Free Republic

FBI Director Kash Patel is planning to visit Russia later this year, likely in mid-October, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the situation. It would be an unusual and sensitive trip for an FBI chief to one of America’s top adversaries. The plans come as Washington and Moscow continue to be at odds over the war in Ukraine, with U.S. lawmakers demanding the imposition of heavy new sanctions on Russia. Patel has a history of involvement in controversial Russia-related matters dating to President Donald Trump’s first term, including trying to cast doubt on investigations into whether...

Arizona state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, an election attorney, is projected to defeat former state GOP chair Gina Swoboda in the Republican primary to take on Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) in November, according to Decision Desk HQ. Kolodin is best known for his efforts to contest the 2020 election results, with the State Bar of Arizona ultimately sanctioning him over the move. In 2023, the Arizona state House Republican supported legislation alongside most of his GOP peers in both chambers that would have given counties the ability to hand-count ballots instead of tabulating them through machines. Some Republicans have...

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who recently lost his state’s primary due in part to President Donald Trump, ripped the president’s obsession with the 2020 elections as Republicans face an uphill battle in the November midterms. Trump spent Thursday night’s primetime address railing against foreign and “deep state” interference in past U.S. elections and presenting declassified documents that he said proved his point. Critics have claimed that Trump is gearing up to interfere in the midterms and usher Republicans to victory. At the yearly Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Politico’s Jonathan Martin asked Cornyn, “Does that speech last night give you...

President Donald Trump delivered an important speech about election vulnerabilities and foreign interference on Thursday night. The liberal media did all they could to make sure that people didn't see it, with outlets like NBC, ABC, and CNN refusing to carry it live. CNN even admitted they had "executives" decide not to show it live because to show it could be "dangerous." So much for being journalists, presenting the facts, and letting the American people decide what to think of it. You have to think too; they seemed very anxious not to have people watch it. Democrats, of course, lost...

As part of President Trump’s continued push to discredit the results of the 2020 election, his administration has considered using AI technology to scrutinize tens of thousands of ballots seized in Fulton County, Georgia, ProPublica has learned. The FBI has explored using artificial intelligence to assess the validity of signatures on tens of thousands of mail-in ballot envelopes seized from Fulton County, Georgia, the latest push in the Trump administration’s unprecedented reinvestigation of the 2020 vote. The effort, according to internal communications reviewed by ProPublica and an agency tech specialist familiar with the work, focuses on comparing signatures on ballot...

FBI Director Chris Wray and former CISA Director Chris Krebs hid the extent of the enormous Iranian election security breach from the American public until last month, four years after the 2020 election. =========================================================================== In 2025, unsealed court documents completely redefined what we were told to believe about the 2020 US presidential election. The election was billed by the Democrat Party, Joe Biden, the mainstream media, and former CISA Chief Chris Krebs as the ‘most secure election’ in US history. Chris Krebs, the former CISA Director, testified before Congress on December 16, 2020, after he was fired by Donald Trump....

U.S. President Donald Trump is slated to speak on Thursday about newly declassified intelligence ​on foreign nations' plans to interfere in the U.S. election in 2020, an MS ‌Now reporter said on X, citing two unidentified White House officials. The Republican president repeatedly has claimed that he lost the 2020 vote to Democrat Joe Biden ​because of massive fraud. But numerous courts, ballot audits and his ​first-term Justice Department found no evidence no evidence of widespread ⁠fraud that could have affected the outcome. Propelled by the Trump's repeated ​claims that U.S. elections are “rigged,” the administration has for more than...

Trump DOJ has secured about two dozen noncitizen voting arrests, prosecutions or convictions in the last few months, with about another 90 more cases under investigation. A small town Kansas mayor born in Mexico. A Filipino senior citizen living in Hawaii. Two Pakistani men residing in New Jersey. An Aussie in Louisiana. And a Chinese student studying at the University of Michigan. They all have one thing in common. Each has been charged in the last year with illegally voting in U.S. federal elections as foreigners, part of a sudden wave of prosecutions led by the Trump Justice Department for...

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency is not fully cooperating with an investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the likelihood that it was caused by a laboratory accident, according to a federal watchdog. In a June letter obtained by The Post, Intelligence Community Inspector General Christopher Fox accused CIA Director John Ratcliffe of failing to provide records critical to determining whether the US government was engaged in what an agency officer recently testified was a “cover up” of the pandemic’s origins. The internal watchdog is reviewing whether a team of analysts dispatched by then-Director of National Intelligence...

Former CIA Director John Brennan sued the Justice Department and top Trump administration officials Wednesday, seeking a court order to force the preservation of records in the ongoing federal investigations targeting him. The lawsuit represents an unusual step for Brennan, a longtime political opponent of President Trump who has been the focus of two Justice Department criminal probes since the beginning of Mr. Trump's second administration. One is centered on allegations that Brennan lied to Congress in 2023 about the U.S. intelligence community's assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The second is a sprawling "grand conspiracy" probe examining...

The Supreme Court upheld states’ ability to count mail ballots postmarked by election day but arriving later, which conservatives have argued slows vote counting but liberals defend as expanding voter access.California officials and voting-rights advocates say the decision protects voters, but agreed the state needs to speed up vote counting in the future. California officials cheered a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday that allows states to continue counting mail ballots postmarked by election day but received in the days after — calling it a win for voter participation and access, including in the upcoming November midterm.They also acknowledged delays in...

District Clerk April Keys allegedly tore up ballots and helped smuggle them out of her office to help board president Victor Pratt win his reelection campaign for the Hempstead Union Free School District on Long Island. Keys was allegedly caught on surveillance throwing the ripped-up ballots into the dumpster. She also allegedly gave Pratt, a local DJ, absentee ballots to get rid of, a district petition filed to the Education Department said, according to the New York Post.

How just 7% of voters, mostly young and white, led Mamdani’s NYC socialist election surge Zo’s red wedding was small, but a bloodbath nonetheless. Just 7% of active voters supported Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s radical ally Darializa Avila Chevalier over establishment Democrat Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s main event primary, data shows. The overall low turnout — roughly 17% of Democratic voters citywide — came as Avila Chevalier and two other Mamdani-backed House primary winners captured a mix of high-earning, young, white and black voters, analysts found. Insiders also credited the Democratic Socialists of America’s formidable field operations for turning out...

Spencer Pratt has clapped back after Jimmy Kimmel roasted him for being beaten in the Los Angeles mayor’s race. During his monologue Tuesday night the TV host mocked claims the election was “rigged” and brought up the former reality TV star’s previous comments he would leave the city if he lost. “I know things might be tight right now, especially with the out-of-state donation money running out,” Kimmel said during his monologue. Moving is expensive, so to help you out we rented you a U-Haul. Our staff spent the whole day decorating for you, and everybody will notice you and...

Karen Bass and Nithya Raman are now the projected winners in the primary for the Los Angeles mayoral race and will likely face each other in November’s runoff as reality television star Spencer Pratt falls to third place. Decision Desk HQ called the race for Nithya Raman to secure the number two spot behind incumbent Karen Bass on Sunday, with roughly 87 percent of the votes in. Bass earned 34.68 percent while Raman won 27.12 percent. Spencer Pratt earned 26.69 percent of the vote and had been in the lead ahead of Nithya Raman since election night; his lead over...

A visibly agitated President Trump stormed off his interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” after a testy exchange with a reporter who grilled him over his claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Trump lashed out at moderator Kristen Welker after she insisted he failed to provide a shred of evidence about his disputed accusations that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him or that the elections in California are subject to malfeasance.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt’s lead over Nithya Raman continued to shrink Friday with the latest ballot drop. Councilwoman Raman scored a major boost, cutting Pratt’s lead by about 13,000 votes from Thursday’s drop. Mayor Karen Bass remained in first place at 35% of the vote, while Pratt held onto second with 28.4% of the vote, down from 29.35% on Thursday. Pratt added just 10,651 votes in the latest count. Raman, meanwhile, surged from 23.42% to 24.89%, picking up 23,115 votes. The latest results keep Raman within striking distance as hundreds of thousands of ballots remain uncounted. 71% of...

The Republican National Committee celebrated a recent court ruling Wednesday that determined the North Carolina state board of elections violated the state constitution by allowing non-residents to vote in federal elections. The Wake County Superior Court sided with the RNC in the ruling Tuesday after the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled last year that people who have never lived in the state cannot vote in state elections. The state stopped nonresidents from voting in state elections in the wake of the state Supreme Court ruling, but did not change its policies when it came to federal elections. “This is a...

Just before writing this piece, I saw Gary Oldman in a London production of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. For those unfamiliar, the play revolves around an old man listening to a series of tapes recorded by himself when he was younger, musing pompously on his hopes and dreams for the future. In his present, desiccated state, he can only scoff at his middle-aged self, before being overcome by the pathetic realization that it is all up for him and that he is doomed to a miserable, unhappy future. It is hard to think of ten people who will want...

Hunter Biden and Candace Owens may be the strangest political media pairing of the week. Owens announced that Hunter will appear on her show Thursday, posting a promo image of the two together and setting off immediate reactions across the political world. The preview clip contains the line everyone is already talking about. Hunter looks across at Owens and acknowledges what she has called him for years. Washington Examiner reported on the upcoming interview and the subjects previewed for the episode. Owens is expected to sit down with Hunter Biden for a wide-ranging interview on The Candace Owens Show. The...