Free Republic

by Becca London | RNNIf it wasn't already clear what a weak surrender - and strategically-dangerous move - was Joe Biden's sending back a jailed Russian arms dealer to the Kremlin in exchange for pothead, America-hating WNBA player Brittney Griner, a stunning video clip from Russian TV makes it that much clearer. To recap, Biden freed the imprisoned "Merchant of Death" Viktor Bout - the most notorious arms dealer in history - to Russia for Griner, but left an American Marine hero Paul Whelan in a brutal Russian jail, where he was thrown after being railroaded on a fake "espionage"...

The Biden administration has determined that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, should be granted immunity in a case brought against him by the fiancée of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whom the administration has said was murdered at the prince’s direction. A court filing was made by Justice Department lawyers at the request of the State Department because bin Salman was recently made the Saudi prime minister and as a result, qualifies for immunity as a foreign head of government, the request said. It was filed late Thursday night, just before the court’s deadline for the Justice Department...

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Sunday voiced agreement with the Biden administration’s decision to grant sovereign immunity to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, shielding the autocrat from a lawsuit over the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. “What the administration has touted this week in granting sovereign immunity to Mohammed bin Salman is in keeping with the practice of custom of lawsuits involving foreign heads of state,” Cotton told “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream. “It would have been a major break if those customs did not grant that kind of immunity.”

The Biden administration told a U.S. court that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s status as a sitting head of government shields him from a civil lawsuit brought by the fiancée of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Mr. Khashoggi, a former royal insider who criticized Prince Mohammed’s policies in Washington Post columns, was killed in 2018 and his body dismembered by Saudi agents during a visit to the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate where he was seeking papers needed to marry Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish citizen. In a filing Thursday, the State Department said “common law principles of immunity” informed its determination...

An unwritten pact binding the U.S. and Saudi Arabia has survived 15 presidents and seven kings through an Arab oil embargo, two Persian Gulf wars and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Now, it is fracturing under two leaders who don’t like or trust each other. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s 37-year-old day-to-day ruler, mocks Biden in private, making fun of the 79-year-old’s gaffes and questioning his mental acuity... He has told advisers he hasn’t been impressed with Mr. Biden since his days as vice president, and much preferred former President Donald Trump ... Mr. Biden said on...

President Biden accused Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister of lying when he contradicted the president’s claim that had raised the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and bristled when asked about the fist bump with the royal. Returning early Sunday morning to the White House after his four-day trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, Biden was asked whether A​del al-Jubier was telling the truth when he said he didn’t hear the president bring up Khashoggi with the prince, commonly referred to as MBS. “No,” Biden responded bluntly, according to a White House pool report. The president,...

Hatice Cengiz, the fiancée of murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, called President Biden's planned visit to Saudi Arabia "heartbreaking" and "disappointing." Driving the news: Biden, who once vowed to make Saudi Arabia a "pariah," is set to meet with the crown prince on Friday, a move that Cengiz described as "a huge backing down" in an AP interview. "It’s heartbreaking and disappointing. And Biden will lose his moral authority by putting oil and expediency over principles and values," Cengiz said. Cengiz also said that Biden should urge Saudi Arabia, which she said is a "terrible ally," to embrace a...

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shouted at President Joe Biden's national security adviser when he was pressed on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and said he would not help the U.S. out by pumping more oil. The staggering decline of U.S.-Saudi relations under the Biden administration was outlined in a Wall Street Journal report Last September, Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with the Saudi Crown prince, who goes by his initials MBS, at a seaside palace. Sullivan brought up Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was murdered in 2018 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. MSB shouted...

Jamal Khashoggi hated America and Jews. That’s why Biden loves him. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began his confirmation hearing by reciting a family history of antisemitism. A month later he unveiled a ban named in the memory of an antisemite. “Jamal Khashoggi paid with his life to express his beliefs,” Blinken claimed. Those beliefs that Khashoggi gave his life for included his contention that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were real, and that Jews were deceivers with no connection to Israel. It also included the Muslim Brotherhood member’s support for the Hamas war against Israel. Last October,...

Pinning the death of Jamal Khashoggi on Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is important to those who want to return to the Obama-era alignment of the U.S. with Iran, not Saudi Arabia, as our principal relationship with the Middle East Muslim world. MbS, as he is known, is a committed modernizer, favorable to warming relations with Israel. Damaging his global standing with the tar of culpability for the killing and dismemberment of Khashoggi could even lead to his fall from the pinnacle of power in Riyadh.Caroline Glick explains who Khashoggi really was — not an actual "journalist" or "columnist"...

Female journalists and activists say they had their private photos shared on social media by governments seeking to intimidate and silence them. Ghada Oueiss, a Lebanese broadcast journalist at Al-Jazeera, was eating dinner at home with her husband last June when she received a message from a colleague telling her to check Twitter. Oueiss opened up the account and was horrified: A private photo taken when she was wearing a bikini in a jacuzzi was being circulated by a network of accounts, accompanied by false claims that the photos were taken at her boss’s house. Over the next few days...

With a small military training program, the United States military has joined efforts to fight a brutal insurgency that has devastated northern Mozambique. American Special Forces soldiers began training Mozambican troops this week as part of an effort to repel a spreading insurgency in northeastern Mozambique that American officials say is linked to the Islamic State. The insurgency, near some of the world’s biggest gas reserves, has killed at least 2,000 civilians and displaced another 670,000. The American program is modest in size and scope: a dozen Army Green Berets are to train Mozambican marines for the next two months....

In order to justify empowering Iran, the United States is pushing a narrative that Israel and Saudi Arabia are equally destabilizing for the Middle East. Israel must be fuming. On March 11, unnamed United States officials released bombshell information to the Wall Street Journal stating that since 2019, Israel has targeted at least a dozen Iranian vessels bound for Syria. The decision to publish the material comes just two weeks after Israel blamed Iran for attacking an Israeli-owned vessel in the Gulf of Oman, and a day before Iran claimed Israel attacked another of its vessels in the eastern Mediterranean....

Washington (CNN)When the Biden administration announced a ban on dozens of Saudis from traveling to the US in response to intelligence that the kingdom's powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had approved the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it was rolling out a plan that had been spiked by the Trump administration and brought back to life once President Joe Biden took office. Dubbed the "Khashoggi Ban" by the State Department, the measure issued visa restrictions on 76 Saudis and their families. The plan had initially been drafted by the Trump administration, which shelved it over fears of alienating the...

The Biden administration’s decision to publish the intelligence report on Jamal Khashoggi’s death in late 2018 was as predictable as it was destructive to U.S. national security and to the security and stability of the Middle East. It was predictable for two reasons. First, this is Obama’s third term. And in Obama’s first term he played a central role in overthrowing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the anchor of the U.S.’s alliance system in the Sunni Arab world in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological anchor of every Sunni terror group in the world. Obama’s consistent policy for eight years...

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decried the Biden administration's release of a declassified report regarding Saudi Arabia's involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi on Sunday, calling the report's release a "reckless" move. Speaking on Fox News on Sunday, the former secretary of State under the Trump administration argued that the Biden administration had "political" motives for releasing the report and was bent on souring the U.S.-Saudi relationship over the issue. "The release of this report was reckless....this administration wants to develop a relationship with Iran and destroy one with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia ...

The Biden administration is set to make public a report that blames Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman for the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The Washington Post journalist was a fierce critic of the kingdom and killed at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. CBS News senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang joins CBSN to discuss the report and how it could affect the U.S. relationship with the kingdom.

Emails from a former business associate of Hunter Biden's inner-circle who's serving time in prison for a 2016 investment scheme reveal that Hunter and his colleagues used their access to the Obama administration to peddle influence to potential Chinese clients and investors - including securing a private, off-the-books meeting with the former Vice President.Devon Archer (left) with Joe and Hunter Biden The emails, given to investigative journalist Peter Schweizer by former Biden associate Bevan Cooney and published by Breitbart also reveal that in 2011, the younger Biden and his business associates discussed strengthening relations with "China Inc." as part...

A Saudi court has issued final verdicts Monday in the 2018 killing of journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi, sentencing eight to prison, according to state television. The names of those convicted were not made public, but Riyadh Criminal Court reportedly ordered a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for five. Another received a 10-year sentence, and two others were ordered to serve seven years in prison. Yet the trial has been widely criticized by rights groups and an independent U.N. investigator, who noted that no senior officials nor anyone suspected of ordering the killing were found guilty. The independence...

Turkish prosecutors said Wednesday they had formally charged 20 suspects for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. An indictment from the Istanbul chief public prosecutor’s office accuses ex-deputy chief of the Saudi intelligence service, Ahmed al-Asiri, and Saud al-Qahtani, a former close adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, of “instigating premeditated murder with monstrous intent.” It cites “evidence” from phone, travel and CCTV footage, as well as statements from dozens of witnesses. Eighteen other Saudi nationals were also accused of carrying our Khashoggi’s killing...