Free Republic

Robert Mueller’s criminal probe of President Donald Trump, his associates and the Trump campaign has passed the 1-year benchmark, and the DOJ-appointed special counsel is no closer to proving Russian collusion or obstruction of justice than when he first commenced his investigation. What Mueller has succeeded in doing is wasting in excess of $20 million in taxpayer money. Actually, Mueller’s investigation may not have been a complete waste for it inadvertently succeeded in exposing the rot and sewage of the deep state. Thus far, five FBI and DOJ officials involved with Mueller and his McCarthy-like witch hunt have been fired...

Turkey’s lira fell as much as 5% on Wednesday (23 May '18), and it’s lost more than a fifth of its value this year... On Wednesday the (Turkish Central) bank lifted a key lending rate to 16.5% from 13.5%... Mr. Erdogan has wanted to keep interest rates low before the June 24 parliamentary and presidential elections when he hopes to consolidate even more power.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry has said it has removed an eight-month-old baby from a list of people killed by Israeli troops while authorities investigate to determine the cause of death. The ministry announced last week that Leila al-Ghandour died from teargas inhalation during a 14 May demonstration along the frontier, where it said Israeli fire killed more than 60 people. A doctor was later anonymously cited by the Associated Press as saying the infant had a pre-existing medical condition and that he did not believe teargas caused her death. Ministry spokesperson Dr Ashraf al-Qidra said an investigation was now being...

Oil prices eased on Friday as Russia hinted it may gradually increase output, after having withheld supplies in concert with producer cartel OPEC since 2017.

A Dutch-led international criminal investigation has concluded that the Buk missile that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014 came from Russia's 53rd Antiaircraft Missile Brigade. The Joint Investigative Team (JIT), comprising authorities from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Ukraine, made the announcement at a press conference on May 24 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. MH17 was shot down over the conflict zone in Ukraine's Donetsk region on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board. The JIT "has come to the conclusion that the Buk-TELAR that shot down MH17 came from the 53rd Antiaircraft Missile...

North Korea said on Friday it was still open to talks with the US despite Donald Trump's threat of military action after cancelling their June 12 summit in Singapore. Pyongyang described the US president's decision to pull the plug on the much anticipated meeting as "extremely regrettable". "The abrupt announcement of the cancellation of the meeting is unexpected for us and we cannot but find it extremely regrettable," Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea's First Vice Foreign Minister, said in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency. "We again state to the US our willingness to sit face-to-face at...

Obama’s former spy chief, James Clapper, is on a roll as of late. The ex-Director of National Intelligence has come to the defense of the intelligence community. Last week, it was reported that Stefan Halper, a longtime CIA operative and Cambridge University professor, spied on the Trump campaign, trying to make contacts with George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Sam Clovis. Yet, to Clapper, this isn’t spying. It was just a confidential source trying to glean information under false pretenses to see if there was any Russian collusion—and so far, there hasn’t been any evidence to suggest the Kremlin was tipping...

A woman walks next to a road sign to the US embassy in Jerusalem, May 11, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Ammar Awad. When Iranian Quds forces fired missiles at Israeli targets on the Golan Heights recently and Israel responded by decimating significant parts of Iran’s military infrastructure inside Syria, something remarkable happened. The United States, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, and United Arab Emirates all identified Iran as the aggressor. Bahrain even explicitly acknowledged the Jewish state’s right “to defend itself.” A decade ago, that would have been unthinkable, but the Middle East has changed in a very fundamental...

Already up on YouTube, a powerful, up-to-date message and a very appreciative congregation in Leipers Fork, Tennessee. The Cincinnati appearance of a few days ago is not yet up on YouTube but can be viewed here as I posted on the previous thread. The sound is very low, though, so you might want to wait for YouTube. Again, a good audience who loves his humor.

Vladimir Putin’s much-hyped nuclear-powered cruise missile is having trouble staying in the air. The Russian president announced the weapon in March as part of a package of new nuclear arms, but the unnamed missile has crashed four times in four months. The new Russian cruise missile takes advantage of a nuclear chain reaction for power. According to CNBC the missile uses a gasoline-powered engine, likely a turbojet similar to the one powering the Kalibr cruise missile (see above, using its rocket booster motor) to achieve flight. Although details surrounding the weapon aren’t clear, the new cruise missile almost certainly uses...

It was a typical December night in Moscow. The cold was biting, the snow thick and dry. In the Federal Security Service's headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, hundreds of intelligence officers met as they did every year to celebrate the founding of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police. Champagne glasses tinkled as the officers spoke in jubilant tones. Classical music played softly in the background. The hall grew quiet as Vladimir Putin -- the former FSB director who had been appointed prime minister a few months earlier -- stood to speak. "Dear comrades," Putin said. "I would like to announce to...

The “complexity” of the case warrants excluding the speedy trial law and delaying the trial, Mueller argued in Tuesday’s court filing. .... Former federal prosecutor and National Review Contributing Editor Andrew C. McCarthy told TheDCNF it was too late for Mueller to claim that the complexity of the case warranted a delay. “Speedy trial rights belong to the defendant, and if the defendant pushes for a trial within the 70 days, the government has little cause to complain,” McCarthy said. “If the case was too complex, the government had the option of holding off on seeking an indictment until it...

Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned along with her father, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, said in a new interview that she hopes to return to her country. “As I try to come to terms with the devastating changes thrust upon me both physically and emotionally, I take one day at a time and want to help care for my Dad till his full recovery," Yulia Skripal told Reuters. "In the longer term, I hope to return home to my country,” she added. Skripal is currently in a secret location in London being protected by the British state, according to Reuters....

Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) is ripping the White House over high gas prices, arguing President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal is putting a pinch on middle class wallets. “According to energy analysts and experts, President Trump’s reckless decision to pull out of the Iran deal has led to higher oil prices,” Schumer said at a press conference held at an Exxon filling station on Capitol Hill, where a gallon of regular costs $3.89. “These higher oil prices are translating directly to soaring gas prices, something we know disproportionately hurts middle- and lower-income people,” Schumer...

President Trump on Wednesday demanded that federal law enforcement officials show "total transparency" about sensitive information related to the earliest days of the Russia probe."What I want from Rod, from the FBI, from everybody — we want transparency," Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, referring to his embattled deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. The president spoke one day before senior law enforcement and intelligence leaders are set to meet with Republican lawmakers to discuss classified information related to a confidential source who helped advance the probe into Trump's campaign. No Democrats were invited to the...

Sources tell The Daily Caller several FBI agents want congressional subpoenas to testify about the agency’s problems. The sources claim there is a demand within the agency to prosecute former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. They also say the bureau has become totally politicized. The subpoenas are desired by the FBI agents because it requires Congress to pay for their legal fees and protects them from agency retribution. Many agents in the FBI want Congress to subpoena them so they can reveal problems caused by former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, three people in...

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) on Wednesday criticized the White House for excluding Democrats from a meeting with top intelligence officials about a confidential FBI source in the Russia probe. “This is not right. Briefings like this should be bipartisan,” Flake tweeted. Flake, a Republican who is retiring from Congress when his term ends in January, has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration. Etc...

The Trump-Russia investigation did not originate with Carter Page or George Papadopoulos. It originated with the Obama administration. Exactly when is the “late Spring”? Of all the questions that have been asked about what we’ve called the “Origination Story” of the Trump-Russia investigation, that may be the most important one. It may be the one that tells us when the Obama administration first formed the Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative. See, it has always been suspicious that the anonymous current and former government officials who leak classified information to their media friends have been unable to coordinate their spin on the start...

Part 1: George Papadopoulos and Josef Mifsud Inaction. It's been rattling around my head for a long time. Why was there no action? Why didn't obama do something? barack obama was warned about Russian meddling in 2014. The Obama administration received multiple warnings from national security officials between 2014 and 2016 that the Kremlin was ramping up its intelligence operations and building disinformation networks it could use to disrupt the U.S. political system, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials. As early as 2014, the administration received a report that quoted a well-connected Russian source as...

Who is the FBI spy that was trying to glean information on the Trump campaign? Well, reportedly, it’s longtime CIA operative Stefan Halper. And no, it wasn’t leaked. If this is true, and most likely it is, there’s enough public information on him, along with the news media leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that confirmed his identity. They were as subtle as a sledgehammer.Last week, it was reported that the FBI had spied on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. It was later revealed by Axios that Halper had tried to get a top-level job in the administration...