Free Republic

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney publicly read texts from Fox News anchors to the Trump White House as some glorious Jan. 6 investigative find that will vanquish the former president and his followers. What it really did was typify what has been going on in Washington since skyscraper man took command. Two-term Republican President George W. Bush returned in 2009 to Texas, where in retirement he plays golf, paints and raises money for wounded veterans. However, he left behind thriving alumni who reside and plot in the comfortable, mega-wealthy confines of Washington. Former President Donald Trump called the town of revolving-door...

Rep. Devin Nunes released a groundbreaking document in early 2018 that shook up Washington and proved to be the beginning of the end of the Trump-Russia conspiracy industry. His memo, released while he chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, contained two stunning disclosures that are now back in the news.First, it confirmed that the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign funded a Kremlin-sourced dossier in 2016 that accused Donald Trump and his allies of various election conspiracy crimes.Second, the Democratic-financed dossier was used by the FBI to justify four wiretaps lasting one year on Trump campaign volunteer...

A legal foundation has filed two court briefs that assert that double voting by the thousands happened in 2016-2018 in Georgia and North Carolina, as the nation prepares for its first large-scale, mail-in balloting to elect a president. Anti-universal mail ballot activists say the two states are a tip-off for what will happen in the Nov. 3 election. Liberal journalists demand that the Trump administration, which opposes mass-mailed ballots in most states, provide evidence of fraud. The counterargument is that it is difficult to cite such examples when only a handful of states before 2020 adopted remote voting. Those unique...

Rep. Adam B. Schiff is promoting a new anti-Trump witness whose public allegations have been met with vehement denials and at least one lawsuit. Lev Parnas and his attorney have been lobbying to become a star Schiff impeachment witness in a Senate trial as part of the congressman’s drive to remove President Trump from office. Mr. Schiff, California Democrat and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, injected Mr. Parnas last week into the impeachment record. He and other Democrats released two troves of Parnas downloads from his various electronic devices including texts, emails and photos of himself...

The public on Tuesday will get its first look at Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman in action. And if he follows his closed-door testimony, he will knock his commander in chief while retelling his version of potentially damning conversations with a Trump ambassador. “I’m the director for Ukraine,” Col. Vindman told the joint House impeachment panel on Oct. 29. “I’m responsible for Ukraine. I’m the most knowledgeable. I’m the authority for Ukraine for the National Security Council and the White House.” “I’m certainly not the president of the United States,” he said at another point, when asked by a Republican...

Deposition on phones given to John Durham A new question about the mysterious Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud is: What did he say on a taped deposition handed to the team of special Justice Department investigator John Durham? Mr. Mifsud is a subject on Mr. Durham’s agenda. The Washington Times reported that Mr. Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, obtained two Mifsud BlackBerry cellphones. Stephan Roh, Mr. Mifsud’s attorney, told The Times he provided the deposition recording to Mr. Durham’s team in midsummer. Mr. Mifsud’s April 2016 conversation with a Trump associate ignited the FBI’s long Trump-Russia probe. In May 2018,...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: A seemingly unrelated criminal case in Washington has reopened a popular Trump-Russia guessing game: Who is Joseph Mifsud? The FBI says the vanishing professor is a Russian spy. Trump backers, citing Mr. Mifsud’s extensive Western intelligence contacts, suspect he’s an FBI, CIA or MI6 plant. The Washington Times examined Mr. Mifsud’s extensive resume and frequent travels, revealing a skilled networker far more wedded to the West than the East. In May 2017, 10 months into the FBI Russia conspiracy probe, Mr. Mifsud spoke in Riyadh at a high-powered terrorism conference. On his panel was counterterrorism expert Michael Hurley, who...

Democrats and their operatives sought foreign help for anti-Trump dirt on a number of occasions during the 2016 election and afterward, including the infamous Kremlin-sourced dossier and Rep. Adam B. Schiff’s attempt to obtain from Russians supposed photos of a naked Donald Trump. Democrats also reached out to Ukraine to collect political smut on President Trump and his aides. Republicans believe the Ukrainian intervention, which is now under Justice Department investigation, included the creation of a bogus “black ledger” whose disclosure felled former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Three Democratic senators pressured the Ukrainian government last year to help special...

The backlash has begun on top Democrats who pushed the claims of Russian collusion with the 2016 Trump campaign. Sen. Rand Paul today called on Justice to investigate the Obama aides who forced the false claims into public. “Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian conspiracy hoax!” he tweeted. And Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin demanded a probe into the efforts by the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign to spy on the Trump campaign. “I’m very concerned that it’s becoming more clear that the Obama administration was able to obtain a FISA warrant to...

The infamous anti-Trump dossier, once toasted by the FBI and liberals, has faded from Washington’s political dialogue. The FBI had embraced the opposition research written by former British spy Christopher Steele and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2016. Congressional Democrats frequently cited its unverified collusion charges in 2017. Today, Democrats seem to have left the document behind. References to the dossier are nonexistent in “The Threat,” the newly released memoir of former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. There is also no mention of dossier writer Mr. Steele or Fusion GPS, the investigative firm...

Senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr has provided a point-by-point narrative of his actions promoting the 2016 Democratic Party-financed dossier that conflicts with Rep. Adam B. Schiff’s official version, according to a comparison of the two. Mr. Schiff, a California Democrat who has promised a wide investigation of President Trump as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued a memo last year on the FBI’s early-on investigation into the Republican’s campaign. It was a counter to a report issued Feb. 2 by Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican who was chairing the committee. Mr. Nunes won White...

Paul Manafort thought he was in the clear in the summer of 2014 after meeting with federal prosecutors and FBI agents about his Ukrainian income, bank records and income tax returns. Michael Cohen was charged so quickly he never got a chance to meet with the Justice Department’s Tax Division to negotiate a non-criminal solution to his tax evasion, a court filing says. Today, both men stand convicted of tax cheating in indictments brought by special counsel Robert Mueller and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan in 2017-2018. The two have other similarities. Manafort and Cohen worked closely with President...

A woman who dated Brett Kavanaugh in 1998 has told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he never mistreated her, as alleged in an anonymous letter sent to Sen. Cory Gardner, Colorado Republican. The former girlfriend found the charge “offensive and absurd.” The anonymous letter writer said her daughter “occasionally socialized” with Mr. Kavanaugh in Washington while he was part of the Ken Starr prosecution team.

The lengths to which the FBI relied on the Hillary Clinton opposition research dossier to investigate her political rival came into sharper focus with the testimony of the lead investigator, FBI agent Peter Strzok. Mr. Strzok told a joint House committee last week that the FBI received from Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr a raft of documents — including sections of the anti-Trump dossier — during the investigation into Russia election interference. The first-time disclosure is significant because it confirms an unusual and continuing channel for collusion accusations that started outside the government with anti-Trump people and reached Mr. Ohr...

A senior Barack Obama State Department official gave the green light to an FBI agent in 2016 to meet with dossier writer Christopher Steele, a meeting that touched off a relationship that would fuel the ongoing investigation into possible Donald Trump-Russia election collusion. And, the sensational Steele allegation that led to an FBI wiretap on Trump volunteer Carter Page came from “pillow talk” with the lover of a Kremlin official, a new book says. The disclosure that Victoria Nuland started the process is contained in “Russian Roulette,” a book released Tuesday by Yahoo News report Michael Isikoff and Mother Jones...

A London court on Wednesday ordered Christopher Steele, author of the anti-Trump dossier, to submit to questions from American attorneys suing him for libel on behalf of a Russian entrepreneur. A senior master in the High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench, rejected Mr. Steele’s argument that British law prohibited an ex-spy such as himself from testifying. “On Mr. Steele’s behalf it was said that the examination would be prohibited by English law which is untrue,” said the 39-page order obtained by the Washington Times. SEE ALSO: Read the ruling requiring anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele to be deposed in libel...

A plan of action for how a second special counsel can investigate the FBI and Justice Department is spelled out in a point-by-point letter submitted by two Republican senators. They specifically want to know whether former FBI Director James B. Comey lied to them and had a plan to double-cross President Trump. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent a letter last week to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. They and two other Republicans want a special counsel with the powers of the Trump-Russia probe’s Robert Mueller to investigate suspected Justice...

Christopher Steele, the former British spy who fueled an ongoing investigation into President Trump’s administration, was a lot more confident of his charges when he wrote his now-notorious 2016 dossier than he is today in defending it in a libel lawsuit. While Mr. Steele stated matter-of-factly in his dossier that collusion between Mr. Trump and the Russian government took place, he called it only “possible” months later in court filings. While he confidently referred to “trusted” sources inside the Kremlin, in court he referred to the dossier’s “limited intelligence.” In recent weeks, the dossier of opposition research has taken on...

Fusion GPS, the producer of the infamous Trump dossier, is fending off in court three of Russia’s richest oligarchs by painting them as corrupt bankers in bed with President Vladimir Putin. The three primary investors in Moscow’s Alfa Bank — Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan — filed a libel lawsuit against Fusion in October. Fusion’s dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele, says two of them engineered cash bribes to Mr. Putin. The dossier also implies that the bank colluded with Mr. Putin to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by hacking Democratic Party computers. The...

Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm whose Democrat-financed Russia dossier fueled an FBI investigation into Donald Trump, pitched other stories about the Republican presidential candidate to Washington reporters, including an attempt to tie him to a convicted pedophile who was once buddies with former President Bill Clinton. Journalist sources told The Washington Times that Fusion founder Glenn Simpson pushed the idea of a close relationship between Mr. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting sex from an underage girl. The Trump-Epstein link appears purely social, far short of Mr. Clinton’s 20-plus plane rides on Epstein’s “Lolita...