Free Republic

Dear Judge Sullivan: I am submitting my letter directly since Mike Flynn’s attorney has refused to submit it as well as letters submitted by other individuals.

...Litvinenko "was giving Scaramella lots of information about Russian and criminal infiltrations in Italy, but most of it was very difficult to verify and crosscheck. It was a little bit out on a limb." In the old days, Litvinenko had been familiar with criminal clans in Russia, now he was making risky approaches to the Italian mafia. Scaramella believed if they could get inside this network, they would be able to leverage much more damaging intelligence about Italian politicians. They spread their net wider. The Litvinenko dossier lists a dizzying roll call of names investigated by the pair, among them...

There is a lot of crap on TV to be avoided but there is one series that I found supremely entertaining (and educational). It is "Red Mafia." It is a Russian production from 2011 but now available via Amazon Prime as you can see HERE. It is not to be confused with the Russian Mafia of current times. This series is about Party corruption during the Soviet Era. And there was quite a bit of corruption all the way to the top. What makes this series especially entertaining is that it has a lot of humor. For example, Brezhnev (in...

Tony Rezko's former development partner is broke. ### Dan Mahru -- a lawyer who became an ice peddler and real estate developer -- has filed for bankruptcy, declaring that he and his business partners, including Rezko, owe as much as $95 million to creditors. Mahru estimates his personal debts could be as high as $50 million. Mahru and Rezko split a few years ago. But they're still fighting dozens of lawsuits filed over housing developments they built. "I couldn't handle all the multitude of lawsuits involving Mr. Rezko,'' Mahru says. Mahru lists $48,970.61 in assets in the bankruptcy case he...

Attorney General Eric Holder said a federal probe found discrimination against at least 200,000 qualified African American and Latino borrowers from 2004 to 2008, during the height of the housing market boom. He said that minority borrowers who qualified for prime loans were steered into higher-interest-rate subprime loans.

The Russian spy case that exploded into public view this week was preceded by nearly a decade of cat-and-mouse activities with the FBI, according to court documents and an interview with a senior U.S. official familiar with the case.

Would you be prepared to cross-dress? And kill a guest in an adjacent hotel room? If the answer to these questions is a resounding “yes”, and you can also act, enjoy luxury international travel with a twist and can carry off a convincing Irish or Australian accent, then the job could be yours. The Israeli spy agency Mossad may be the target of international reproach since it allegedly killed the Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel this month, but at home emerging details of the operation have generated Mossad mania. It has never been more popular in Israel,...

Da boy in Dubai. Or, more accurately, da dead boy in Dubai. Da boy is Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a leading Hamas operative who habitually boasted of killing two Israeli soldiers and was renowned as an arms supplier for various Palestinian groups in Gaza. He who lives by the Kalashnikov tends to die by the Kalashnikov. It’s a tragedy that violence still occurs in the world, but it would be equally tragic if we singled out one nation for condemnation. There is a very good chance that some branch of Israeli intelligence killed the man. The Mossad is often mentioned, but historically...

Israel is facing uncomfortable questions regarding senior Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was found dead in a Dubai hotel room on Jan. 20. Dubai police say al-Mabhouh was assassinated, but in his chosen profession, his fate really was the result of workplace-related injuries. Dubai has named 26 suspects in the case, and has evidence including credit card records, flight itineraries and closed-circuit television footage supposedly showing the accused assassins stalking their quarry. Much of the furor over the case has arisen over the apparent fraudulent use of British, Irish, French, German, Australian and other passports. The British government said...

What do you call a story whose plot includes 11 skilled rogues coming together in an exotic locale for the ultimate teamwork takedown, and then disappearing into the mist to celebrate their acts of derring-do? Using their skills to find their target, track it, and then finally acquire it sounds like Oceans 11, right? Yes, except this story features primarily British olim (immigrants to Israel) and instead of knocking over a casino, this story includes knocking out a terrorist. Using the Hollywood props of fake wigs, fake passports, fake tennis outfits, fake room service and a real cattle prod and...

DUBAI (Reuters) - New evidence incriminating Israel's spy agency in the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai includes credit card payments and phone calls made by suspects, an Arabic-language daily reported on Saturday. Police have already said the 11 suspects used forged passports in the names of innocent individuals of several European nationalities. "Dubai police have information confirming that the suspects purchased travel tickets from companies in other countries with credit cards carrying the same names we have publicized (in the passports)," Al Bayan daily on Saturday quoted Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim as saying. It did not...

The Dubai police has published a video showing alledged intelligence agents operating in a Dubai hotel last January 19, 2010, and suspected of having killed Hamas high-ranking figure Mahmud al-Mabuh.

Corrupt Russian officials are creaming off about $120bn (£61bn) a year - the equivalent of a third of the national budget, a senior prosecutor has said. The country's new President, Dmitry Medvedev, has pledged to tackle the problem - although correspondents say few expect things will change quickly. Russia's investigations committee has opened more than 1,000 corruption cases involving officials in 10 months. The committee's chairman said the extent of corruption was much wider. Alexander Bastrykin said the results of the investigations "do not yet equal the scope of bribery and corruption in bureaucracy", state news agency Itar-Tass reports. "Practice...

Substantial sums of hard currency provided to Saddam Hussein from the sale of Iraqi oil allowed under United Nations sanctions have been laundered through banks around the world by a Russian Mafiya boss described in an MI5 report as "one of the world's top criminals." Despite that, Israel continues to allow Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich to travel openly on one of its passports. Even more remarkable, the MI5 description was reinforced by an investigation by Mossad. Its report concluded that Mogilevich is a "major criminal - but has taken great care to commit no crime against Israel." His supply of arms...

Last week, a Swiss prosecutor found former Kremlin aide and present Secretary General of the Union between Russia and Belarus, Pavel Borodin, guilty of money laundering. Prosecutor Bernard Bertossa convicted Borodin and ordered him to pay a fine of 300,000 Swiss francs ($177,000). Switzerland issued an international arrest warrant for Borodin in December 1999 on suspicion of laundering up to $30 million linked to a lucrative Kremlin renovation contract awarded to two Swiss-based construction companies. He was arrested in New York in January 2001 and extradited to Switzerland in early April. After spending a few days behind bars, he was...

While U.S. law enforcement agencies are still busy searching for "sleepers" and other international terrorists in the U.S. and elsewhere, Russian mobs are increasingly engaged in criminal activity all across America. According to media reports, late last month the body of a woman was pulled from a mountain lake, the fifth murder victim recovered in an investigation of a Los Angeles-area Russian mob. California authorities found the body in 220 feet of water under a bridge straddling New Melones Lake. Four other bodies were found separately in the same lake between October and March. Investigators identified a body found last...