Free Republic

The dramatic Tuesday hearing for former national security adviser Mike Flynn didn’t produce a sentence. Instead, Judge Emmet Sullivan gave Mr. Flynn a delay to reconsider his options. I was in the courtroom, and my reading of Judge Sullivan’s treatment of Mr. Flynn (with whom I co-wrote a 2016 book) was rather different from what most reporters have said and written. Judge Sullivan repeatedly invited Mr. Flynn to reconsider his guilty plea on a charge of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Judge Sullivan stressed that he had not presided over earlier proceedings in the case and that he...

On top of her McCarthyite smear of Judge Kavanaugh, she’s closely tied to both Chinese and Russian operations in the United States. To date, only one fairly obscure member of Congress has asked our intel people—in this case, the FBI--to look into the alarming case of a Chinese agent becoming her office manager and personal chauffeur. An excerpt from Rep. Jim Banks’ letter to FBI Director Wray: It has recently come to light that U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the former chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, employed a staff member who was using his position to secretly report...

The War Against the Torture Masters Will any Western leader proclaim the Iranian elections a fraud? The cheerless creatures who rule the Islamic republic of Iran have developed a particularly wicked use of torture. Not only do they use the full panoply of physical and psychological horrors on their captives, but they then send the victims back into their homes and neighborhoods for brief periods of “parole” or “medical leave,” so that their friends and families can see with their own eyes the brutal effects of the torture. The clear intent of this practice is to intimidate the population at...

On Friday evening, CBS News reported that the FBI is investigating a suspected mole in the Department of Defense who allegedly passed to Israel, via a pro-Israeli lobbying organization, classified American intelligence about Iran. The focus of the investigation, according to U.S. government officials, is Larry Franklin, a veteran Defense Intelligence Agency Iran analyst now working in the office of the Pentagon's number three civilian official, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. The investigation of Franklin is now shining a bright light on a shadowy struggle within the Bush administration over the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran. In...

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei loudly proclaimed that the United States was entering an Iraqi quagmire (Vietnam metaphors are in great favor among the world's dwindling number of tyrants), but he and his regime seem rather deeper in the muck of late. It couldn't happen to a more worthy bunch, and it's especially gratifying to see Khamenei, Rafsanjani, and the other mullahcrats swinging in the wind, as world opinion turns against them. It is particularly satisfying to see this crowd of old white men humiliated by intrepid women, one Shirin Ebadi — the unexpected recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the...