Free Republic

Ten people involved with the highest echelon of college basketball, including four assistant coaches and a senior executive at Adidas, are facing federal bribery, fraud and other corruption charges, prosecutors in Manhattan announced on Tuesday. The United States attorney for the Southern District of New York said in a statement that since 2015 the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors have been investigating “the criminal influence of money on coaches and student-athletes who participate in intercollegiate basketball governed by the N.C.A.A.” The investigation has revealed “numerous instances” of bribes paid by athlete advisers, among others, to assistant coaches and sometimes directly to...

A former staffer for U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez testified Monday that the Democrat helped with the visa applications of friends of a wealthy doctor who faces bribery charges with him, while defense attorneys sought to show Menendez's actions were unremarkable and part of the duties of his office. Under direct questioning from the government, former senior policy adviser Mark Lopes testified Menendez emailed him in 2008 authorizing a letter of support from Menendez to be sent to consular officials regarding the visa applications of two sisters from the Dominican Republic.*snip*Earlier Monday, a vice president for American Express testified Melgen used...

Ah! Life is good. Just luxuriating poolside in a tropical setting at a four star resort while sipping on an endless supply of mai tais while munching on ceviche. All that is required is to listen to a five hour pitch. Not for time share condos. Instead this pitch is made to journalists about how and why the Electoral College can be bypassed.  This revelation about how an obviously well-funded group called the Institute for Research on Presidential Elections is providing vacations for journalists comes to us via reporter Tim Alberta of Politico Magazine.  Alberta relayed the posh pitch in Is...

For the first time in nearly four decades, a sitting US senator goes on trial Wednesday on federal bribery charges in a case that could have profound political impact. Prosecutors have laid out a strong case against New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez in their indictment. But in the two years since it was unveiled, the Supreme Court has made it much harder to win a conviction. The senator is charged with taking nearly $1 million in personal gifts and campaign cash from a longtime friend, allegedly in return for political favors.

Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader, tried to pressure the White House under President Barack Obama in an overbilling case that is now the centerpiece of the charges against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). The latest in the case against Menendez, whose trial starts Wednesday, was made public in filings in federal courts. Menendez stands accused of inappropriately using his office to help campaign donor Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist who plied Menendez with campaign cash but also expensive trips to the Caribbean and Paris. The involvement of Reid, however, was a surprise to some. Menendez enlisted Reid in November...

The upcoming bribery trial for New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez could have damaging consequences for his party whether or not he's convicted, by sidelining him from Congress just as Democrats gear up to fight the Trump agenda. The senator is now pleading with a federal judge to alter the trial schedule on certain days so he can return to Washington to vote. So far, however, the court has rejected these requests, which the Trump Justice Department has decried as a bid for "special treatment." The timing of the trial, set to begin Sept. 6, is critical. It would fall...

When Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey goes on trial on federal corruption charges in three weeks, far more than his own fate hinges on the outcome. If Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, is convicted and then expelled from the United States Senate by early January, his replacement would be picked by Gov. Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey and an ally of President Trump. That scenario — where Mr. Menendez’s interim replacement would more than likely be a Republican — would have immediate and far-reaching implications: The Republicans would be gifted a crucial extra vote just as the...

United Auto Workers (UAW) president Dennis Williams called the bribery allegations brought against the widow of a former union executive "appalling," adding that they may have led Nissan workers to reject unionization, but denied that they reflect the larger organization.In July, the Department of Justice indicted Monica Morgan, the wife of the late UAW vice president General Holiefield, and former Fiat Chrysler vice president Alphons Iacobelli for funneling $1.2 million from a worker training center to pay off Morgan's mortgage, buy luxury cars, and pay for personal travel. The indictment came just one week before the UAW held a historic...

This should enrage the American people to the point of revolution! Each day, that Mueller continues the façade of a Russian Interference Probe is another blow to the intelligence of the American people. Not only that he is destroying the dignity of the office of of the Presidency and making a sham out of our voting system. James Comey is the man who should be scrutinized by an investigation of the FBI’s part in the whole made-up Russian interference nightmare. We know he supported the Democrats using a firm they hired to dig up dirt on Trump to create a...

Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz seemingly planned to pay cyber-probe suspect and IT aide Imran Awan even while he was living in Pakistan, if the FBI hadn’t stopped him from leaving the U.S. Monday. Public statements and congressional payroll records suggest she also appears to have known that his wife, a fellow IT staffer, left the country for good months ago — while she was also a criminal suspect. In all, six months of actions reveal a decision to continue paying a man who seemingly could not have been providing services to her, and who a mountain of evidence suggests...

A Russian man wanted by the Justice Department on charges connected to hacking U.S. companies now claims the FBI offered him immunity in exchange for accepting responsibility for cyberattacks targeting former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Yevgeny Nikulin, the alleged hacker, laid the claim to Russian media Thursday in a letter sent from a Czech Republic prison cell amid an international extradition battle currently underway between Washington and Moscow. FBI agents promised Mr. Nikulin money, American citizenship and a free apartment for taking the fall over hacking Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, he alleged in a letter published Thursday by Nastoyashchoe Vremya, a...

The proposed border wall, hereafter referred to as the "Wall", is THE political issue of the century, and here's why. The Wall prevents the influx of two major items that benefit the members of government who despise and want to enslave the people. Those two things are illegal immigrants, whose offspring vote for the party who allows them in to the "promised land", and drugs, from which a lot of very wealthy business people AND government officials are getting a cut. The Democrats, many of which are nothing more than official criminals and their criminal friends are more than eager...

Companies controlled by Israeli mining magnate Beny Steinmetz sued fellow billionaire George Soros, claiming he cost them at least $10 billion through a defamation campaign that stripped them of rights to an iron ore deposit in Guinea and other business opportunities around the world. Soros funded law firms, transparency groups, investigators and government officials in Guinea in a coordinated effort to ensure BSG Resources Ltd. lost the rights to the Simandou deposit in April 2014, BSGR said in a complaint filed Friday in Manhattan federal court.

Candace Marie Claiborne, a 60-year-old employee of the U.S. Department of State, was charged Wednesday with obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI -- both felony offenses -- for allegedly concealing numerous contacts that she had over a period of years with Chinese intelligence agents, the Justice Department said Wednesday. The veteran State Department employee, who appeared before a judge Wednesday, is also accused of failing to report gifts she received from Chinese contacts. Claiborne allegedly failed to report repeated contacts with two intelligence agents of the People’s Republic of China, and the agents provided tens...

A State Department employee pleaded not guilty in court on Wednesday after being charged in an FBI investigation, the Department of Justice announced. Candace Claiborne, who worked in the Caucasus Affairs office of the State Department, is being charged for two felony offenses. Claiborne is being charged with “obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI, both felony offenses, for allegedly concealing numerous contacts that she had over a period of years with foreign intelligence agents,” a Department of Justice release said. Claiborne, who has a Top Secret security clearance, failed to disclose her foreign contacts abroad...

That alone is a newsflash. Usually, college presidents approach big government with their hands out. At the Cato Institute on March 30, 2017, Mark Zupan, president of Alfred University, noted that trust in government is at an all-time low. It currently runs at 19 percent, down from 66 in the 1960s. Dr. Zupan is the author of Inside Job: How Government Insiders Subvert the Public Interest, published this year by Cambridge University Press. "In the developed world, government now includes 50 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 28 percent of the workforce," Dr. Zupan said at Cato. He notes...

South Korea’s first female president, Park Geun-hye was arrested Friday morning in Seoul over bribery allegations which led to her impeachment and removal from office earlier this year. The Daily Caller reports: According to Reuters, Park was arrested after the Seoul Central District Court sided with prosecutors, claiming the 65-year-old former president posed a flight risk and could potentially tamper with evidence involved in the ongoing investigation. Park is accused of colluding with friend and advisor Choi Soon-sil of soliciting donations from Korean businesses, most notably Samsung, to foundations friendly to Park’s legislative agenda in exchange for political favors. The...

(WASHINGTON) -- Nine high-ranking U.S. Navy officers, including one former admiral, have been charged with trading classified information in exchange for travel, dinner and prostitution services from a foreign defense contractor -- the latest charges in the widening probe, according to the Justice Department. According to the Justice Department, the Navy officials allegedly took in expensive travel and entertainment expenses as well as prostitution services while steering contracts toward the company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA), and blocking its competitors. They allegedly used fake names and foreign email address to keep their actions secret.

Photo-enforcement firm Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. announced on Monday that it will pay $20 million to the city of Chicago to settle its high-profile bribery scandal. The Glendale, Arizona-based firm released details of its settlement agreement on the same day that its former CEO, Karen Finley of Cave Creek, is scheduled to report to prison. Finley was sentenced in November to 30 months in federal prison and pay $2 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit bribery in Illinois and Ohio. She was supposed to report to the U.S. Marshal's Office in Phoenix on January 3, but that was since...

Hillary Clinton did two huge favors for Morocco during her tenure as secretary of state while the Clinton Foundation accepted up to $28 million in donations from the country’s ruler, King Mohammed VI, according to new information obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group. Clinton and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lisa Jackson tried to shut down the Florida-based Mosaic Company in 2011, operator of America’s largest phosphate mining facility. Jackson’s close ties and loyalty to the Clintons were revealed when she joined the Clinton Foundation’s board of directors in 2013, just months after she left the EPA....