Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump plans to announce at the Libertarian National Convention on Saturday that he intends to commute "Silk Road" website operator Ross Ulbricht's life in prison sentence, according to a source familiar with the matter. Ulbricht was sentenced to life in federal prison in 2015 for creating and operating a hidden website known as the "Silk Road" that people used to buy and sell drugs, among other illegal goods and services. Many libertarians have called for Ulbricht's release. At the convention on Saturday, the crowd was filled with "free Ross" signs and took up chants in...

Dr. Gal Luft, the Israeli whistleblower who has been on the run since April, detailed his bribery allegations against the Biden family in an extraordinary new video obtained by the New York Post. As American Greatness previously reported, Luft was arrested on weapon trafficking and other charges in Cyprus last February and disappeared after he was let out on bail. After his arrest, the former Israeli army officer tweeted that the Biden administration was out to “bury” him.The Biden Department of Justice had Luft, the founder and executive director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS),...

In March 2018, Barack Obama’s former Secretary of State, John Kerry was caught secretly meeting with Iranian officials to salvage Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Kerry was working against the Trump administration to salvage Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal that funded terrorism across the Middle East. Obama’s former Secretary of State was seen dining with several Iranian regime officials. The above photo was taken as Kerry left the restaurant in Paris. Around this time, President Trump withdrew from the sham Iranian nuclear deal. President Trump knew the deal with the Iranian mullahs was not working. John Kerry reportedly told the Iranian officials...

We already know that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was completely unjustified and unnecessary for many reasons …***Now we're learning that due to a secret Obama-era program, the Presidential Information Technology Committee (PITC), there's a very good chance that the Biden Administration has had control of the originals of many, or all of the documents at issue this entire time.The PITC was created in March 2015 by Executive Order in response to an October 2014 incident in which Russian hackers breached Executive Office of the President computers. ...A 2015 Memorandum of Understanding between the members of the PITC set out the...

“Therefore, for the sake of our diplomatic effort to resolve this crisis, we believe it is vital to restore Iran’s fear that its current nuclear path will trigger the use of force against it by the United States,” the letter signed by Leon Panetta and David Petraeus read. Al Arabiya English reports now that Two former CIA directors and a handful of former senior US officials urged President Joe Biden to “restore Iran’s fear that its current nuclear path will trigger the use of force,” in a letter published Friday. “Diplomacy appears to be moving backward,” the letter read on...

The senators claimed the reason for the State Department's interference was because of ongoing negotiations related to the Obama administration's Iran nuclear deal, which former President Barack Obama signed in 2015. Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson unveiled evidence on Wednesday that former Secretary of State John Kerry's State Department "actively interfered" with the FBI's attempts to arrest people suspected of being in the United States illegally to support Iran's efforts to create weapons of mass destruction. Whistleblowers allegedly told the senators and shared unclassified documents with them that supported their claims, and showed that the Justice Department and...

Cold War games? In a throwback to the Cold War, a Russian spy ship caused a stir after unexpectedly docking in Havana on the eve of historic talks between the U.S. and Cuba. There was nothing stealthy about the arrival of the Viktor Leonov CCB-175, which was moored to a pier in Old Havana where cruise ships often dock.

Court documents showed Kandic had multiple responsibilities, including recruiting foreign fighters (ISIS photo) On January 4, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) called for worldwide targeting of Jews and Christians, which it later claimed resulted in 610 people wounded or killed in 110 attacks across 12 countries. Avril D. Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, told a Senate panel, “The threat from ISIS remains a significant counterterrorism concern,” while noting that the majority of its attacks have been carried out by “parts of ISIS that are outside of Afghanistan.” The main body of ISIS is active in Turkey,...

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. You might have learned it as a chant, a song, or a simple declaration, but this is how you learned the vowels of English. You may have wondered, why is Y so unsure of itself? Can't we just decide what it is? Why is Y a "sometimes" vowel? Because writing is not the same thing as speech. While we casually refer to letters, which are written symbols, as vowels or consonants, the concepts of vowel and consonant properly belong to the domain of speech. In general terms, a consonant is a...

Russian president Vladimir Putin over the weekend celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany with a military parade on Red Square and a series of smaller events. But while standing next to German chancellor Angela Merkel, he appeared to justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which the Soviet Union signed with the Nazi regime in 1939. “This pact made sense in terms of guaranteeing the Soviet Union’s security,” he said on Sunday (10 May). Putin noted that Moscow, in the 1930s, had tried to stop Nazi Germany, but felt isolated after Germany, France, and the UK signed the...

The Chinese operative, who was Rep. Eric Swalwell's (D-CA) personal companion and staffer, broke cover in an X-post of her sitting with a Global Times reporter nearly 10 years after her abrupt exit from the United States—shortly after the FBI warned Swalwell she was a foreign agent.“I had lunch with this lady today. Her name is Fang Fang, and U.S. media called her a ‘suspected Chinese spy,’ wrote Hu XiJin, along with the operative who became an omnipresent force in San Francisco Bay Democratic politics—with significant dalliances in the Midwest.Hu wrote that Fang Fang, who presented herself in the U.S....

The revelation that the U.S. intelligence community, under the Obama administration, sought the assistance of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Donald Trump’s associates before the 2016 election is a chilling reminder of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to protect its interests and challenge its adversaries. (The Five Eyes countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.) This bombshell, reported by a team of independent journalists, exposes a dark chapter in American political history, where foreign intelligence services were reportedly mobilized against a presidential candidate. The alleged operation against Trump...

Alaska health officials confirmed the state’s first fatal case of Alaskapox — a recently discovered viral disease. An elderly immunocompromised man from the Kenai peninsula, south of Anchorage, died while undergoing treatment in late January, the Anchorage Daily News reported. He is one of only seven reported Alaskapox infections, the Alaska Department of Public Health said in an announcement on Friday. “People should not necessarily be concerned but more aware,” said Julia Rogers, a state epidemiologist. “So we’re hoping to make clinicians more aware of what Alaskapox virus is, so that they can identify signs and symptoms.” The double-stranded-DNA virus,...

Over the last month or so pressure has been building on the Chinese government to fully comply with an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, particularly data that could link the outbreak to a lab leak – or rule it out. Anyone who really understands how the Chinese Communist Party and all of its apparatuses operate knows that there is no way full transparency will ever be achieved, but still, we must demand it.If that were the only pressure on the Chinese government, they’d ignore it just as they have for the past 18-plus months. But, based on the propaganda...

A judge unsealed identities of anonymous "John Does" in Ghislaine Maxwell litigation. Several names were of Jeffrey Epstein victims, not powerful associates. One, a subject of "intense media coverage," was allowed to remain anonymous and pursue an appeal. A judge agreed to make public the names of several "John Does" who tried to keep their identities secret in the long-running litigation between Jeffrey Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell and Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim. One of them, however — identified as "John Doe 183" in court filings — will remain anonymous despite being the subject of "intense media coverage" and was...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived a damages lawsuit against Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who in 2015 refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples because it conflicted with her Christian beliefs. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said a lower court judge erred in finding that damages claims by David Ermold and David Moore became moot, after a new state law last July excused clerks like Davis, from Rowan County, from having to sign marriage license forms. While the couple eventually did get a license, a three-judge appeals court panel said they could...

The man sitting in the back of the vehicle is wearing a light-colored shirt, a patterned tie and an air of authority. He's headed to a conference in Anaheim to give a speech and, as trees, hedges and apartment buildings flash by, he rattles off a list of accomplishments — his book, his expert witness testimony. "This has been a dream of mine," he says in the online video, referring to his speaking invitation. "You know how many people have said, 'You can't do it'?" There was every reason to doubt Rene "Boxer" Enriquez could. Enriquez, 52, is serving a...

A Plague Upon Us; the Niagara Falls Smallpox Epidemic of 1914 September 1, 2015 By Michelle Ann Kratts It must have seemed like the end of the world--the Apocalypse--when smallpox came to Niagara Falls, New York, in January of 1914. Luckily, the city pulled through...although it was quite a harrowing journey to the end. It wasn't exactly a topic I wanted to dive into after a refreshing vacation at Saranac Lake, but there it was on my desk: a dusty, decrepit scrapbook filled with tattered news clippings on one subject, smallpox. I try and imagine the person who cut these...

A young Ohio man has pleaded guilty to attempting to burn down Community Church of Chesterland in Ohio in an attempt to halt the church from hosting its Drag Queen Story Hour. Aimenn D. Penny, 20, threw two Molotov cocktails at the church on March 25 the weekend before two planned drag queen events. He is slated to be sentenced in January, and could spend up to 20 years in prison for violating the Church Arson Prevention Act with a mandatory sentence of 10 years, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The federal law was enacted in 1996 following...

The House Oversight Committee issued three subpoenas on Wednesday for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, his brother, James Biden, and a Biden family business associate, Rob Walker. These are three of the most consequential subpoenas that House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) has filed during his investigation. The subpoenas are for depositions for testimony related to the House GOP's ongoing impeachment inquiry. Hunter Biden and James Biden are centerpieces of Comer’s investigation into Biden and his family’s overseas business. Through their investigation, they have found that Hunter Biden received millions from foreign oligarchs and companies. Walker was a business...