Free Republic

Yes, I know Allahpundit wrote about this last night, but this is one candidacy I can’t keep my mouth shut on. I’ve been covering New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for a long time now and up until this point, I’d always assumed that his presumed flirtations with a presidential run were more of a ploy to simply raise his national profile in the Democratic Party. I never thought he was actually going to do it. And yet, here we are.So as Hizzonor embarks on what has quickly become the most mocked and ridiculed presidential bid in modern history,...

Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden's out and about, repeating the old, tired saws of the Obama administration.  According to Fox News: Former vice president and newly-minted 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Bidenappeared on "The View" on Friday morning and told hosts that his proudest moment of serving with President Barack Obama was that there was "not one whisper" of scandal during the time they served together in the White House. Biden said that, coincidentally, he and Obama both told press on the same day while in different parts of the country that the thing they were most proud of while...

Former Vice President Joe Biden said that he was very proud he and President Barack Obama had never experienced a “single whisper of scandal” during a Friday interview on “The View.” “I’m incredibly proud to have served with him,” Biden said. “The thing I’m proudest of is we were each in a different part of the country and we were each talking to groups of people that were being televised. Purely coincidentally we said the same thing. We were asked what are you proudest of from your administration? You know what I said — he said the same thing as...

Lightning-rod lawyer Michael Avenatti is accused of embezzling nearly $2 million that he was supposed to give to a client to settle her suit against NBA-player ex Hassan Whiteside, blowing the funds on a private jet, a report said Sunday. The Miami Heat hoopster had wired $2.75 million to Avenatti in January 2017, intending it to cover the bulk of his $3 million settlement with former flame Alexis Gardner, who was repped by Avenatti, The Los Angeles Times reported, citing court filings. Avenatti was entitled to keep a roughly $1 million cut to cover his legal fees but instead allegedly...

The great difficulty of interpreting political scandals was summarized by a newspaper editor in the western film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Deciding not to publish the truth of an explosive political story, the editor justifies it by saying, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” We have certainly had many legends regarding political scandals foisted on us, especially since Watergate. Nearly every political administration has potential scandal lying just below the surface. There are always those in government who seek to profit privately from public service, and there are always those who will abuse their power. All...

Morrie Tobin was in Boston to cut the deal of his life. It was early April last year. A few weeks before, federal agents had descended on the multimillion-dollar home Tobin shares with his wife and some of their six children in Hancock Park, a moneyed Los Angeles enclave. Warrant in hand, the agents searched the French chateau-style mansion for financial records and other evidence to nail Tobin, the suspected ringleader of a stock scam that defrauded investors of millions of dollars. The raid imploded Tobin’s very comfortable life. Faced with the prospect of years in prison and a seven-figure...

Biden is currently mulling a third run for the presidency and is topping the large 2020 field, leading the polls with 29.2% of Democratic support according to Real Clear Politics average of polls. However, despite the potential fallout for the Democratic frontrunner, it wasn’t enough to earn coverage on CNN or MSNBC. In the five hours of programming that aired since Flores’s op-ed was published, the liberal cable outlets failed to allot any time to report the Biden news.

When I was eighteen, I won a scholarship to the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. I wanted to go. My dad refused to send me to a "fruit school," as he called it. Years later, after wasting thousands of his dollars by dropping out of ASU (because I didn't go to class—a fact I'm not proud of) we had another moment to talk about what went wrong. I asked him again why he didn't want me to go to Roosevelt and he repeated, "That's a school for fruits." I looked at him and said, "Dad, when...

The U.S. college admissions scandal that erupted this week has triggered private litigation accusing rich, well-connected parents of buying spots for their children at prestigious schools, and keeping children of less wealthy parents out. A $500 billion civil lawsuit filed by a parent on Wednesday in San Francisco accused 45 defendants of defrauding and inflicting emotional distress on everyone whose "rights to a fair chance at entrance to college" were stolen through their alleged conspiracy. In the largest known college admissions scandal in U.S. history, federal prosecutors on Tuesday said a California company made about $25 million by charging parents...

The Evening Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an actress. – Everyone should watch this video. Trust me, just watch it. It’ll be the best 23 minutes you invest this week. I’m going to keep this pinned at the top of each piece I post for the next few days in order to maximize its – and her – exposure. This college admissions bribery scandal is just fascinating to me. Here you have a bunch of mainly-white, mainly-liberal wealthy people using their status and money to buy their kids’ way into some of the Ivy League...

A college entrance exam policy that was meant to help students with disabilities was exploited to enable cheating in an explosive school admission scandal. At least 50 people - including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin - were charged with cheating on admission tests and bribing coaches in what's being described as the biggest school admissions scandal ever prosecuted by federal authorities. In the scandal parents had their children 'purport to having learning disabilities' so they could get medical documentation for it and take advantage of the College Board's special accommodations for students with disabilities. With medical proof, those students...

Hollywood elites are, by definition, in the business of concocting fictional stories. Is it any surprise that they apply these skill sets beyond screen and stage entertainment, where the fiction is acknowledged, and use them to achieve their objectives in realms affecting their personal and political lives? In both the college admissions scandal and the alleged hate crime fraud masterminded (I use the term very loosely) by Jussie Smollett, I find five other common points in addition to the first point of employing fiction: Two: Powerful people from powerful families with no concern for issues of right and wrong tried...

A college tennis coach who also served as the personal instructor for former first lady Michelle Obama and her daughter, Malia, was among the 46 people charged by federal authorities in a sweeping college admissions bribery case announced Tuesday. According to the indictment unsealed Tuesday by federal prosecutors in Massachusetts, Gordon Ernst, the women’s tennis coach at the University of Rhode Island, is accused of conspiracy to commit racketeering during the years he served as a tennis coach at Georgetown University. There is no suggestion that Malia, a sophomore at Harvard, was implicated in the scandal in any way. Between...

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has been at the center of controversy all week on Capitol Hill, said Friday that a perceived criticism she gave of former President Barack Obama was the result of a reporter distorting her words. n an interview Omar gave to POLITICO Magazine, the freshman Democrat said while it is right to criticize President Donald Trump and the policies of his administration, she also feels that there are "ways that our Democratic leaders have conducted themselves within the system is not one that we are all proud of." "You know I will talk about the family...

he political operative at the center of an election fraud scandal that has engulfed a North Carolina congressional race was arrested Wednesday on charges of illegal ballot handling and conspiracy. Four people working for him were also charged. Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr., 63, was accused of directing workers to collect and mail in other people's absentee ballots during the 2018 Republican congressional primary and the 2016 general election. It is against the law in North Carolina for anyone other than the voter or a close relative to handle a mail-in ballot.

Finance titan John Havens, Citigroup Inc.’s former president and chief operating officer, was also charged in connection with the sting, cops said. “We are working in conjunction with numerous jurisdictions and local agencies to try to arrest all subjects we have active charges on,” Vero Beach Police Public information Officer Bradley Kmetz told Bloomberg. “We encourage people who have active arrest warrants to turn themselves in,” he said.

The brother of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' girlfriend, former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez, criticized the tech billionaire's decision to try to preempt the National Enquirer's scoop on their affair. Michael Sanchez told Fox News' "MediaBuzz" Sunday that he had been negotiating with the Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., to soften a forthcoming story on the couple's extramarital affair when Bezos' longtime security adviser Gavin de Becker "launched World War III against AMI" by advising Bezos to undermine the scoop with what Sanchez called a "misleading" tweet about Bezos' divorce from wife MacKenzie. "Everything that Gavin has advised...

Scandal-scarred celebrity chef Mario Batali will not be charged for alleged sex attacks on two women, sources told The Post.

A man’s body was found early Monday in the West Hollywood home of prominent Democratic donor Ed Buck, authorities said. Deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s West Hollywood station responded to the Laurel Avenue apartment complex at 1:05 a.m. in response to a report of a person not breathing, the department said in a statement. At some point, the 911 caller performed CPR, the department said. Paramedics pronounced a man dead at the scene. The cause of death was not yet known. The dead man’s name has not been released, but Nicole Nishida, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s...