Free Republic

President Joe Biden’s unabashed reliance on pre-prepared notes to help him explain his own policies in response to questions he knows are coming is sparking concern about his age from party donors. An Axios report sets out even in closed-door fundraisers, where prescreened donors can ask questions of the octogenarian, he can be seen consulting his notes to provide detailed answers, according to people familiar with the routine. The staged Q&A sessions have left some donors wondering whether Biden can withstand the rigors of a 2024 presidential campaign let alone potential debates with former President Donald Trump, 77, according to...

Despite a punishing loss in New Hampshire, Nikki Haley has nearly a dozen fundraisers scheduled between now and the South Carolina primary — and insiders are now wondering how many of these shindigs will actually happen. On Jan. 30 in New York City, billionaires including Leonard Stern, Cliff Asness, Stanley Druckenmiller, Ken Langone and Henry Kravis are co-hosting an event for the former South Carolina governor. On Feb. 6, Silicon Valley mogul Tim Draper is hosting Haley in Atherton, Calif. On Feb. 15, Haley also is slated to be feted in Dallas by real estate tycoon Harlan Crow, according to...

In recent weeks, it seems like every time I go to the supermarket during the day, there is a small group of Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts conducting a fundraiser. The Girl Scouts have cookies, the boy scouts have—whatever is they’re pushing. Today was no different, some local Boy Scout troop was selling something for a fundraiser, and when approached on my way out, I politely declined to buy whatever it was they were selling.And I will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.This isn’t something I’m happy about. I know these kids are putting in some effort to...

House intelligence committee Republicans were surprised to learn this week that a member of their committee, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, was targeted by a suspected Chinese spy who slept with US politicians as a tactic to elicit information. Swalwell, who represents a California district south of Oakland, received an FBI “defensive briefing” in 2015 on operative Fang Fang, but most if not all Republicans on the elite committee weren’t told that a colleague had been targeted by China. Fang, also known as Christine Fang, returned to China in mid-2015 as US officials heightened their scrutiny of her string of honey-trap...

Rep. Eric Swalwell is famous for yelling about Russian influence with outrageous claims against President Trump, even calling for a 'presidential crimes commission,' but based on a year-long investigation from Axios, he's the one who has some spy problems, and they ought to be embarrassing. He was China's idea of the perfect fool.According to a year-long investigation from Axios:A suspected Chinese intelligence operative developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including a U.S. congressman, in what U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015, Axios found in a...

The report submitted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that exonerated President Trump on the charge that he colluded with the Russians. Right now, they’re having an epic meltdown over that fact. They wanted indictments. They wanted a roadmap to impeachment. Well, that plan was torched. The media hasn’t been this salty since the 2016 election. I love it. Sorry, this is just too good. At the same time, while Democrats are whining about Trump’s deep ties to America, it does bury an issue (for now) that was engulfing the party: allegations of anti-Semitism. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has been playing...

**SNIP** The Los Angeles Theater Center was decked out Thursday like a trade show for left politics. Booths featuring community organizers, single-payer healthcare enthusiasts, and direct action groups like Occupy ICE handed out literature and chatted up attendees. Off in the corner they were selling Ocasio-Cortez T-shirts, but community groups were far more prominent. Many of these groups met with Ocasio-Cortez that morning at a breakfast organizing meeting. When the program began, Ocasio-Cortez took a seat on stage while presenters spent an hour pitching the crowd of more than 500 on their projects. The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment...

Gilbert Chagoury donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. He also donated to a Lebanese organization with financial ties to Hezbollah, designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department. Let that sink in. Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. A huge donor to her family foundation had ties to an organization that the State Department had designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. How extensive were Chagoury’s ties to an organization that funded Hezbollah? So extensive that he was denied entry into the U.S.

In the wake of Peter Schweizer’s explosive revelation that 80 percent of the Department of Energy’s $20.5 billion in green energy loans went to President Barack Obama’s fundraisers and donors, CBS News is now reporting that the Obama Administration spent billions of taxpayer dollars on 11 more Solyndra-style loans to so-called green energy companies that have since gone bankrupt or are facing serious financial difficulty.

Embattled Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein is the subject of a devastating expose detailing decades of sexual harassment. Weinstein is one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest donors, having raised mega bucks for the failed Democratic presidential candidate. Weinstein threw a fundraiser for Clinton back in June. Page Six reports Harvey Weinstein is throwing a starry fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on Monday with co-hosts Leo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. Weinstein and his designer wife, Georgina Chapman, are planning a dinner and conversation with Clinton at their Manhattan home to benefit the Hillary Victory Fund. We’re told the event...

Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is being accused of groping a 22-year-old Italian model on the opening weekend of his Radio City “New York Spring Spectacular,” police sources said Monday. The model told cops that the Oscar-winning Hollywood producer sexually abused her after coaxing her to his Manhattan office on the pretense of talking business, sources told the Daily News. The woman told cops that Weinstein — a married, 63-year-old father of five — groped her private area and her breasts around 6 p.m. Friday in his third-floor office at the Tribeca Film Center on Greenwich St., the sources said. “He...

The throngs of "anti-war" marchers heading to DC to attend the September 24th rally don't know that they are being used. CodePINK and United For Peace and Justice are both prodigy of Global Exchage, the 501(3)c non-profit formed by Global's Medea Benjamin. It's the "Benjamins For Benjamin Weekend"!. Using the attraction of a Hate America event to lure attendees, Code Pink's Medea Benjamin's cash cow, Global Exchange, has scheduled one of it's "Green Festivals" for the same weekend and is running it in competition with the anti-war events scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. How convenient? How many people will...

The L.A. County Coroner has reported the death of Gemmel Moore, 26, of an accidental meth overdose at 7:22 p.m. on July 27 at the West Hollywood home of top Democrat donor and political activist, Ed Buck.

Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the nation’s House of Commons Tuesday that he has attended lavish fundraisers for his family’s foundation to “create economic growth for the middle class.” His defense of his participation in fundraisers thrown by the Pierre Trudeau Foundation – which he renounced his official position in upon becoming the leader of the Liberal Party – follows an admission that he allowed attendees to lobby him at these fundraisers, a clear violation of Liberal Party bylaws. The metastasizing cash-for-access scandal follows a calamitous month for Canada’s Liberals in which, partly triggered by Trudeau’s effusive praise...

<p>Theranos, the biotech company started by a 19-year-old Stanford dropout, has another hurdle to cross in its whole "we're totally a legit blood-testing company" campaign. This time, it turns out that tens of thousands of blood tests were voided, making them totally invalid. Whoops!</p>

We haven't really written much about the insane Theranos scandal, though we discussed it on our podcast. The whole story is pretty crazy -- involving a heavily hyped up company that appeared to basically be flat out lying to everyone about what it could do. The company still exists, but barely. The company's founder and CEO, who was plastered across magazine covers and compared frequently to Steve Jobs, has been banned from running a lab for two years, and the company is now facing a $140 million lawsuit from its biggest partner, Walgreens, who claims that Theranos repeatedly lied to...

Litigator David Boies and the law firm he founded, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, have stopped doing legal work for Theranos Inc. after disagreeing about the strategy for handling ongoing government investigations of the blood-testing company, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Boies, 75 years old, has been one of the country’s best-known litigators since the late 1990s. He became Theranos’s outside counsel after being approached in 2011 by two investors in the Palo Alto, Calif., startup. He fiercely defended Theranos against questions about its technology and operations. Those efforts included threatening to take legal action against The...

Litigator David Boies and the law firm he founded, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, have stopped doing legal work for Theranos Inc. after disagreeing about the strategy for handling ongoing government investigations of the blood-testing company, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Boies, 75 years old, has been one of the country’s best-known litigators since the late 1990s. He became Theranos’s outside counsel after being approached in 2011 by two investors in the Palo Alto, Calif., startup. He fiercely defended Theranos against questions about its technology and operations. Those efforts included threatening to take legal action against The...

It's worth asking why Elizabeth Holmes is still leading the embattled blood testing company Theranos Inc. But there may be a good reason why she still is in charge, one that has little to do with the scandal-ridden company's performance to date. Forget what venture capitalist Tim Draper — one of the first to invest in the Palo Alto company — implied this week that Holmes is being attacked because she's a young, female entrepreneur. The simple fact is that Theranos has not been able to deliver on its technology from a commercial, scientific or regulatory standpoint, and that falls...

2016 has not been too kind to Elizabeth Holmes, the Steve-Jobs wannabe in charge of fraudulent Theranos. She has thus far been banned for 2 years from operating labs, removed from hosting fundraisers for Hillary and lost her entire net worth. And now, the Wall Street Journal has published the "tell-all" story of the whistle-blower, 26 year old Tyler Shultz, who brought the the whole Theranos farce crashing down. It's a sordid tale complete with all the expected twists and turns of a Jason Bourne thriller including intimidation, coercion and private detectives. Tyler Shultz is the grandson of George Shultz,...