Free Republic

Twelve years ago, FBI agents in Baltimore sought to wiretap former Brookings Institution analyst Igor Danchenko on suspicions he was spying for Russia. But the counterintelligence analyst they were assigned to work with ‒ Brian Auten ‒ told them he could not find their target and assumed the Russian national had fled back to Moscow. But Danchenko had not left the U.S., court documents show. He was living in the Washington area. In fact, he had been arrested in Maryland in 2013 by federal Park Police for being drunk and disorderly, something the FBI analyst could have easily discovered by...

An American businessman arrested in Communist China over a decade on apparently flimsy charges of drug trafficking will be put to death, Chinese government officials have announced. Mark Swidan, a Houston, Texas businessman, was arrested in November 2012 and sentenced to death in 2018 on charges he was in China to smuggle illegal drugs. John Kamm, chairman of the Dui Hua human rights foundation, tells Newsweek “the only ‘evidence’ against him is that Swidan once visited a factory where Chinese authorities allege the meth was manufactured, and that he had been in a room rented by another person where drugs...

The billionaire founder of Craigslist, Craig Newmark, is using his fortune to further shape journalism into partisan activism to help Democrats win elections. He is the nation’s leading financier of the “mis”- and “disinformation” industries and is now the largest private stakeholder in America’s legacy journalism schools. The most recent Twitter Files released by Matt Taibbi add a deeply disturbing new layer to the story. They show Newmark is at the very heart of an incestuous web of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and corporate media institutions operating in concert to censor political opponents on social media. Newmark is financing the...

Almost everyone so far has provided worthless hearsay as did Fiona Hill who left by July 19th before the phone call, but Morrison was listening in on the phone call and said he heard nothing illegal and declated in testimony along with Volker there was Quid Pro Quo, bribery or extortion. She though appears to have lied through her teeth as even left-wing publications like Politico and others have confirmed Ukraine's role in 2016 election interference despite her attempts today to downplay their role. At the very least she would have blatantly and shamelessly provided a False Choice if both...

LEARNING MORE FACTS ABOUT THE FALSE TRUMP-RUSSIA-COLLUSION. HERE ARE THE BASICS:The latest: The Trial of Igor Danchenko, Christopher Steele’s source for his dirty dossier against then-candidate Trump.Why is this important? We are learning more on how government employees (FBI, DOJ) worked with a political party (the Democrats) to destroy their political opponents, i.e., Trump and his allies. Most probably, the Democrats and government employees who participated in this scam will get away with it, but at least Americans are going to know how they did it.

The reelection of President Barack Obama and the convening of China’s 18th National Congress marks a new era for U.S.-China relations. On November 29, the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy hosted Jeffrey Bader for a public forum to discuss these and related issues facing the Obama and Xi administrations. Bader is the John C. Whitehead senior fellow in international diplomacy at the Brookings Institution. He served as senior director for East Asian affairs on the National Security Council during President Obama’s first term, and is the author of Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asian Strategy. In...

Ukraine is losing and will lose its war with Russia. For Moscow not to lose the peace, it is unfortunately the case that a rump Ukraine may no longer provide in Russian eyes the security from the NATO/Ukraine threat it understandably (to some) seeks. Time is running out to avert a larger, truly Ukraine-wide war carried successfully by Moscow into the country’s more anti-Russian western regions and Kiev, putting an end to the Ukrainian state in lieu of NATO military intervention. However, a Russian-occupied Ukraine will simmer with partisan warfare and neofascist terrorism for some time, leaving the risk of...

President Trump’s words and actions Monday – railing against “weak” governors and mayors, then holding a Bible outside a historic church near the White House – may have marked “the beginning of the end” of American democracy, a retired four-star Marine Corps general writes in an op-ed article. “The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020,” John Allen, who served as a special envoy for the global alliance against ISIS under former President Barack Obama and now heads the Brookings Institution think tank, writes in Foreign Policy magazine. “Remember the date. It...

Special Counsel John Durham’s prosecution of Igor Danchenko, the Russian national who served as Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source, will soon heat up—maybe as early as next week, if prosecutors are wise and return to the grand jury to obtain the documents the Hillary Clinton campaign wrongfully withheld based on attorney-client privilege. Those documents will likely reveal Fusion GPS peddled Danchenko’s lies directly to reporters. The jury’s acquittal of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann after less than a day of deliberations represented a setback to Durham’s three-year investigation of the Russia collusion hoax. Americans nonetheless learned much from the prosecution,...

Retired four-star Marine Gen. John Allen, is on administrative leave from his role as president of the Brookings Institute D.C. think tank after the FBI seized his electronic data on suspicion of lying to investigators and withholding evidence about his role in secretly lobbying for the government of Qatar. As a general, he commanded all U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan in the Obama administration. The court records, which were unsealed Tuesday, are the latest public evidence showing the FBI and Justice Department are conducting a large-scale investigation into the stateside influence of wealthy Arab nations including Qatar, Saudi Arabia...

host of foreign policy “experts” are now explicitly calling for “regime change” in Russia following Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine. Reminiscent of the establishment’s failed calls for regime change in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, whose military conflicts cost countless American lives and resources, the sentiment appears to be at odds with the majority of the country. Nearly three-quarters of Americans oppose playing a major role in the unfolding conflict.Benjamin Wittes, a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, epitomized the establishment’s ultimate policy goal for Russia in a recent tweet: “Regime change: Russia.”

A church in southwest Oregon is suing the city where it's located over a strange new local ordinance that limits the number of times per week the institution can serve free meals to needy residents. What are the details? St. Timothy's Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Brookings, Oregon, last week, arguing the city violated the church's constitutional right to religious expression by barring it from serving the community, NPR reported. For more than 75 years, the church has been serving its local community, often by providing services to people...

"Oh, Fiona!" Take the quotes in the “anonymous” op-ed and run a search. You’ll find her there. Offered as food for thought but the author makes a compelling argument.

It did not seem possible for the Steele dossier – the collection of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories funded by the Clinton campaign; hyped by the US media establishment; and tapped by the FBI for surveillance and investigative leads – to get more embarrassing for all of those involved. But the indictment by Special Counsel John Durham of Steele's key source, Igor Danchenko, offers 39 pages of new evidence that Russiagate — after five years of failed innuendo, debunked “bombshells”, and humiliating revelations — has no rock bottom. Danchenko is accused of making false statements to the FBI about his role in...

In April 2021, the Brookings Institution publicly confirmed that Special Counsel John Durham had subpoenaed records from the D.C.-based left-wing think tank in December 2020. The friendly reporters at Time magazine framed the subpoena as limited to the decades-old employment record of former Brookings staffer Igor Danchenko. Last week’s indictment of Danchenko, however, provides a perfect reminder that Brookings was ground zero for the Russia collusion hoax, with many key staff embroiled in the damaging lie that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election.

Special Counsel John Durham’s indictment of researcher Igor Danchenko yesterday brought many powerful leftists into the spotlight. Impeachment witness Fiona Hill was involved in bringing the right people together. Christopher Steele has long been credited with creating his infamous dossier but may have only been a front to distance Hillary Clinton’s campaign from the whole mess. Now we know a primary ringleader in the creation and subsequent use of the dossier. Charles Dolan, Jr., a PR consultant for the Clinton campaign, is the person referred to as “PR Executive-1” in the indictment. Fox News host Jesse Waters, sitting in for...

The nation argued for five years over the infamous “Steele dossier,” the document on which the Federal Bureau of Investigation relied to investigate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. It should have been called the Clinton dossier. Special counsel John Durham this week obtained an indictment of Igor Danchenko, a Russian who provided information for the dossier. ---SNIP--- Never forget the original claim. According to the FBI, Democrats and the media, Mr. Trump harbored secret and nefarious ties with Russia. We knew that because—as Mother Jones explained in a 2016 article that became the reigning story line— Christopher Steele was a “credible...

Inequality in employment, education and earnings has cost the U.S. economy nearly $22.9 trillion over the past 30 years, a sum that is likely to increase as minority populations expand, according to a new paper from economists including Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly. “The opportunity to participate in the economy and to succeed based on ability and effort is at the foundation of our nation and our economy,” the authors wrote. “Unfortunately, structural barriers have persistently disrupted this narrative for many Americans, leaving the talents of millions of people underutilized or on the sidelines. The result...

Biden to sign executive order reestablishing White House faith officeThe order reappoints Melissa Rogers, who headed the office under President Barack Obama.WASHINGTON (RNS) — President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Sunday (Feb. 14) reestablishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, undoing former President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape an agency that went largely unstaffed for most of his tenure.In a statement accompanying the announcement of the executive order, Biden echoed his recent remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast, bemoaning widespread physical and economic suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic, racism and climate...

If, as expected, Mitt Romney wins his race for a Senate seat from Utah he may become the most powerful man in the United States Senate. As many of us remember, Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, ran for president in 2012 and lost to Barack Obama. It wasn’t one of those totally humiliating losses—the map did not turn blue—but we assumed Mitt Romney would fade into history. Well, maybe not. The seat will remain Republican-held for President Trump come January of 2019, but this one could very well turn out to be the swing vote in the Senate. If Democrats...