Free Republic

The military contractor known as “Fat Leonard,” the mastermind behind the worst public corruption scandal in U.S. Navy history who was three weeks away from being sentenced in the case, is on the run. Leonard Glenn Francis, who has been under house arrest, cut off his GPS monitoring ankle bracelet and absconded from his San Diego home sometime Sunday morning, said Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Omar Castillo. Pretrial Services, the federal agency monitoring Francis, was alerted to an anomaly with Francis’ bracelet, and Francis’ defense team went to check on him, knowing he has a history of health issues. An...

A Cuban man charged in a $4.2 million Medicare fraud scheme is being held as a flight risk after officials said he tried to flee the U.S. on a Jet Ski. Court records show that a federal judge in Miami ordered 54-year-old Ernesto Cruz Graveran to be detained pending trial Monday.

A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety tells KBTX that five people were found murdered in Leon County near the area where escaped inmate Gonzalo Lopez was last seen in May. A large law enforcement presence is in the area including a helicopter. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says law enforcement received a call from an individual who was concerned after not hearing from an elderly relative. Officers arrived at the residence and discovered the bodies of two adults and three children.

In another note of optimism for our country, Americans with money are officially starting to stockpile second passports as “Plan B” for their families. In fact, Americans who are citizenship or residency in foreign countries “has skyrocketed” over the last 3 years, according to a new report from Insider/Yahoo News. The report says that billionaires and entrepreneurs, along with celebrities, are all looking for a backup plan to the red, white and blue, should the proverbial stuff hit the fan. Among the worries of the rich remain Covid, climate change and political turmoil, the report says. There are more than...

Vicky White died Monday night at a hospital. Casey White is in custody.Alabama murder suspect Casey White has been interviewed extensively since he was apprehended on Monday, ending an 11-day, multistate manhunt, and is cooperating with the investigation, authorities said. Escaped inmate Casey White had spent about one week in Evansville, Indiana, where he was taken into custody, Vanderburgh County Sheriff Dave Wedding said at a news conference Tuesday. Casey White, 38, and his accomplice, Lauderdale County Assistant Director of Corrections Vicky White, 56, stopped in Evansville to figure out their next place to travel, the sheriff said. The sheriff...

In the wake of Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell’s announcement that interest rates would be raised by 0.5%, Fox Business Network host Larry Kudlow on Thursday warned that the U.S. economy was “in trouble.” Kudlow, appearing on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” said it was going to be “hard to escape a recession” in the coming years.

LOS ANGELES, CA—One day after Governor Newsom fended off recall and secured the continuation of his reign, swarms of Californians descended upon Los Angeles International Airport desperate to escape. As planes filled and people began getting turned away, mothers attempted to pass their babies over the fence of the tarmac, and others clung to the landing gear of the last departing planes. Timothy Sawchuck of Pomona, who released his grip on the landing gear just before it became too late, said, “Grabbing the landing gear is what you do when you’re fleeing an authoritarian regime, right? I’m pretty sure I...

One of the most frustrating parts of the entire Afghanistan troop withdrawal saga was the story of how President Ashraf Ghani fled his country like a thief in the night as the Taliban approached, allegedly packing several cars and a helicopter with what was described as “a cartoonish quantity of cash” as he went. That story came to us via the Russian embassy in Afghanistan, so assign whatever credibility to it that you will, but the tale quickly picked up traction. After Ghani disappeared, first to Uzbekistan and then on to the United Arab Emirates, nobody heard from him for...

“If you watch CBC, you’ll see our dear prime minister tell the Canadian public what the government of Canada won’t be able to do. This is just a total load of BS,” says Clayton, who has been working to get dozens of people in Afghanistan out before they are slaughtered by the Taliban.... “They can’t get to the airport,” says Clayton, who adds this person and their family sent him a video clip of the road to the airport, jammed with people on foot with gunfire ringing out.... “We’ve got a government that’s in the middle of an election that...

The American-nurtured Afghan military of the last 20 years that had suffered thousands of prior casualties evaporated in a few hours in the encirclement of Kabul. Enlistees apparently calculated that their own meager chances with the premodern Taliban were still better than fighting as a dependency of the postmodern United States — despite its powerful diversity training programs. Forces more powerful than the Taliban, in places far more strategic, will now leverage an ideologically driven but predictably incompetent administration, a woke Pentagon and politically weaponized intelligence communities. Why not, when President Joe Biden trashes both American frackers and the Saudis...

An inmate thought to have ties with the Russian mob who managed to escape from a floating jail in New York has been caught 12 hours after he escaped. David Mordukhaev's prison break occured early on Saturday morning just hours after suspicious federal investigators had called the Vernon C. Bain Correctional Facility to check on him at around 1am. At the time, officials were informed that Mordukhaev, 30, was indeed still inside his cell. When a second call was placed at 4.30am, Mordukhaev was nowhere to be found. Only his prison clothes remained. The timeline of his escape remains murky...

Why have thousands upon thousands of very wealthy people suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to buy a home in Montana? At this moment, Montana is one of the hottest real estate markets in the entire country. When a desirable house is put on the market, it can often spark a wild bidding war. Of course the vast majority of the potential buyers involved in these bidding wars do not actually have any roots in Montana at all. Vast hordes of wealthy individuals from Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and other major cities are flooding into the state, and there...

No good deed goes unpunished; this must be what US Ambassador to China Gary Locke must have been thinking as a firestorm of criticism erupted over his embassy’s handling of the Chen Guangcheng case. Under great pressure, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner arriving for high profile talks with China’s leadership, the embassy and colleagues in the State Department including Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Kurt Campbell had negotiated a delicate deal with Chinese counterparts that Chen accepted. Negotiated with the involvement of top legal scholar Jerome Cohen, and based on a...

You see, people are fed up. Not just with economic conditions. But with the political ones. We suspect that that frustration is tinged with fear. We know it is in our case. The state is growing outright despotic…tyrannical. You have congressmen who make no bones about telling us that we should all be subject to arrest and detention by the military. This at a time when the definition of “terrorism” is expanding to include any activity that annoys the political class. The government has been in the business of prohibiting personal behaviors, regulating professional ones and eating out our substance...

California Governor Gavin Newsom could appoint himself U.S. Senator to replace Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) if she and Joe Biden are certified as the winners of the November presidential election, as she takes up her new role as vice president. Much speculation has surrounded the question of whom Newsom might appoint, with heavy pressure to appoint another “woman of color,” or to appoint the state’s first Latino member of the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress. Several other Latinos already serve in the Senate: Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) and Marco Rubio (FL), for example, on the Republican side, and Sen....

SACRAMENTO, CA—In a move to prevent Californians from fleeing by the millions, Gavin Newsom announced a ban on gasoline automobiles this week. The law will make it so that Californians can't drive away and escape the state in a matter of hours, forcing them to instead form migrant caravans and make the treacherous trek across the blistering deserts of the Southwest. "Now, they'll have to cross the desert on foot," Newsom said as he handed down the order. "I'll show them, trying to flee my progressive utopia! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) - The U.S. Attorney of Middle Tennessee called it a “bloodbath” of a plan. The Sheriff of Davidson County simply called it evil. The latest development in the case against 50-year-old Alex Friedmann includes details of what federal prosecutors said was a well-orchestrated plan to help inmates escape the Davidson County Jail. The plan included weapons and handcuff keys hidden behind concrete walls and a 37-mm launcher to fire flares and gas stashed among an arsenal of weapons, according to the complaint. Friedmann also faces state charges of attempted burglary and vandalism after being accused of dressing...

By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. (Hebrews 11:4-6)The...

In what appears to have been a routine patrol, 30 members of Mexico's National Guard were caught off guard and ambushed from an unsuspecting local house. After repelling the initial attack, authorities soon discovered Ovidio Guzmán López, son of "El Chapo" and suspected co-leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, hiding inside the home. Chaos quickly ensued as gunmen blocked streets with burning vehicles. The scenes that unfolded were reminiscent of a war zone.

President Trump claimed Wednesday that the purported ‘escape‘ of hundreds of ISIS terrorists from a prison in northern Syria was purposefully manufactured in order to draw US troops back into the conflict there.While speaking in front of the press at the White House, Trump described the withdrawal of troops from Syria as “strategically brilliant,” adding that as far as ISIS is concerned “you have a lot of countries over there that hate ISIS as much as we do…So they can take care of ISIS.”“We have them captured. The United States captured them,” Trump urged before making the claim about the...