Free Republic

Preet Bharara knew about FBI leaks two years before his office denied them. No one has been punished Preet Bharara is often mentioned as a possible U.S. attorney general in a Joe Biden administration after building a reputation as a hard-charging federal prosecutor and self-proclaimed ethicist teaching law school and dispensing morality on Twitter. But one of the last cases he handled as the chief federal prosecutor in New York City cuts against the grain of his carefully manicured image, exposing widespread leaking by the FBI — and knowledge of it by the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office — during the...

Newly filed lobbying records show Venezuela’s socialist government previously hired a longtime Democratic Party donor for $6 million at the same time it was lobbying to discourage the U.S. from imposing sanctions on the oil-rich nation. The documents, which were disclosed Thursday, show a U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil giant PDVSA agreed to hire Marcia Wiss’ Washington law firm in March 2017. That’s the same month it signed a consulting deal for $50 million with scandal-tainted former Congressman David Rivera. Wiss, an international trade lawyer with a history of donations to the Democratic Party, including a $1,500 contribution to...

You saw this right @FBI https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1325294917695000577 

Jill Biden was allowed to brush off The Post’s bombshell reporting on son Hunter Biden’s business dealings as “smears” and “distractions” in a softball interview on “The View” — even as evidence mounted that her husband, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, was heavily involved. In an interview on the ABC daytime talk show on Wednesday, the former second lady did not deny the allegations that her scandal-scarred stepson tried to leverage his family connections to land lucrative deals with overseas executives. But she also insisted the American people didn’t care about the Biden family’s murky deals with energy companies in Ukraine...

On Obama Adviser’s Disclosure Form: ‘Bermuda’ A lot of attention has been focused lately on Mitt Romney’s offshore finances in places like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. But the word Bermuda pops up on the financial disclosure forms of one of President Obama’s top advisers too. Valerie Jarrett’s financial disclosure form filed May 4 lists a line of credit from a Bermuda insurance company valued between $100,000 and $250,000. We’ve asked the White House what exactly this mark is, and we’re waiting to hear back. In the meantime we’ve spoken to tax experts who have said that the filing could...

A New York judge has rejected Jeffrey Epstein accuser Jennifer Araoz's request to have a list of his 'recruiters' after his legal team filed a motion to suppress the files and said the case was moot in light of his death. The 32-year-old woman, who claims Epstein raped her when she was 15, sought to have a court order release the name of the woman who recruited her to be abused by the billionaire along with a roster of his employees in on his alleged trafficking ring. But the billionaire pedophile and his legal team refused to name names and...

Just as the Senate is about to begin President Clinton's impeachment trial in earnest, Mr. Clinton sent $850,000 to Paula Corbin Jones today to settle the sexual misconduct lawsuit that started it all. Clinton Administration officials said a check for $850,000, the amount agreed to in November to settle the case, was being sent by overnight mail to Ms. Jones and her lawyers.

Pope Francis told leading oil executives Saturday that the transition to less-polluting energy sources “is a challenge of epochal proportions” and warned that satisfying the world’s energy needs “must not destroy civilization.” The Vatican said Francis held a two-day conference with the executives as a follow-up to his encyclical three years ago that called on people to save the planet from climate change and other environmental ills. Participants included the CEOs of Italian oil giant ENI, British Petroleum, ExxonMobil and Norway’s Statoil as well as scientists and managers of major investment funds. Their remarks on the first day of the...

Some of the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High are planning on using their newfound star power to get their gun control message out ... through a good page-turner. Sources tell TMZ that at least two of the outspoken survivors have been in talks with publishers for book deals. The deals haven't been inked ... the students are in the meeting phase with book honchos. We're also told that some of the students have been getting help from high-profile publicists to field requests and schedule media appearances. A lot of these kids have been all over the news lately, so...

Judicial Watch announced today it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Justice Department for FBI records about former Director James Comey’s book, which he signed to write in August 2017 and is set for publication in April 2018 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice, (No. 1:18-cv-00220)). The suit also seeks records of communications between Comey and the FBI prior to and regarding Comey’s controversial June 2017 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Judicial Watch filed suit on January 31 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Justice Department failed to...

Potentially illicit private performance bonuses — or political payoffs — between $30,000 and upwards of $50,000 possibly awarded to high-ranking FBI agents have caught the eye of the Inspector General, according to federal law enforcement sources. Your tax dollars at work at the FBI. The two levels for cash awards include the Meritorious award and Distinguished rank award, sources said. Recipients receive a cash prize of 20 percent of their base pay for Meritorious and a cash prize of 35 percent of their salary for Distinguished level awards. How many cash rewards were handed out among the FBI’s hierarchy? No...

Rep. Raul M. Grijalva quietly arranged a “severance package” in 2015 for one of his top staffers who threatened a lawsuit claiming the Arizona Democrat was frequently drunk and created a hostile workplace environment, revealing yet another way that lawmakers can use taxpayer dollars to hide their misbehavior on Capitol Hill.

A leading Democratic congressman settled a wrongful dismissal complaint for more than $27,000 in taxpayer funding after he allegedly fired the staffer because she would not “succumb to [his] sexual advances,” according to a new report. The congressman, Michigan Rep. John Conyers, is described as a serial sexual harasser who would prey on his female staffers in sworn affidavits signed by four of his former staffers. BuzzFeed News first reported the bombshell allegations and accompanying settlement after right-wing blogger Mike Cernovich provided the website with the documents. One former female employee filed a complaint with the Congressional Office Of Compliance...

When former President Bill Clinton received a $500,000 check from a Kremlin-linked bank in 2010 to give a speech in Moscow it served, to the FBI, as further evidence the Russians had unleashed an influence campaign designed to get access to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The Hill newspaper reported Sunday night that the FBI had been keeping close tabs on a Russian spy network that was trying to inch closer to the Clintons at the dawn of the Obama administration, with one spy – who was eventually arrested and deported – briefly posing successfully as an American accountant and...

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – The committee that raised money for last summer's Democratic National Convention used surplus funds to hand out nearly $1 million in bonuses for staff members as well as grants for Philadelphia schools and nonprofits, rankling some state lawmakers who ponied up $10 million in tax dollars for the event. The bonuses to the host committee staff came from a $4 million post-convention surplus and were disclosed in a Jan. 31 filing with the Federal Election Commission. They were first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer. All told, the committee raised $86 million in public and private money. Former...

Financial disclosure shows direct payment from Qatari network to Jon Ossoff Democratic congressional candidate Jon Ossoff has received over $5,000 in compensation from Qatari-owned Al Jazeera since January 2016, according to his recently filed financial disclosure report. Ossoff, who is hoping to win the seat vacated by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, has taken heat from Republican opponents for his ties to Al Jazeera, which has aired films produced by Ossoff's investigative film company. The London-based company Insight: The World Investigates (Insight TWI) has produced nine films for Al Jazeera since Ossoff joined as managing director and CEO...

Union leader says some stations continue to follow Obama 'catch and release' directives Some border patrol stations have been slow to carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement executive order and instead have continued former President Barack Obama’s “catch-and-release” policies, according to a union official. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, told LifeZette that he raised concerns Thursday with U.S. Border Patrol Chief Ronald Vitiello. He said he is confident that issue soon will be corrected. But Judd said as recently as Thursday, some border patrol stations were still releasing border-jumpers, often without even issuing notices to...

Mayor Bill de Blasio, persistently beset by legal problems and entering his re-election year, just did what any New Yorker in trouble might do. He called the cops. That is, he laid a bundle of cash on the NYPD’s principal labor union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, settling the city’s last major outstanding labor contract.

“Republicans in name only” or “RINOs.” An email from John Podesta to Huma Abedin that was released as document number 1078645 is about to turn the speculation that certain prominent Republicans who opposed Donald Trump into the truth that they were, in fact, not just disloyal to Trump and the party but were on Hillary Clinton’s payroll. The email, sent in July of this year, describes how funds were being diverted from Clinton’s campaign to the Super PACS of Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, and John Kasich.

It isn’t cheap to get on Hillary Clinton’s good side, but if you’ve got enough money to make a million-dollar donation to the Clinton Foundation, you are set. Say goodbye to federal regulations or bureaucratic red tape. Make a donation, get on Hillary’s good side, and you are in. This is pay-to-play, and it goes against every ethics standard in the book. No wonder Hillary Clinton lives by it. In his new book, Guilty as Sin, Ed Klein exposes Hillary’s pay-to-play scandals and how she turned the Clinton Foundation into a subsidiary of the State Department. It didn’t take too...