Free Republic

While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC). The focus on AntAC — whose youthful street activists famously wore “Ukraine F*&k Corruption” T-shirts — was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted. The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy...

Sometimes it is the quiet, elusive ones who come back to haunt you. And for ex-special prosecutor Robert Mueller, one of those might be a Russian billionaire named Oleg Deripaska. The oligarch who once controlled Russia’s largest aluminum empire has been an international man of intrigue in the now-completed and disproven Trump collusion investigation. Deripaska was a disaffected former business client of Donald Trump’s fallen campaign chairman Paul Manafort. He also was a legal research client of Trump-hating, Clinton-aiding British spy Christopher Steele. In his spare time, he was an occasional friendly cooperator with the FBI and its fired deputy...

We are familiar with the pattern. Leak details about fake documents like the Steele dossier to the media, then use the media reports as a second source “corroborating” the unverified report when using it to justify your illegal actions. More evidence of the deceitful and arguably illegal actions by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller has popped up, this time regarding Paul Manafort’s “black cash ledger” allegedly documenting criminal financial moves on his part and it parallels the criminality of the use of the Steele Dossier by the FBI to lie to the FISA court to authorize the surveillance of Team...

Full title: Sean Hannity was laughed at when he said he was spied on. The proof just came out. He was. For years Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed that the Obama administration was spying on him. The public release Friday of a text-message exchange between him and President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort suggests he was perhaps at least partially correct. Unsealed by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the far-left Obama appointee with a suspiciously Democrat-friendly history, the text messages date from July 14, 2017 to June 5, 2018, and show Hannity speaking sympathetically to Manafort...

Fifty-five pages of texts between Fox News host Sean Hannity and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort make their way online.

Text messages sent between Fox News host Sean Hannity and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort have been released, showing the two expressing outrage over the Russia probe and concern for the direction of the country. Read the texts below.

Paul Manafort is currently holed up in solitary confinement at a Manhattan prison — and he’s expected to remain at the lockup as his mortgage-fraud case plays out, his lawyer and the Department of Justice said Tuesday. The president’s former campaign manager was recently transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center to await arraignment on state crimes. “My expectation is he won’t remain there [in solitary]. For a couple days when you’re being processed, they keep you in solitary,” Manafort’s lawyer Todd Blanche told The Post on Tuesday. “I’m hopeful the MCC will have a location for him that’s not solitary.”...

Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, had been expected to be transferred to the notorious Rikers Island jail complex this month to await trial on a separate state case. But last week, Manhattan prosecutors were surprised to receive a letter from the second-highest law enforcement official in the country inquiring about Mr. Manafort’s case. The letter, from Jeffrey A. Rosen, Attorney General William P. Barr’s new top deputy, indicated that he was monitoring where Mr. Manafort would be held in New York. And then, on Monday, federal prison officials weighed in,...

It’s already bad enough that the FBI appears to have not even attempted to verify the Trump dossier. The document has clear errors in it. Inaccuracies that could easily have been caught with a simple Google search. On top of this, the State Department knew this document was biased political trash. The Clinton campaign and the Democrats, which hired Fusion GPS, who then tapped ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele to compile the document, funded the effort. Steele told the State Department that the information in his possession had a shelf life. Yeah, it was called the 2016 election. The document is...

The liberal media feigns horror over "lock her up" refrains. But when it comes to a Trump associate actually being locked up in a notoriously awful jail, well, that's a cause for mirth and hilarity. And thus it was that on today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough joked about Paul Manfort being confined at Rikers Island, which has been described as a "hellhole," as here, here, and "the most notorious jail in America."Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

The federal government has put Paul Manafort's New York City loft on the market for more than $3.6 million. The apartment, on Howard Street in Manhattan's posh SoHo neighborhood, was one of five properties forfeited by the former Trump campaign manager as part of his plea agreement in September 2018. A judge ordered the forfeiture on May 22. The apartment is now listed with other seized properties on the U.S. Marshals Service website with an asking price of $3,663,000.

In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence. But hundreds of pages of government documents — which Mueller possessed since 2018 — describe Kilimnik as a “sensitive” intelligence source for the U.S. State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian matters. Why special counsel Robert Mueller’s team omitted that part of the Kilimnik narrative from their report and related court filings is not known. But the revelation of it comes as the accuracy of Mueller’s Russia conclusions face increased scrutiny. The incomplete portrayal...

Most people don't quite know what to make of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's alarm about Manhattan prosecutors' decision to throw President Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, into Rikers Island prison. It was an unprecedented move. Yet she's hardly a supporter of people connected to President Trump - she actually wants the president impeached. But she's right about what she's reading:

Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was sentenced earlier this year to nearly seven years in prison in connection with two federal cases, will be transferred later this week from a minimum security facility in Pennsylvania to New York City’s Rikers Island, a source close to Manafort told Fox News. Rikers Island is the famous jail in the shadow of LaGuardia Airport. It has been the temporary home of some of the most high-profile violent criminals in the city, including David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam; and Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon. "He’s not...

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” this week to discuss the origins of the Steele dossier. He said it should really be called the “Simpson” dossier. Although Christopher Steele likely contributed “stories” to the dossier, and his years of experience in British intelligence lent credence to the document, Nunes believes that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson may actually have written the majority of it. In his book “Spygate,” journalist Dan Bongino makes the same case. He points out the striking similarities between articles Simpson and his wife, Mary Jacoby wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 2007...

Paul Manafort officially can no longer practice law in Washington, D.C., according to a Thursday court filing. A panel of judges for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals found that Manafort’s criminal convictions for obstruction of justice through witness tampering and conspiracy to commit fraud were enough to disbar him in D.C. The judges wrote in the opinion that Manafort having committed crimes of “moral turpitude” was enough to disbar him in D.C. They retroactively applied the order to Feb. 28.

Former White House counsel Gregory Craig will go to trial in August to face charges of lying to investigators who were working for special counsel Robert Mueller, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., said Friday.Craig, who worked under former President Obama from 2009-2010, is scheduled to begin his trial at 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 12, according to court filings first reported by The New York Times. He is accused of lying and withholding information about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's lobbying work in Ukraine from investigators working for Mueller's now-shuttered probe. Craig pleaded not guilty to the charges earlier...

Greg Craig, the top lawyer in President Barack Obama's White House, pleaded not guilty Friday afternoon and was released on personal recognizance, following his indictment for allegedly making false statements to US authorities about his work for Ukraine alongside Paul Manafort.

Washington (CNN)A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted Greg Craig, a prominent Democratic attorney who worked for two presidents, charging him with false statements and concealing material information in connection with work he performed for Ukraine. An indictment in the case against Craig, which originated in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, has been expected for several weeks, with Craig's own lawyers saying Wednesday they anticipated such an outcome. Craig, 74, is the highest-profile Democrat to be indicted in a matter stemming from Mueller's work, which resulted in charges against numerous Republicans connected to President Donald Trump. The case is being...

Greg Craig, who once served as White House counsel for then-President Barack Obama, was indicted Thursday for alleged false statements in connection with his work on behalf of Ukraine. The Washington-based lawyer was indicted by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for allegedly falsifying and concealing “material facts” and making false statements to the unit responsible for enforcing foreign lobbying laws.