Free Republic

October 2, 2019 The Honorable Eliot L. Engel, Chairman Committee on Foreign Affairs House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Dear Mr. Chairman: I am writing to strongly object to the abdication of the Foreign Affairs Committee's oversight jurisdiction to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It will damage the credibility of our committee and minimize our Members' expertise in the exercise of that jurisdiction. On September 27, 2019, you and two other chairmen sent a letter to the Secretary of State claiming to "schedule" without subpoena the depositions of five State Department officials to "be conducted jointly by the Committee...

Oct 01, 2019 Butler County, Iowa - Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) made the following comments regarding the intelligence community whistleblower and related issues. "This person appears to have followed the whistleblower protection laws and ought to be heard out and protected. We should always work to respect whistleblowers' requests for confidentiality. Any further media reports on the whistleblower's identity don't serve the public interest--even if the conflict sells more papers or attracts clicks. "No one should be making judgments or pronouncements without hearing from the whistleblower first and carefully following up on the facts. Uninformed speculation wielded by politicians or...

Sep 30, 2019 Ukrainian Records Shed New Light on Biden's Ultimatum to Terminate Prosecutor --- Ukraine-DNC Coordination to Undermine Trump 2016 Campaign Should Not be Overlooked WASHINGTON - Two Senate chairmen want to know whether the Justice Department has acquired information from Ukrainian prosecutors that may contradict the stated reasoning behind former Vice President Joe Biden's threat to withhold U.S. assistance from Ukraine. They are also renewing an inquiry into the department's response to reported efforts by Ukrainians, in coordination with Democratic Party associates, to acquire damaging information on Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. In a letter to...

Three Democratic senators have written a letter to Ukraine's prosecutor general to "express great concern" over reports that Ukrainian officials had looked to potentially hinder special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. Sens. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Patrick Leahy of Vermont wrote in the letter to Yuriy Lutsenko that a recent New York Times report said his office "effectively froze investigations into four open cases in Ukraine in April, thereby eliminating scope for cooperation with the Mueller probe into related issues." ... "As strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine, we believe...

Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelensky. While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear - by his own account - that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden's family. ... The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and...

RALEIGH, N.C. - Today, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, issued the following statement after the former Fed monetary Vice Chairman Bill Dudley proposed that the Fed meddle in the presidential election to defeat President Trump: I am very disappointed that former Fed monetary Vice Chairman Bill Dudley is lobbying the Fed to use its authority as a political weapon against President Trump. The President is standing up for America against China after 30 years of our country and our workers being ripped off and there is now an effort to get the Fed to...

While prosecutors routinely recite their full knowledge of and compliance with their Brady obligations, in truth they often scoff at them and continue to play games to win convictions at all costs. Meanwhile, the defense does not know what the defense does not know. This problem was demonstrated dramatically in the prosecution of United States Senator Ted Stevens. In fact, it was the prosecutorial misconduct in that case that led this Court to adopt the Brady order it now routinely enters in every criminal case. Unfortunately, the government learned nothing from the rebukes in Stevens. It has engaged in even...

The attorneys for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn called for a court intervention on Aug. 30 as the government continues to deny them security clearances required to view classified documents which they say likely contain exculpatory information. "Our attempts to resolve that issue with the government have come to a dead-end, thus requiring the intervention of this Court," the attorneys for Flynn state in a status report filed on Aug. 30. ... The judge in the case ordered the defense and the prosecution to file a status report on Aug. 30 to brief the court on the status of...

... The Department of Justice Inspector General just fired the first of three cruise missiles trained on Mr. Comey with devastating impact. Comey’s reaction? "Feel free to apologize to me." ... Next up will be the IG's findings regarding Comey’s truthfulness before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court and whether he attested to false or misleading statements in order to electronically monitor a presidential campaign. ... But beyond that, Mr. Durham and his team likely will follow up on emerging indicators that Comey may have colluded with other intelligence community leaders to actually "manufacture" the justification needed for an...

A Google insider who anonymously leaked internal documents to Project Veritas made the decision to go public in an on-the-record video interview. The insider, Zachary Vorhies, decided to go public after receiving a letter from Google, and after he says Google allegedly called the police to perform a "wellness check" on him. ... Vorhies described the incident to Project Veritas: "they got inside the gate, the police, and they started banging on my door ... And so the police decided that they were going to call in additional forces. They called in the FBI, they called in the SWAT team....

A former Google insider claiming the company created algorithms to hide its political bias within artificial intelligence platforms - in effect targeting particular words, phrases and contexts to promote, alter, reference or manipulate perceptions of Internet content - delivered roughly 950 pages of documents to the Department of Justice's Antitrust division Friday. ... "I honestly think that a free market can fix this issue," he told this reporter at a meeting in Washington D.C. "The issue is that the free market has been distorted and what's happened is that the distortion is so grotesque and the engineering is so repulsive,...

Friday, August 9, 2019 WASHINGTON, D.C. - Yesterday, Senator Rick Scott sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr urging him to seek answers from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray. Senator Scott has been seeking information on what steps the FBI has taken to address critical deficiencies in its handling of actionable intelligence on the perpetrators of acts of mass violence in Florida, including the tragic shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and Pulse Nightclub. This letter follows an inadequate response from the FBI to Senator Scott's continued requests for this information.

The provisions in 26 U.S.C. S: 6103 protecting confidentiality of tax returns prohibited the Department of the Treasury from complying with a request by the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee for the President's tax returns. The text of section 6103(f), the statutory exception under which the request was made, does not require the Committee to state any purpose for its request. But Congress could not constitutionally confer upon the Committee the right to compel the Executive Branch to disclose confidential information without a legitimate legislative purpose. Under the facts and circumstances, the Secretary of the Treasury reasonably...

WASHINGTON, DC: Southeastern Legal Foundation filed a Motion for Publication of Records with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) on behalf of award-winning investigative reporter John Solomon and itself, seeking rulings, orders and opinions issued by the Court finding any of the attorneys associated with the Carter Page FISA applications violated rules of the Court or rules governing professional conduct by attorneys. Southeastern Legal Foundation successfully pursued Bar sanctions against sitting President Bill Clinton, ultimately resulting in the surrender of his law license on the last day in office and disbarment by the U.S. Supreme Court (1998-2001) as part of...

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., pressed President Trump on Wednesday to ask British Prime Minister Theresa May about the Steele dossier when he visits the United Kingdom next month. In a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner, Nunes lists a number of recommended questions "about the British government's knowledge of the Steele dossier and whether the British government took any unilateral actions based on information provided by [Christopher] Steele or at the request of any U.S. departments." ... Link to letter (scribd link from source)

David Kramer, a former State Department official, said in a deposition on Dec. 13, 2017 that he provided a copy of Christopher Steele's dossier to reporters from McClatchy, NPR, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed and to CNN's Carl Bernstein. He also shared the report with State Department official Victoria Nuland, Obama National Security Counsel official Celeste Wallander and Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger. ... Kramer said he also met Mother Jones's David Corn, The Guardian's Julian Borger, and Washington Post reporters Tom Hamburger and Rosalind Helderman. Kramer also said that ABC News's Brian Ross showed him...

It was widely reported that Theresa May paid a visit to Angela Merkel in Berlin shortly before the Chequers meeting. What did they discuss? We weren't told at the time. According to a confidential source who has seen a complete transcript of the meeting, the two leaders agreed to a plan that Mrs May allegedly told the Chancellor would "appease" Brexit voters while nonetheless enabling her to get rid of those Tories who were (in her words) "against progress and unity in the EU." According to the transcript, Mrs May is also reported to have agreed "to keep as many...

READ: The transcribed interview of Peter Strzok by the Committee on the Judiciary, joint with the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Link to transcript

Interview of: Lisa Page READ: The transcribed interview of Lisa Page by the Committee on the Judiciary. READ: The transcribed interview of Lisa Page by the Committee on the Judiciary - Day 2.

1 COMMITTEE SENSITIVE EXECUTIVE SESSION COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, JOINT WITH THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D.C. INTERVIEW OF: BRUCE OHR Tuesday, August 28, 2018 Washington, D.C. The interview in the above matter was held in Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, commencing at 9:05 a.m. COMMITTEE SENSITIVE 2 COMMITTEE SENSITIVE Mr. Parmiter. Good morning. This is a transcribed interview of Bruce Ohr. Chairman Goodlatte and Chairman Gowdy requested this interview as part of a joint investigation by the House Committee on the Judiciary and the House Committee on Oversight and Government...