Free Republic

**SNIP** The Russia-interference-was-no-big-deal crowd also clings to the fact there’s no evidence of the greatest fear when it comes to election stealing — that hackers accessed electronic voting systems on election night and changed vote totals to hand the contest to Trump. And yet — buried beneath the headlines on Friday’s indictments — were two largely new revelations that dramatically elevated the possibility that Russian meddling wasn’t just morally and criminally wrong but actually went a long way toward snatching victory away from Clinton and handed it to Trump on Election Day. — Hacking of state voter rolls. — The...

Anthea Butler Democrats will lose in 2018 if they don't shut up about civility and shout about our democracy dying Rejoice, Republicans, you will have another majority on your hands, because Democratic messaging for the 2018 election cycle is nonexistent. Harsh? Not even. The unimaginative leaders of the Democratic Party — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez — have been playing nice and talking about the virtues of "civility," while the Republican Party has been accusing Democrats of backing Communism and supporting the violent street gang MS-13. (Trump has...

Mystery as IDENTICAL letters appear in 21 newspapers across 12 states slamming Trump's Supreme Court pick – and they're all signed by different people At least 21 U.S. newspapers ran identical letters to the editor opposing President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh this week Each letter was published with the name of a different 'signer,' claiming Kavanaugh threatens 'everything that we hold dear as a nation' Technique is known as 'astroturfing'; it's unclear who's behind it One editor says the woman who appeared to have emailed him the letter now denies ever sending it Three prominent liberal advocacy groups...

Top Maryland officials have asked the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help ensure that the state’s election system is secure after learning that a Russian-backed firm is linked to the Maryland state Board of Elections. Gov. Larry Hogan (R), Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) and House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) sent a joint letter on Friday to Homeland Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen asking for technical assistance to evaluate the network utilized by the state board. Miller and Busch said late Friday during a hastily called news conference in Annapolis that the FBI briefed them...

Coming off a contentious NATO summit and a trip to the U.K. in which he seemed to undercut the government of America's closest ally, President Trump took aim at another Western institution just days before his high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In an interview with "CBS Evening News" anchor Jeff Glor in Scotland on Saturday, President Trump named the European Union -- comprising some of America's oldest allies -- when asked to identify his "biggest foe globally right now." "Well, I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they...

LONDON – Thousands of Trump supporters and right-wing activists took to the nation’s capital on Saturday — a day after anti-Trump protesters had dominated the city. While the displays of right-wing support were nowhere near as large as the enormous anti-Trump march that demanded the international media’s attention the day before, it was still a significant show of support for Trump from those eager to counter the claim that Trump had been unanimously rejected by Britons. The day started with a small pro-Trump rally outside the U.S. Embassy, featuring numerous red “MAGA” hats and U.S. and U.K. flags -- as...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the American presidential election entered the final stretch in 2016, a dozen Russian military intelligence officers were scattered throughout Moscow, unleashing a massive cyber operation to disrupt the vote. That’s according to an indictment issued Friday that says the officers developed malicious computer code known as malware, hacked into Democratic Party computers and silently watched as unknowing staffers typed. The Russians stole the Democrats’ secret files. They took snapshots of their screens. They used fake emails to dupe Hillary Clinton’s staffers into exposing their passwords. And then, the indictment says, the Russians released their stolen information...

A bipartisan pair of senators are calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether Russian intelligence services posed as an Islamic extremist hacker group that sought to harass U.S. military families. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) wrote a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday asking him to investigate whether a hacking group called the “Cyber Caliphate” launched an intimidation campaign against members of military families in 2015. “If substantiated, the claims about APT28 posing as the Cyber Caliphate could be the first public evidence that influence operations have specifically targeted American military families,” Wyden and...

Friday, The View’s Hot Topics table, devolved into a shouting match between Republican hosts Meghan McCain and Tara Setmayer. The Never Trump, CNN commentator was a fill-in host for the day, and used the opportunity to air her grievances against Republicans who supported the President as part of a “cult.” McCain took issue with Setmayer’s rhetoric and the two sparred, as some of the liberal hosts chimed in to support Setmayer. Host Joy Behar led the segment by explaining Trump’s visit to the UK and his recorded interview with the British tabloid The Sun, where he derided Prime Minister Theresa...

GOP Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) on Friday said that if President Trump isn't prepared to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin "accountable" for aggression toward the U.S. then he should cancel their meeting next week. "President Trump must be willing to confront Putin from a position of strength and demonstrate that there will be a serious price to pay for his ongoing aggression towards the United States and democracies around the world. If President Trump is not prepared to hold Putin accountable, the summit in Helsinki should not move forward," McCain said in a statement.

President Trump and Prime Minister Theresa May held a joint press conference today in the UK. After brief statements, Trump and May spent about a half hour taking questions from a large group of assembled media. In the midst of an otherwise orderly press conference, CNN’s Jim Acosta demanded he be given a chance to ask a question. President Trump refused, calling CNN “fake news.”The way the Q & A worked was very orderly. “We’re going to take four questions each,” Prime Minister May said at the beginning. She then selected the first journalist from the crowd to ask...

Swamp regular Admiral James Stavridis has taken his best shot at addressing a phony issue: whether "democracy" is dying, killed off by President Trump, presumably, by offering reassuring words to the left and the Washington establishment about its durability in a cover essay in Time. Axios has the write-up and a photo of the cover. I suppose a lot of them are going to take grim satisfaction from it, given the level of hysteria on the left about President Trump's very existence. But it rather too cutely frames a canard. The left, including Time magazine, seems all in for the...

Or did someone throw the Washington Post a curveball? The White House released Brett Kavanaugh’s financial records yesterday as part of their disclosures for his eventual confirmation hearing, and the Post may have thought they’d found a diamond in the rough. Kavanaugh ran up some substantial credit-card debt, a potential hanging slider over the partisan plate. That is, until they found out what the charges were.Can we call this a swing and a miss? Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh incurred tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt buying baseball tickets over the past decade and at...

Despite a lack of evidence and fabrications Avenatti is hailed by the press as a Trump foe. This morning once again Morning Joe was joined by the perpetual cathode litigator Michael Avenatti, legal counsel for porn star Stormy Daniels. He was presenting his latest piece of “evidence”, purportedly connected to his case. This time he had a document that President Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen had received payments from a variety of companies, including one nefariously alluded to have the always dreaded “Russian Ties”. What wrongdoing was exposed, and what does this have to do with a skin-star’s NDA settlement? Those...

The lawyer for Daniels is using his client to get three hours of his face on NBC’s cable news arm........Avenatti. “We can have a whole show — If you’ll devote a show to what’s on the DVD, maybe we’ll release it.” We were reminded once again that this is a racket when Stormy Daniels did her part for #TheResistance and she appeared last weekend on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” Daniels and Avenatti continued to raise their national profile and capacity to profit off a scam with the eager help of NBC. Daily Beast politics reporter Gideon Resnick joked Tuesday on...

CNN political commentator Errol Louis, CNN anchor Don Lemon, and CNN commentator Margaret Hoover partying with Avenatti like its Impeachment Day!

Avenatti is shown yucking up with CNN's Don Lemon and Errol Louis, as well as with CNN's "conservative" commentator Margaret Hoover. Twitter pic at link.

Shortened title. Full title: Jim Jordan Goes Off! Fake News CNN Contacts Over 100 of His Former Staff and Interns Looking For Dirt Representative Jim Jordan was slandered over the past week for allegedly ignoring a now dead doctor’s advances on his wrestlers when he was an assistant coach over 20 years ago. The story appears to be another hit piece from the slanderous left and media elites. The law firm handling this case is none other than Perkins Coie; the same law firm that represented Hillary Clinton’s campaign and paid for the fake Russia dossier. Rep. Jim Jordan has...

Politics has become so mindless I’m almost ready to watch soccer. On the left, Trump is the root of all evil. On the right, the pro-Trumpers mostly just repeat themselves. So to make things more interesting, let a Trump supporter tell you how the Democrats can win an election. Spoiler: It’s not Bernie Sanders holding the party back; it’s Barack Obama. I know at this moment, it looks pretty hopeless. I don’t think socialism is the ticket, or open borders either. And the “Abolish ICE” crowd makes it seem as if the party of FDR and JFK has a death...

President Donald Trump, more than any modern president, freely expresses his racist views — whether it is calling Mexican immigrants rapists, asserting that immigrants “infest” America, saying neo-Nazis include some “very fine people,” preferring Norwegian immigrants to those from “sh--hole” countries or associating immigrants with crime in public and in private. (In May, The Post reported on an episode in April 2017: “Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he were at a rally, he recited a few made-up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, such...