Free Republic

A former CIA senior officer with top secret-level clearance has been accused of secretly stashing [$40] millions of dollars in gold bars in his home that he said he needed for “work-related expenses,” according to court documents...David Rush, who held a management position, was charged with criminal theft of public money in a complaint filed in the Eastern District of Virginia. He was also accused of lying to his employers about his background for nearly two decades. [snip]“After a CIA internal investigation identified potential violations of the law, CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred the information to the FBI for a...

A fascinating piece by Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal [July 2] with the title: “How a Secret, Failed Trip to Chechnya Turned Key Plotter’s Focus to America and bin Laden.” The key plotter in this case was 9/11 mastermind and bin Laden’s Egyptian lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The article’s title suggests that Zawahiri’s failure to settle in Chechnya (due to his “detention” by the KGB/FSB in 1996-97) led him to Afghanistan and an alliance with bin Laden. But according to ranking U.S. terrorism expert, Yossef Bodansky, Egyptian Jihad leader Zawahiri was preparing a massive...

“The issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution,” said the late David Horowitz, quoting a 1960s rebel. The Palestinian conflict, the climate, transgenderism, immigration, and abortion are all proximate causes for protests and now terrorism. But they are all also part of an amalgamated “omnicause” whose real purpose is to bring down the United States and the West. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk and other recent tragedies that are rightly garnering worldwide attention, our leaders have finally woken up and are looking into who the perpetrators are and who organizes and finances them. After Kirk’s death,...

US Attorney Pirro @USAttyPirro·16h John Rogers spent years secretly funneling sensitive Federal Reserve information to Chinese spies, then looked investigators in the eye and lied about it. And when that wasn’t enough, he lied again under oath at trial. Federal Reserve employees entrusted with America’s most sensitive economic information cannot sell out their country and their colleagues for personal gain and then expect to hide behind a single word. U.S. Attorney DC @USAO_DC John Harold Rogers, 64, a former senior adviser for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (FRB), was sentenced today in to 38 months in federal prison in...

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...

At the beginning of the Cold War, the Soviet Union bugged the U.S. Embassy with one of the most ingenious devices ever created. In the summer of 1952, an attaché at the American Embassy in Moscow was idly tuning his shortwave radio, searching for a broadcast from Washington. As he slowly turned the dial, a voice suddenly emerged from the static—a voice he knew all too well. It belonged to his superior, Ambassador George Kennan. At first, he assumed it was a recording. Then his blood ran cold. What he was hearing was not a broadcast at all. It was...

Foreign intelligence services are using "spy turtles" and "spy fish" to snoop on China, the country's Ministry of State Security said Friday. "An unseen covert war of espionage is currently unfolding" in the seas around China's coast, the ministry wrote in a post on the WeChat social media platform. In recent years, overseas spy agencies have been "continuously collecting and stealing sensitive maritime data through various new types of espionage equipment," it said, including "spy turtles and spy fish." In certain Chinese waters, "relatively large living marine animals have been fitted with sensors to swim in specific areas, collect ocean...

The Supreme Court just issued a unanimous ruling, and the case behind it has everything: Twitter, Saudi dissidents, federal prosecutors, and a fake invoice. The decision came down June 11, 2026, in Abouammo v. United States, No. 25-5146. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for a 9-0 Court, reversing the Ninth Circuit and sending the case back. Legal reporter Katie Buehler summed up the ruling this way: The defendant is Ahmad Abouammo, a former Twitter employee accused of giving confidential information about Saudi dissidents to a high-level Saudi official. According to the Court, the Saudi official wired Abouammo $300,000. Later, after Abouammo...

The Justice Department has charged two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia, The Washington Post reports. U.S. citizen Ahmad Abouammo on Tuesday was arrested for allegedly spying on the accounts of three users on behalf of the kingdom. Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen, was charged on Wednesday with accessing the personal information of more than 6,000 Twitter accounts in 2015 on behalf of Riyadh. One of the accounts Alzabarah allegedly hacked belonged to Omar Abdulaziz, a known critic of Saudi Arabia, who later became friends with Jamal Khashoggi, The Washington Post columnist that was killed by the Saudi...

A Chinese tracking device was discovered in the Prime Minister's official car, MPs were told yesterday. The bug is believed to have been found in a sealed part of the vehicle imported from China. Its discovery during a sweep first emerged in 2023, sparking fears that Beijing was aggressively spying on ministers in the then-Conservative government. Now it has been revealed that the device was in fact found in the Prime Minister's car the previous year. Charles Parton, of think-tank the Council on Geostrategy, told the Commons Business and Trade Committee yesterday: 'The prime minister's car in 2022 was emanating...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called out “incompetent communists” who are in charge of the Cuban government, as the United States is eyeing possible intervention regarding the island nation just off the coast of Florida. The country is facing nearly all-day electricity blackouts, as CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Cuba earlier this month to meet with officials. There are also concerns about Cuba possibly wanting to act against the U.S. with military drones, according to Axios. “Cuba’s in a lot of trouble because, unfortunately for them, it’s run by a bunch of incompetent communists,” Rubio said. “Being a communist...

Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful@kevinolearytvWe uncovered something far bigger than I ever expected. After seeing coordinated false attacks against the Utah data center project, we brought in an advanced data science team to trace where the content was coming from and the results were shocking. What we found led back to organized networks, political activist groups, and funding trails tied to massive international entities. We dug through IRS 990 filings, tracked IP data from around the world, and uncovered what appears to be a coordinated campaign targeting energy and data center projects across multiple regions.I shared 90 pages of evidence...

President Donald Trump struck a conciliatory tone during his trip to China. He returned from his Beijing summit with Xi Jinping yesterday full of praise for the “great leader,” who is, in Trump’s estimations, “an incredible guy.” The summit was “very successful, world-renowned, and unforgettable,” according to the President, who insisted that “a lot of different problems were settled.” But there’s one problem that hasn’t been addressed: the growing number of Chinese operations on US soil. Last week Eileen Wang, the mayor of the southern Californian city of Arcadia agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent of...

A New York man was convicted Wednesday of helping operate a secret Chinese government-linked police station in Manhattan used to monitor dissidents, federal prosecutors said. Lu Jianwang, 64, a U.S. citizen also known as "Harry Lu" from the Bronx, was convicted by a jury on two counts related to operating an overseas police station in New York City on behalf of China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS), as well as obstruction of justice for destroying evidence. According to prosecutors, Lu and his co-defendant, Chen Jinping, acted as illegal agents of the Chinese government beginning in 2022 and established what authorities...

The FBI is offering a $200,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension and prosecution of Monica Witt, a former U.S. service member and counterintelligence agent.Witt was indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia in February 2019 on charges of espionage, including transmitting national defense information to the government of Iran.Witt, a former active-duty U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist and special agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, served in the military between 1997 and 2008 before working as a U.S. government contractor until 2010. FBI Washington Field Office Announces $200,000 Reward for Information...

Full Title: Ex-Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne says he got 'fishy' orders from Peter Strzok; former acting AG unsure of claims Overstock founder and CEO Patrick Byrne, who resigned Thursday amid ties to a government probe related to the 2016 election, claimed he received "fishy" orders from former FBI official Peter Strzok. Byrne said Thursday on "The Story" he'd helped the federal government with investigations twice in the past, including to "help them take down people on Wall Street." Several years after Byrne's last contact with the government, he said FBI officials reached out to him in 2016.

A married mom who vanished last year may be tied to a string of mysterious deaths and disappearances of US scientists and military officials with access to potentially sensitive information, according to a report. Melissa Casias, who worked with her husband as an administrative assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory [LANL] — famous for developing nuclear weapons during the Manhattan Project — has not been seen since she dropped lunch off for her daughter in New Mexico last summer. She is one of four high-clearance people who have died or gone missing since June 2025 with connections to UFO-linked retired...

No link yet as John Solomon is just now announcing it on RAV...

A disgraced FBI official tipped off a Chinese company about a criminal investigation while Hunter Biden was pursuing lucrative deals with the CCP-linked business. The since-convicted FBI official who led counterintelligence efforts in New York leaked information to an affiliate of a Chinese company which was linked to Hunter Biden’s business efforts, according to a DOJ watchdog who concluded the leak tipped the Chinese conglomerate off about the bureau’s criminal investigation.Charles McGonigal, the former special-agent-in-charge of the FBI Counterintelligence Division in New York, leaked information to “Person B” – an unnamed businessman who worked for the Chinese energy conglomerate...

The New York Times Sept. 4 feature on Tim Kaine1, shows that his year in Honduras introduced him not to Jesus Christ, but to Karl Marx. The story doesn't say that, exactly, but connect the dots with a little history, and an alarming picture emerges of Kaine's adventures with radicals and revolutionaries in 1980s Latin America. The Times notes that in Honduras: “Mr. Kaine embraced an interpretation of the gospel, known as liberation theology...” This wasn't mainstream “Catholic thought” at the time. It was a radical, Marxist-based ideology at odds with the Church, the pope, and the United States, but...