Free Republic

AT A MINUTE before 5 a.m. on April 27, ABC News’ James Gordon Meek fired off a tweet with a single word: “FACTS.” The network’s national-security investigative producer was responding to former CIA agent Marc Polymeropoulos’ take that the Ukrainian military — with assistance from the U.S. — was thriving against Russian forces. Polymeropoulos’ tweet — filled with acronyms indecipherable to the layperson, like “TTPs,” “UW,” and “EW” — was itself a reply to a missive from Washington Post Pentagon reporter Dan Lamothe, who noted the wealth of information the U.S. military had gathered about Russian ops by observing their...

The Biden administration is taking seriously a string of recent threats and sanctions from Iran against Trump administration officials around the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 3, 2020 strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Iran’s actions may indicate Iran is plotting to assassinate the officials. On Saturday, Iran announced sanctions against 51 Americans, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley as well as several individuals who worked with the Trump administration, like former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and private military contractor Erik Prince. While sanctions typically yield economic punishment, current and former U.S. officials...

The FBI admitted this weekend to The New York Times that they had informants and operatives inside groups attending the January 6 rallies in Washington DC. The FBI finally admitted they infiltrated the Jan. 6 rallies with informants. In fact, one of the first “protesters” inside the US Capitol was an FBI informant. We all already knew this was happening as TGP reported back in June when we reported that the FBI was recruiting former service members to work for them infiltrating conservative groups attending the January 6 protests in Washington DC. And now the FBI is investigating the US...

On the second night of his visit to Kyiv, Erik Prince had a dinner date on his agenda. A few of his Ukrainian associates had arranged to meet the American billionaire at the Vodka Grill that evening, Feb. 23, 2020. The choice of venue seemed unusual. The Vodka Grill, a since-defunct nightclub next to a KFC franchise in a rough part of town, rarely saw patrons as powerful as Prince. As the party got seated inside a private karaoke room on the second floor, Igor Novikov, who was then a top adviser to Ukraine’s President, remembers feeling a little nervous....

President Trump plans to assign a New York billionaire to lead a broad review of American intelligence agencies, according to administration officials, an effort that members of the intelligence community fear could curtail their independence and reduce the flow of information that contradicts the president’s worldview. The possible role for Stephen A. Feinberg, a co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, has met fierce resistance among intelligence officials already on edge because of the criticism the intelligence community has received from Mr. Trump during the campaign and since he became president. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump blamed leaks from the intelligence community for...

On December 22, President Trump issued 15 pardons. Among those pardoned were Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard. If the names are unfamiliar, you might recognize them collectively as the Blackwater private contractors. In September 2007, these former veterans ended up in a shootout in Nisour Square, Baghdad, that left 17 Iraqis dead and 20 wounded. Slatten got life in prison; the other men each got 30 years. The left would like to see them continue to rot in jail, but President Trump made the right decision to let them go. I have to admit that, for...

When news broke that Mohammed Kinani's son’s killers, Blackwater private military contractors hired by the U.S. government in Baghdad, were pardoned Wednesday by President Trump, Kinani said it was like losing his 9-year-old boy all over again. "I don't know what I did to Blackwater,” Kinani told ABC News. "Did I know Blackwater before? No. Why did this happen to me?" President Donald Trump pardoned four private military contractors who were found guilty for murdering 17 Iraqi citizens, including two children, in an attack that also left over 20 injured. The decision was praised by the contractors' lawyers but has...

President Donald Trump has pardoned four Blackwater security guards who were given lengthy prison sentences for killing 14 civilians in Baghdad in 2007, a massacre that caused international uproar over the use of private contractors in war zones. The four – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten – were part of an armoured convoy that opened fire indiscriminately with machine-guns and grenade launchers on a crowd of unarmed people in the Iraqi capital. Known as the Nisour Square massacre, the slaughter was seen as a low point in the conflict in Iraq. In 2014, Slough, Liberty and...

Right Side Broadcasting Network interviews and event speakers starts at 3 p.m. Trump is supposed to be on at about 7 p.m. Any FReepers at the rally should check in here!

The Doobie Brothers play Black Water in isolation- still sound great after 40 years! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZLY2ht9iBM

The Doobie Brothers come together virtually to perform 1974’s “Black Water” Directed by Rob Arthur

When you need some mellowing...

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A much-loved musician who for years was part of the famed rock act the Doobie Brothers has died. Michael Hossack died Monday at his home in Dubois, Wyo., according to friends and family. He was 65 years old. Hossack had battled cancer and finally succumbed to the disease with family by his side. Known to friends as “Big Mike,” Hossack had local connections, having lived for many years in Lake County, where his children attended school. Hossack was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on Oct. 17, 1946, and began playing the drums at age 12, according...

Keith Knudsen, a drummer for the Doobie Brothers since 1974, died of pneumonia Tuesday. He was 56. Knudsen, who lived in Sonoma County's wine country, had been hospitalized for more than a month. He died at Kentfield Rehabilitation Hospital at about 12:30 p.m., according to the band's longtime manager Bruce Cohn. "I just saw him Sunday, just before the Super Bowl," Cohn said. "He was in good spirits. He was weak, but he was OK." Knudsen, who said he began drumming in eighth grade, joined the classic rock band in 1974 after he met Cohn, who told him the Doobies...

Universities in the United States reported $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed gifts and contracts from foreign sources as a result of an investigation by the Department of Education. Federal law requires universities to disclose substantial foreign gifts and contracts to the Department of Education (DOE) twice a year. Many have for years failed to do so, while others have underreported. After the department opened an investigation into the matter in 2019, 60 schools that had never complied with the law disclosed $350 million in previously unreported foreign funds, according to a report (pdf) released by the DOE on Oct. 20....

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents. One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly...

Convicted child sex offender George Nader visited the White House at least 13 times to meet with President Trump’s then-chief strategist Steve Bannon, records indicate, raising questions about possible gaps in security and judgment. Nader first visited Bannon in the White House in February 2017. His dozen subsequent visits stretched through August, when Bannon was fired after seven months on the job. It's unclear if Nader visited the White House after Bannon left. The Lebanese American businessman, a past consultant for military contractor Blackwater, was known for his links to Saudi and Emirati leaders and secured a $100,000 speaking fee...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, December 3, 2019 California CEO and Seven Others Charged in Multi-Million Dollar Conduit Campaign Contribution Case Earlier today, an indictment was unsealed against the CEO of an online payment processing company, and seven others, charging them with conspiring to make and conceal conduit and excessive campaign contributions, and related offenses, during the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and thereafter.Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Assistant Director in Charge Timothy R. Slater of the FBI’s Washington Field Office made the announcement.A federal...

A key witness in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election has been indicted with seven others on charges of conspiring to funnel more than $3 million in illegal foreign campaign contributions for that year’s elections, the Justice Department announced. George Nader, an adviser to the United Arab Emirates who acted as an intermediary for members of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign seeking to forge contacts in the Middle East, was charged with conspiring to make conduit campaign contributions and related offenses in a 53-count indictment unsealed Tuesday in Washington, prosecutors said.

Well, this is certainly an odd coincidence! In fact, when you dig in, you find an amazing series of coincidences. If you believe in coincidences when the CIA is involved, that is. Mitt Romney’s national security advisor in his 2012 campaign -- a career CIA spook who rose to its top levels -- sits on the board of directors of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company that formerly paid Hunter Biden $50k a month despite his complete lack of credentials or qualifications. And it also an odd coincidence that Mitt has as CNN puts it “been a lone Republican voice expressing...