Free Republic

A jury on Monday convicted four members of the extremist group the Oath Keepers of seditious conspiracy. The jury started deliberations Thursday morning after a trial that spanned five weeks. Prosecutors said the four defendants — Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo — used a “perverted version of American history” to justify their actions on Jan. 6, 2021. “Attacking the Capitol was a means to an end,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Manzo told jurors during closing arguments Wednesday. He said the group took advantage of the riot and seized the opportunity to fulfill their goal of preventing...

Less than a day after receiving a warning from a federal judge, former President Donald Trump has withdrawn his $250 million lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James. The withdrawal came in a brief document filed Friday morning with U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who late Thursday warned Trump's legal team that the lawsuit appeared to verge on frivolous. "Plaintiff, PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, by and through his undersigned counsel and pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i), hereby voluntarily dismisses his claims in this action against Defendant, LETITIA JAMES, without prejudice," the letter said. Trump's lawsuit had sought...

A federal judge on Thursday imposed nearly $1 million in sanctions on former President Donald Trump and his lawyer for filing a since-dismissed ‘frivolous’ lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and many others, which had claimed they tried to rig the 2016 presidential election in her favor by smearing Trump.“We are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” wrote Judge John Middlebrooks in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in his order sanctioning Trump.The judge in his...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Albuquerque Police says a former New Mexico House candidate who lost his election in November is now accused of conspiring to shoot at the homes of four Albuquerque lawmakers in December and January. The department made the announcement late Monday afternoon, saying Solomon Peña is accused of shooting at the homes of two Democratic Bernalillo County commissioners and two Democratic state lawmakers. A 39-year-old Republican, Peña ran and lost the race for House District 14 in the November 2022 election. APD arrested Peña during a SWAT situation Monday afternoon near downtown Albuquerque. Albuquerque Police Chief Harold...

RENSSELAER, N.Y. (NEWS10) — Jason Schofield, a former Rensselaer County elections commissioner, has pleaded guilty to unlawfully using the names and dates of birth of voters to fraudulently apply for absentee ballots. Schofield, 43, faces up to five years in prison on each count (a 12-count indictment), a fine of up to $250,000, and a term of post-imprisonment supervised release of up to three years. Schofield was arrested in September of 2022. The Department of Justice says Schofield pleaded guilty to unlawfully using the names and dates of birth of voters to fraudulently apply for absentee ballots during elections held...

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge tossed a lawsuit on Friday filed by former GOP candidates Mark Finchem and Jeff Zink that challenges the results of November’s general election. Judge Melissa Iyer Julian dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, which means it cannot be filed again. The judge also confirmed Adrian Fontes won the election and is the secretary of state-elect for Arizona. Finchem, who ran for secretary of state, and Zink, a former candidate in Congressional District 3, filed a lawsuit on Dec. 9 to overturn the results of the election. The lawsuit claimed that current Secretary of State Katie...

Former president Donald Trump’s legal effort to thwart a Justice Department investigation into classified documents seized from his palatial Palm Beach estate was officially tossed out Monday. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, after being rebuked by a federal appellate court for allowing Trump’s lawsuit to move forward, brought his controversial lawsuit to a halt after the court had ordered her to end it. “This case is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction,” Cannon wrote in a one-page order released Monday. “The Clerk of Court shall close this case.” At the beginning of the month, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in...

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump declined Thursday to appeal a court order ending his lawsuit challenging the FBI’s seizure of documents from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, paving the way for investigators to finally get hold of the bulk of documents collected in the search. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week dismissed the lawsuit he filed after the Aug. 8 search. The appeals court overturned U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order appointing a special master to review the trove of documents federal agents recovered and preventing the government from using them in its investigation into Trump’s...

WASHINGTON — The first Jan. 6 defendant to take his case to trial has been found guilty on five counts related to his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Guy Reffitt, a Texas man who attempted to storm the U.S. Capitol while allegedly armed with a gun and zip ties, was convicted of all five counts he was charged with, including transport of a firearm in support of civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding. Jurors began deliberating on Tuesday morning after a week-long trial in which they heard testimony from Reffitt's teenage son Jackson Reffitt, who...

NEW YORK (AP) — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lost her libel lawsuit against The New York Times on Tuesday when a jury rejected her claim that the newspaper maliciously damaged her reputation by erroneously linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting. A judge had already declared that if the jury sided with Palin, he would set aside its verdict on the grounds that she hadn’t proven the paper acted maliciously, something required in libel suits involving public figures. Palin, a onetime Republican vice presidential nominee, sued the newspaper in 2017 claiming it had damaged her career as a...

Rudy Giuliani is in active discussions regarding testifying before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and potentially responding to some of the committee's questions, sources familiar with the matter confirm to ABC News. The extent of the cooperation remains to be seen and no deal is anywhere near final, the sources said. Sources have told ABC News that the negotiations could easily dissolve. Giuliani was subpoenaed by the committee last month to appear for an interview last week. "Mr. Giuliani's appearance was rescheduled at his request," a committee aide told ABC News on...

Ex-U.S. Justice Department official Jeffrey Bossert Clark appeared on Wednesday before the congressional probe of the assault on the Capitol for questions about his bid to bolster former President Donald Trump's false claims of election fraud. Clark was spotted entering a room inside a U.S. House of Representatives office building where the select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack conducts its depositions. A committee spokesman declined to comment. Clark, who served as the acting head of the Justice Department's Civil Division, drafted a Dec. 28, 2020, letter to Georgia state lawmakers that falsely claimed the department had found "significant...

Washington – A South Carolina man who traveled to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021 and later assaulted officers outside the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 44 months in jail on Wednesday. Nicholas Languerand, an avowed follower of the QAnon conspiracy, pleaded guilty in November to assaulting officers and faced a maximum of 20-years prison sentence. However, prosecutors asked the court to sentence Languerand to 51 months. While Languerand admitted he had participated in the assault on the Capitol, investigators say he showed little remorse and even indicated that he wanted to see more violence, alleging he had sent a...

The founder and CEO of San Diego-based One America News on Thursday appealed to viewers of his far-right network to contact their cable provider to carry OAN. Robert Herring Sr. commented publicly for the first time on “surprise” news a week ago that AT&T and DirecTV would drop OAN. “Whether it’s Spectrum, Dish, or any of the other great providers … let them know that you would like for them to carry One America News,” he said in a 2 1/2-minute segment. He even revealed what OAN makes in the carriage agreement. “We only charge 10 cents per household per...

Falsified documents claiming Michigan’s electors voted for former President Donald Trump were given by state election officials to a congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 riot. Sixteen Republicans, including the current co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, signed certificates asserting they were Michigan’s presidential electors and sent the illegitimate documents to the National Archive. The unofficial documents were part of a failed Republican strategy to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in battleground states, which is under new scrutiny from a U.S. House panel and the Michigan Attorney General’s office. Each political party nominates its own slate of electors, but...