Free Republic

The Rightosphere is well-acquainted with stories about the mainstream media working against US interests, but even so, this is still a bit much. Less than a week after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited the United States, the Justice Department announced Monday that 10 people were arrested on charges of being Russian agents involved in a long-term mission in the country. Another suspect was still being sought.Five of the arrested suspects appeared in a New York courtroom Monday. Four of the five, including a longtime U.S.-based columnist for the Spanish-language “El Diario” newspaper, were advised of their rights and ordered held...

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...

Now that Republicans have narrow control of the House of Representatives, the GOP is investigating the Biden administration with gusto. Still, Republicans seem not to have noticed one major foreign policy scandal that's hiding in plain sight. As I recently reported , the rising scandal surrounding retired FBI senior official Charles McGonigal is perhaps the worst in the bureau’s history. Multiple sources have told me that McGonigal, while still serving with the FBI as head of counterintelligence in New York, shook down Balkan business people, most of them Albanian, in an audacious political corruption scheme worth many millions of dollars....

Elena Branson, a dual Russian and U.S. citizen, has been charged with acting and conspiring to act in the United States illegally as an agent of the Russian government, willfully failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”), as well as conspiring to commit visa fraud and making false statements to the FBI. As alleged, beginning in at least 2011, Branson worked on behalf of the Russian government and Russian officials to advance Russian interests in the United States, including by coordinating meetings for Russian officials to lobby U.S. political officials and businesspersons, and by operating organizations in...

An accused Russian spy who worked as a merchant banker in New York City called convicted spy Maria Butina after 30 FBI agents showed up at her apartment with a battering ram. Elena Branson, 61, who holds dual U.S. and Russian citizenship, was accused of running a 'Russian propaganda center' in New York and communicating directly with President Vladimir Putin. She shared details of her encounter with the law during a cozy chat with Butina broadcast on Russian state broadcaster RT, and recalled how Butina had been one of the first people she'd contacted.

Tara Reade, who claims she was sexually assaulted by President Joe Biden in 1993 and recently moved to Russia, has filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General (IG). Reade served as a Biden aide when he was a U.S. senator representing Delaware, drawing headlines during the his campaign April 2020 when she filed a criminal complaint with the Washington Metropolitan Police Department accusing him of pushing her against the wall in a Senate corridor and penetrating her with his fingers nearly three decades earlier. The accusations were strongly denied by Biden, and Reade became...

The corresponding decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin has already been publishedMOSCOW, September 22. /TASS/. Tara Reade (who changed her name to Alexandra Tara McCabe), a former aide to Joe Biden during his career as a senator, has received Russian citizenship. The corresponding decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin has already been published. "To accept the following persons as citizens of the Russian Federation: ...McCabe, Alexandra Tara, born February 26, 1964 in the United States of America," the decree says. Reade was an aide to Biden during his senatorial term from Delaware. In the spring of 2020, she...

Ames, a 31-year CIA veteran, admitted being paid $2.5 million by Moscow for US secrets from 1985 until his arrest in 1994. WASHINGTON: CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, who betrayed Western intelligence assets to the Soviet Union and Russia in one of the most damaging intelligence breaches in US history, has died in a Maryland prison. He was 84. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Ames died Monday. Ames, a 31-year CIA veteran, admitted being paid $2.5 million by Moscow for US secrets from 1985 until his arrest in 1994. His disclosures included the identities of 10 Russian officials...

Moscow (AFP) - US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden warned of dangers to democracy in the first video released of the fugitive since Russia granted him temporary asylum in August. "If we can't understand the policies and programmes of our government we can't grant our consent in regulating them," Snowden said in one of the short video clips posted on the WikiLeaks website Friday night. The anti-secrecy group said the videos were filmed Wednesday when Snowden met with a group of four retired US ex-intelligence workers and activists now seeking to promote ethics within the profession. Snowden, a former National Security...

In a barbed tweet yesterday, NSA consultant turned whistleblower Edward Snowden said that Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) could “casually [annihilate] the savings of every wage-worker” in the country. Snowden began his attack against the nascent promise of CBDCs—digital currencies backed by the monetary reserves of a central bank—in response to an article by New York Times guest columnist Dr. Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policies at Cornell University. Dr. Prasad highlighted the growing move towards a cashless economy, a move signaled by the research and trials of CBDCs in countries such as China, Sweden, Japan, Britain, as well...

@ggreenwald Trump's failure to pardon Assange and Snowden was one of the worst and most cowardly mistakes he made. Few realize how close he was to doing it. He got scared by threats from GOP Senators that they'd vote for impeachment if he did it.

Is the military handling of a Chinese balloon, identified as a surveillance device, and other unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) in recent days, just being hyped by the lapdog media to divert attention from the news that the Democrat administration of POTUS Joe Biden may have blown up the Nord Stream pipeline? That is a question on the minds of many Americans and many other people around the world. Answers are not so easy to come by as the Democrats have long and rambling press conferences to try to explain why such massive military action has been taken and what the...

'The Senate Intel Committee spent nearly the entirety of its session today furiously demanding that DNI nominee Gabbard condemn me personally, a position now opposed by something like 94% of Americans...' President Donald Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence, faced sharp criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike Thursday during a fiery confirmation hearing focused on her past support for whistleblower Edward Snowden—but Gabbard stood her ground and refused to disavow him. Gabbard started her hearing by telling lawmakers that big changes are needed to address years of failures of America’s intelligence service. She said too often intelligence has...

Deep state whistleblower Edward Snowden may be getting a new lease on life. The famous fugitive, who has been living in Russia since 2013 after leaking classified National Security Agency documents showing the US was engaged in a massive surveillance program, has been a cause célèbre among left-wing and free speech activists, but has received a chillier reception from Republicans. But Snowden has some powerful allies in President-elect Trump’s cabinet, insiders told The Post. Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, co-sponsored a resolution in September 2020 calling on the United States to drop all charges against...

A former FBI informant pleaded guilty on Thursday to lying about a $10 million bribe that a Ukrainian businessman paid to then-vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter to “protect” his firm from a looming corruption investigation. Alexander Smirnov, 43, entered into a plea agreement with special counsel David Weiss and confessed to having created “a false and fictitious record” as part of a multi-year federal probe into the Bidens. The falsehoods included the bribery allegation, which was memorialized in an FBI FD-1023 form in 2020 and released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) last year, and other aspects of...

Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, a Mexican citizen residing in Singapore, was arrested based on a Complaint charging him with acting within the United States on behalf of a foreign government (Russia), without notifying the Attorney General, and conspiracy to do the same.John C. Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Ariana Fajardo Orshan, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida; George Piro, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office; and Diane J. Sabatino, Director of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Miami Field Office, made the announcement. According to court...

A U.S. Army specialist has been arrested at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska on suspicion of espionage, an Army spokesman said on Tuesday. Specialist William Colton Millay, a 22-year-old military policeman, was taken into custody on October 28, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Bill Coppernoll told Reuters. Coppernoll said Millay, of Owensboro, Kentucky, was arrested following a joint espionage investigation conducted by the FBI and Army Counterintelligence special agents.

Julian Assange's 14-year saga as a fugitive and prisoner may be coming to an end. The Wikileaks founder has agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge with the U.S. Justice Department in exchange for no additional prison time. He has already served 5 years in a maximum security prison in England after spending 7 years hiding in an Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange would only agree to a hearing outside of U.S. soil. Last month he won his right to appeal an extradition order. High Court judges Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson ruled for Assange after his lawyers argued that the...

Did anyone else catch the “discussion” between Hannity and Mark Summers today?I’m not sure if they have some sort of history, but Hannity sure jumped quickly. F. Lee Levin was on too and brought up Summers ordeal with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which I thought was in poor taste.I’m still not sure why Summers even called.

Julian Assange tried to contact Hillary Clinton and the White House when he realized that unredacted U.S. diplomatic cables given to WikiLeaks were about to be dumped on the internet, his lawyer told his London extradition hearing on Tuesday. Assange is being sought by the United States on 18 counts of hacking U.S. government computers and an espionage offense, having allegedly conspired with Chelsea Manning, then a U.S. soldier known as Bradley Manning, to leak hundreds of thousands of secret documents by WikiLeaks almost a decade ago. On Monday, the lawyer representing the United States told the hearing that Assange,...