjani Farahani, a 41-year-old Iranian national and intelligence agent, accused of orchestrating assassination plots against US officials. "Majid Dastjani Farahani, an Iranian intelligence officer, is wanted for questioning in connection with the recruitment of individuals for various operations in the United States, to include lethal targeting of current and former United States Government officials as revenge for the killing of IRGC-QF Commander Qasem Soleimani," it said in a report on March 5. Soleimani was killed in 2020 in Baghdad by an American airstrike. He was commander of the Islamic Revolutionary...

The Biden administration suppressed information about Iran’s efforts to assassinate U.S. officials to ensure Congress and the American public were kept in the dark, according to a lawmaker on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "What Americans don’t know is that the Biden administration has gone to great lengths to hide the extent and persistence of those threats" from Iran, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) said during a Senate hearing Wednesday on Tehran’s network of terror proxies. Those threats include active plots to assassinate former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and other top U.S. officials. The administration has been "abusing the...

Farahani is also accused of recruiting people to surveil religious sites, businesses and other locations in the U.S. The FBI is searching for an Iranian intelligence officer connected to plots to assassinate current and former U.S. government officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as revenge for the 2020 death of Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani. The FBI's Miami Field office on Friday issued a "Seeking Information" notice for Majid Dastjani Farahani, 41, who is accused of acting on behalf of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. He is "wanted for questioning in connection with the recruitment of...

The agency has issued an alert regarding an Iranian official wanted in connection to a plot to assassinate current and former U.S. officials "in revenge" The FBI is on a manhunt for an Iranian intelligence officer allegedly overseeing a plot to assassinate current and former federal government officials as revenge for the Trump administration's 2020 airstrike killing of an Iranian military official. Last Friday, the agency's Miami field office issued an alert that Majid Dastjani Farahani "is wanted for questioning in connection with the recruitment of individuals for various operations in the United States." Those operations, the alert adds, include...

The FBI is hunting for an alleged Iranian spy who is accused of plotting assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other American officials. Majid Dastjani Farahani speaks Farasi (sic), French, Spanish and English and frequently travels between Iran and Venezuela, according to an alert Friday by the agency’s Miami field office. The 41-year-old suspected member of Iran’s brutal Ministry of Intelligence and Security had been recruiting “individuals for operations in the U.S., to include lethal targeting of current/former [U.S. government] officials,” the FBI said. The alert came as Iran sought to avenge the 2020 US assassination of Major...

The FBI has launched an urgent manhunt for an Iranian secret intelligence official accused of plotting to assassinate Trump administration officials. Federal agents say Majid Dastjani Farahani has been trying to recruit allies in the country to murder current and former US government officials as revenge for the US assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. In an urgent notice on Friday, the FBI office in Miami asked for information on Farahani, who is said to speak Spanish and frequently move between Iran and Venezuela, where the ruling regime is friendly with Iran.

He spoke in a vigil in commemoration of Qasem Soleimani held in front of the U.S. consulate in Toronto, which he referred to as the "representative of the Great Satan," on January 2, 2022 and which was posted on Dars TV on YouTube...

A recent intelligence leak report indicates that Iran is plotting to kill or capture former President Donald Trump as well as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.According to the Mirror, Iran is seeking to avenge the death of its beloved commander, Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a drone strike two years ago.The claim comes after a recent National Counterterrorism Center report, which said Iran is "waging a multi-pronged campaign against select U.S. officials."The report also mentioned threats of international legal maneuvering, the issuance of Iranian arrest warrants, as well as sanctions, and lethal action.Soleimani was considered one...

ran’s Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, warned the governments of the region and the “Zionist movement” against any role in the Persian Gulf. This comes in the wake of the Negev Summit, where Bahrain and the UAE, which are in the Gulf, attended an unprecedented and important summit in Israel. The report of his comments took place in Iran’s Fars News and Tasnim News on Wednesday night. He was “referring to the security situation in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of ​​Oman and some movements of the presence of the Zionists...

The Trump administration issued the designation in 2019 A top Iranian resistance group is warning that any move to take the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps off the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list will "heighten terrorism and mayhem" in the region, amid fears the Biden administration will make such a move as part of negotiations to bring Iran back into the 2015 nuclear deal. "A potential IRGC exclusion from the FTO list and taking these individuals off the terror blacklist, as requested by Iran’s ruling theocracy, will no doubt heighten terrorism and mayhem in the region," the report by the...

Last Thursday was the second anniversary of the killing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani; while the date passed virtually unnoticed in the United States, it was a major event in the Islamic Republic of Iran, featuring numerous threats of revenge from enraged Iranian leaders. One of these stood out from the others: Soleimani’s successor as Quds Force commander declared that the revenge would come from inside the United States. Iran’s state-controlled Tasnim News Agency reported that Brigadier General Esmaeil Qaani was “delivering a speech to a ceremony in Mashhad” for the anniversary...