Free Republic

Infamous mercenary organization Wagner Group is feuding with the Russian military over who should get the praise for seizing control of Soledar, a town in eastern Ukraine. Russia's defense ministry said on Friday that its forces had captured the salt-mining town, killing over 700 Ukrainian troops and destroying more than 300 Ukrainian weapons systems over the past three days of battle, according to state media. Russia did not make any mention of Wagner, the paramilitary organization helping Russia fight in Ukraine. Wagner's founder Yevgeny Prigozhin wasn't happy with the apparent snub. Earlier this week, Prigozhin claimed in a statement that...

A leaked membership list suggests that Oath Keepers have infiltrated the Department of Homeland Security. More than 300 members of the paramilitary group describe themselves as current or former DHS employees. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Just weeks after Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy for trying to violently overturn the 2020 election, a leak of the paramilitary group's membership list has revealed that potentially hundreds of far-right extremists have infiltrated federal law enforcement, the Project on Government Oversight reported on Monday. Launched in 2009, the Oath Keepers from the start...

Russia's oil exports have plunged amid the latest round of western sanctions. According to data from Kpler, Russian seaborne oil shipments fell 16% on Tuesday. Russia's central bank has called the sanctions "new economic shocks" that could derail the economy. Russia's oil exports have plunged amid the European Union's price cap on Russian crude and the latest round of sanctions, squeezing revenues for Moscow's wartime economy. According to data from the analytics firm Kpler, Russia's seaborne oil shipments fell by 16%, or about half a million barrels per day on Tuesday this week. TankerTrackers.com, another analytics site, recorded an even...

Russia's elite are worried for their safety after an ally of President Vladimir Putin said those who aren't enthusiastic enough about the war in Ukraine should be repressed, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin loyalist and founder of the paramilitary Wagner Group, said that Russian tycoons who are not supportive enough over the conflict should face "urgent Stalinist repressions", Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources. The "Stalinist repressions" are a reference to Russia's Great Purge, a political campaign led by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1937 that aimed to eliminate anyone in his party he considered a threat. Prigozhin's...

Russia has withdrawn some officers and medics from around the annexed city of Kherson as fears of a major Ukrainian offensive grow, said The Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Moscow is in retreat across the Dnipro River in anticipation of an advance of Ukrainian troops on the regional capital, the US-based think tank said on Sunday. "Russian forces continued to withdraw from western Kherson Oblast while preparing to conduct delaying actions that will likely be only partially effective," concluded the ISW, in a Russian Offensive Campaign assessment, on Saturday. The think tank, quoting the Ukrainian General Staff, stated...

President Donald Trump was furious when the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election results, according to details revealed during a Thursday hearing by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The committee shared a message from the Secret Service that described Trump's reaction to the news on December 11, 2020, as "livid." "Just fyi. POTUS is pissed — breaking news — Supreme Court denied his lawsuit. He is livid now," the message read. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, also testified to the committee that...

On the morning of January 6, 2021, Michael Palian went to work as an FBI agent assigned to a task force investigating health care fraud. Then a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol. That afternoon, he was among the FBI agents who rushed to the Capitol to guard senators who had gathered earlier in the day to certify now-President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. On Monday, federal prosecutors called Palian as the first witness in the seditious trial of Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes and four others charged with plotting to violently prevent the peaceful handoff of power...

Former President Donald Trump has asked several of his donors to refrain from boosting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who has emerged as one of the former president's most formidable potential rivals in a GOP presidential primary matchup — according to The Washington Post. Trump was instrumental in shaping DeSantis' political rise in the Sunshine State, endorsing the little-known congressman in the 2018 gubernatorial primary over a more established rival, then-Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. With the MAGA movement behind DeSantis, he became unstoppable in the GOP primary that year, romping to an easy win over Putnam and narrowly winning the...

On August 24, Belarus' authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, sent a congratulatory message to Ukraine for its 31st Independence Day. Lukashenko said Belarus would "continue to stand for the preservation of harmony" and development of "mutually respectful contacts" and wished Ukrainians "peaceful skies, tolerance, courage, strength and success in restoring a decent life." It was a bizarre message from a leader who has not only made Russia's invasion of Ukraine possible but has done almost everything he can to assist Russia in its war. Under Lukashenko, Belarus has emerged as Russian President Vladimir Putin's greatest ally on the world stage and...

Russia is pulling all of its fighter jets out of Crimea in an apparent response to recent explosions at Russian military outposts in the region, a secret NATO report seen by Insider said. Russia has already moved ten aircraft — six Su-35S and four MiG-31BM jets — out of Crimea and into Russia and is set to continue until all fighter jets are removed, the report, which was dated August 22, said. The first ten jets were moved from Belbek airfield in Crimea to Kushchevskaya and Marinovka, two regions in Russia, the report said. "Russia has dispersed 10x fighter aircraft...

A recently released FBI affidavit related to the Mar-a-Lago search spells trouble for Trump. "Donald Trump will be indicted in the classified documents matter," a national security lawyer said. The affidavit also throws a wrench into Trump's claim of innocence because "it was all declassified."

Dr. Mehmet Oz has spent the past week defending himself from charges that he's hopelessly out of touch with most residents of Pennsylvania, where he is the Republican candidate for Senate. Last Monday John Fetterman, Oz's Democratic opponent, resurfaced a video Oz recorded in what he called a "Wegners" — a mishmash of the Redner's and Wegmans grocery store chains — shopping for "crudité" and complaining about inflation. Fetterman's comment: "in PA, we call this a veggie tray." In an exclusive statement as part of Insider's investigation into Oz, the doctor's campaign jabbed back. "If John Fetterman had ever eaten...

Morgan Ortagus @MorganOrtagus · Follow Bucket list #selfie Thank you @elonmusk ❤️ Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, attended a fundraiser retreat in Wyoming that was hosted by Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy, Fox News has learned. The event was held at a resort in Teton Village, near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and happened on the same day Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney lost a primary election to Trump-backed Republican nominee Harriet Hageman. A source told Fox News that McCarthy and Musk led a fireside chat with supporters, House members and Republican candidates. The event was closed to the...

Former President Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump, has suggested his son-in-law Jared Kushner could be the mole in the Trump camp who tipped off the FBI about confidential documents that were being held at Mar-a-Lago... Speaking with SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah, Mary Trump was asked if she had any idea who the suspect might be... 'It's so tough to choose. I want it to be all of them. You know, I think we need to start with who would have access to this stuff. I don't think Mark Meadows [former White House Chief of Staff] would have access to it,'...

Former President Donald Trump took Truth Social to his social media platform over the weekend to lash out at the FBI over its raid of Mar-a-Lago. In a stream of messages, Trump complained that the FBI searched the house, including his wife Melania Trump's closets, "alone and unchecked." He also repeated the baseless allegation that the FBI could have planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago: "There was no way of knowing if what they took was legitimate, or was there a "plant?" The FBI raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as part of an investigation into whether he mishandled government records by...

GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, who could potentially lead the powerful House Oversight Committee if Republicans take control of the lower chamber after the 2022 midterms, said high-profile conservative congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado have shown interest in becoming members of the panel. In a recent interview with Politico, Comer — who is currently the Oversight ranking member — said that if he led the panel, it would not devolve into "a dog-and-pony show." "This isn't a committee where everybody's gonna scream and be outraged and try to make the witnesses look like...

The IRS is underfunded and understaffed, and had to deal with new pandemic responsibilities. The result has been a massive backlog of unprocessed tax returns, many of them on paper. A photo from the agency's Austin facility shows just how much paper the IRS is dealing with. The IRS is still full of paper. The agency has been contending with a historic backlog of unprocessed tax returns amidst new pandemic responsibilities, understaffing, and underfunding. The result: A massive build-up of unprocessed tax returns, many of which belong to Americans who have been waiting on refund checks. Natasha Sarin, a tax...

A former correspondent with Fox News suggested on Saturday that law enforcement agencies will have to take action against Fox News and Tucker Carlson to "stop the lying." Carl Cameron, Fox's former chief political correspondent, told CNN's Jim Acosta that Carlson in particular has been "screaming fire in a crowded movie house for years." "The fact of the matter is, if you disturb the peace by starting a riot in a movie theater, cops are going to arrest you and you might end up in jail or you might end up in something worse," Cameron said. "And that kind of...

Republican lawmakers privately support to Rep. Liz Cheney but refuse to do so in public for fear of former President Donald Trump, according to extracts from a new book. The claim appeared in "Thank You For Your Servitude," by Mark Leibovich, a political writer who speak years at The New York Times Magazine and now writes for The Atlantic. The book is devoted to exploring Trump's circle, and alleges that many people who support him in public are hypocrites who privately dislike him. One Republican member of Congress to vocally oppose Trump is Cheney, who was stripped of a party...

Analyzing Trump's presidency, a fascism expert argues he tried to use the office to make money. The historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat described Trump to Insider as a "dedicated" and talented "grifter." When looking back on President Donald Trump's time in office, Ruth Ben-Ghiat sees someone who pursued a unique goal among his predecessors, one requiring extreme discipline and dedication from the unlikely leader. "Trump's aims as president were totally different from any other president, Republican or Democrat," Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University who is an expert on fascism, told Insider. "His aims were autocratic in that he wanted to...