Free Republic

On his weekday podcast (which I sorely miss), Dan Bongino would occasionally refer to a scandal as “the biggest of our time.” This raised questions in my mind, such as how big was it compared to the others? How big must a scandal be before it could be considered “the biggest scandal of our time”? How are scandals measured, anyway? You can’t easily assign a dollar value to loss of trust or societal division. Evaluating the damage from these events requires considering multiple dimensions: economic costs, loss of life, social cohesion, political polarization, and erosion of trust in institutions. For...

When the White House included a gilt-framed image of an autopen in the new Presidential Walk of Fame installed outside the West Wing last month, it was more than just another epic troll by President Trump of his predecessor.The stark image on the wall among presidential portraits from George Washington to Donald Trump encapsulates Joe Biden’s failed presidency. It wasn’t just the opportunity cost of a commander in chief who was asleep at the wheel but the sum total of catastrophic judgments over four years of a man whose manifest flaws were only magnified by his cognitive decline.Even though everyone...

The alleged connection between the Mafia and two former NBA players -- Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups and longtime veteran Damon Jones -- began the way such things often do: through a little-known intermediary. That's one of the ways organized crime finds its way into locker rooms and athletes' inner circles -- by degrees, through introductions that seem harmless enough. What starts as a friendly poker night or an invitation from a trusted acquaintance can, before long, become something else entirely -- a sticky web of influence and, soon enough, obligation, former prosecutors and those who study the Mob say....

The Nobel Peace Prize has become mired in scandal today after suspicious bets were placed before a longshot was announced as the winner. Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was an obscure candidate just 12 hours before she was announced as winner on Friday. Her victory stunned the world after Donald Trump secured a peace deal in Gaza, ending a two-year war that has killed more than 70,000 people. Machado had just a 5 percent chance of claiming victory, according to prediction market Polymarket. But then a buying spree, from a newly created account '6741', rocketed her chances to 70...

[H/T Little Jeremiah]October 8, 2025

Most of us are glad to see the back of Joe Biden, but there are still a few little tidbits worth looking at that tell us so much about the incompetence and corruption of all his time in office. RealClearPolitics has a good one, by Philip Wegmann, indicating that U.S. intelligence sources knew all about Joe Biden's corrupt dealings with Ukraine as President Obama's point man, before the country was invaded by Russia, because Ukrainian officials told them all about it. It ended up in a CIA report ... and to no one's surprise, Biden deep-sixed it. According to Wegmann:...

At the specific request of then-Vice President Joe Biden, the CIA buried an embarrassing intelligence report detailing the poor view the Ukrainian government took of his diplomatic efforts and the business dealings of his own family in that country.Biden had traveled to Kyiv in December 2015, ostensibly to meet with leaders of that fledgling democracy and to deliver a warning against “the cancer of corruption.” And during an address to the Ukrainian parliament, he did condemn the “pervasive poison of cronyism, corruption, and kleptocracy.”But behind the scenes, Ukrainian officials expressed “bewilderment and disappointment” that the vice president had crossed the...

People in Washington DC are starting to realize the full scale of the Obama surveillance system. All of the evidence and datapoints, those released and those yet to surface, flow in one direction. Even the professionally reluctant are starting to admit.What Obama, Biden, Comey, Crossfire Hurricane, Robert Mueller, Arctic Frost and Jack Smith were doing, was using their offices -and govt systems- to watch their opposition, spy on them, then take action based on the results.Friend of the Treehouse John Spiropoulos has put together a series of videos explaining how President Obama, FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John...

Joe Biden’s presidency was a multi-trillion dollar criminal conspiracy that shred every “norm,” violated nearly every right, and abused any power it could to punish its political opponents. The Trump administration’s prosecutions of Team Biden’s abuses of power may be the healthiest development for the rule of law since the end of Jim Crow.This is a story Republicans should tell with pride — and must tell incessantly, or the next Democrat administration will make Biden’s four years look like Camelot under Arthur.The Seeds of CorruptionThe seeds of the Biden administration’s weaponization of government were sown while he was still vice...

Joe Biden quashed the release of a CIA memo indicating concerns over his family's allegedly corrupt business ties to Ukraine, it emerged today. CIA director John Ratcliffe declassified a stunning memo on Wednesday after a review of historical records from Biden's tenure as vice-president.The 'top secret' document, filled with redactions, also highlights how Ukrainian government officials were uneasy about Biden's visits to the country during the Obama administration.The dossier details how officials in Kyiv privately raged at Biden for coming to their nation to lecture them about corruption while his son Hunter was sitting on the board of a Ukrainian...

A new batch of declassified documents reveals that President Joe Biden allegedly quashed an investigation into his family’s international business dealings right as opponents in Congress sought to expose them. CIA Director John Ratcliffe ordered the release of a report detailing how Ukrainian officials grew increasingly concerned over the Biden family’s business dealings in their country. In it, Biden, then the vice president, told CIA officials in 2015 he would “strongly prefer” that a summary of his family’s “corrupt” business dealings “not be disseminated” — a request that the Obama-era CIA honored at the time. In a statement, Ratcliffe cited...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope Leo XIV Wades Into Durbin DebatePope Leo XIV responded to controversy over the Chicago cardinal’s plans to honor a Catholic U.S. senator who supports legalized abortion, saying that the senator’s record should be considered in its totality and that Americans should search together for the truth on ethical issues.Several U.S. bishops condemned Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich’s plans to honor U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, with a “lifetime achievement award” for his work surrounding immigration policy despite his pro-abortion voting record. “I am not terribly familiar with the particular case. I think it’s important to look at the...

Democratic New Jersey gubernatorial hopeful Mikie Sherrill’s husband was also caught up in the Naval Academy cheating scandal that has rocked her campaign, court documents exclusively obtained by The Post show. Jason Hedberg was one of about four dozen midshipmen who sued top officials at the Naval Academy, Navy and Pentagon in 1994 in a desperate bid to block an Honor Board at Annapolis from deciding whether they should be dismissed from the school. “In compliance with the orders of their superior military officers, each named plaintiff was compelled to make inculpatory statements to Navy Inspector General investigators,” read the...

New documents show that President Biden was checked out of decisions on pardoning felons and commuting the sentences of death-row inmates while his aides worked to make him look involved on paper. The National Archives and Records Administration handed over Biden administration memos detailing steps taken to create a record that would make Mr. Biden look like the decision-maker for the thousands of pardons signed by autopen during his final days in office.“Internal emails reveal Biden didn’t review thousands of pardons granted in his final days and even his own White House lawyers were scrambling for proof he approved them,”...

FIRST ON FOX: The House Oversight Committee is slamming former Biden spokesman Andrew Bates after he accused Republican lawmakers of having a misguided focus in his opening remarks during the panel's autopen probe. Bates, the latest former White House official to be interviewed by House investigators, affirmed ex-President Joe Biden's leadership while criticizing his successor in an opening statement obtained by Fox News Digital via a source familiar. An Oversight Committee spokesperson said in response, "Andrew Bates was part of the Biden cognitive decline cover-up and he’s delusional." "His so-called opening statement — leaked in the middle of his transcribed...

The new internal memos from the Biden White House are the first glimpse into the Trump administration’s probe into the former president’s mental decline and the abundant use of his autopen signature. Internal memos obtained by Just the News show President Joe Biden’s aides believed at the beginning of his administration that he had an obligation to personally sign official presidential actions, including pardons, and chronicle how the former president later outsourced clemency decisions to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The memos were gathered as part of a sweeping review by the Trump White House into Biden's use of autopen signatures...

For years, Americans were told their only hope was to roll up their sleeves for Pfizer, Moderna, and the rest of the vaccine cartel. Trillions of dollars flowed into their coffers while dissenting doctors were silenced, families were divided, and countless workers lost their jobs under vaccine mandates. However, a peer-reviewed study out of Germany now shows that a cheap, decades-old nasal spray, azelastine, may do what the so-called ‘miracle’ experimental COVID jabs never accomplished: stop infection. According to new findings published in JAMA Internal Medicine this week, all it may have taken to block infections was a $10 bottle...

Weren’t we assured that Barack Obama went “into and out of office with not a whiff of scandal”? Yes we were. Former Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen told us so, as did many others. But it wasn’t true. There are many, the most recent a claim that Obama, and then Joe Biden, pressured bank executives to deny services to conservatives. It’s a serious charge that, like the Russia hoax, makes Watergate look like a sandbox squabble. Here’s what we’ve learned: According to Fox Business, major bank executives said “they were under pressure by the Obama and Biden administrations to deny...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, confirmed Friday that his committee’s review of Joe Biden’s pardons so far calls into question their legality. Biden granted more acts of clemency than any other president in U.S. history.. During just one term, he gave a total of 4,245, which included 4,165 commutations of sentences and 80 pardons. By comparison, Barack Obama issued 1,927 acts of clemency over two terms, and Donald Trump issued 238 during his first term. The vast majority of Biden’s pardons came during his final two months in office.. The pardon for his son,...

MEGA BOMBSHELL: Rep. Tim Burchett EXPOSES Biden White House Staffers for Taking HUGE Payoffs to Issue 8,000+ Autopen Pardons — While Their In-Laws HID $160M+ in Cayman Islands! 💰 Smoking Gun Proof They SOLD Pardons for Bribes? DOJ Must ACT NOW! Rep. Tim Burchett drops nukes: Biden White House staffers allegedly took HUGE payoffs for 8,000+ autopen pardons while Joe was "incapacitated." "Someone got rich off that" – pure BRIBES! Now, NEW REVELATION: CIA & DOGE uncover in-laws of TWO Biden staffers stashing over $80M EACH in Cayman Islands accounts! As their shady income gets probed, should DOJ subpoena these...