Free Republic

Multiple reviews of whether FBI agents’ political bias affected the Russia-Trump collusion case remain in their infancy, but investigators already have unearthed troubling internal communications long withheld from public view. We already know from FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok’s now-infamous text messages with his fellow agent and reported lover, Lisa Page, that Strzok — the man driving that Russia collusion investigation — disdained Donald Trump and expressed willingness to use his law enforcement powers to “stop” the Republican from becoming president. The question that lingers, unanswered: Did those sentiments affect official actions? Memos the FBI is now producing to the...

(CNN)Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller said in a court filing Friday that they intend to present evidence at the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that a banking executive allegedly helped Manafort obtain loans of more than $6 million while the banker sought a role in the Trump campaign. Manafort faces trial on bank fraud charges in the Eastern District of Virginia beginning July 25. Until now, there had been no indication that his role in the Trump campaign would become part of the trial, and he had asked the judge to keep details about his ties...

Interview: Former Trump aide Carter Page speaks about the FBI's Russian interference investigation

A district judge on Tuesday evening tossed out a lawsuit alleging the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians and WikiLeaks to publish hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails during the 2016 presidential race. Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the suit largely on the basis of jurisdiction, arguing the plaintiffs did not successfully tie the Trump campaign's actions to D.C. "Campaign meetings, canvassing voters, and other regular business activities of a political campaign do not constitute activities related to the conspiracies alleged in the complaint," Huvelle wrote. "The same is true...

A federal judge tossed out a lawsuit alleging that President Donald Trump’s campaign and former adviser Roger Stone worked with WikiLeaks. “Plaintiffs assert that defendants engaged in a conspiracy with unidentified Russian agents and WikiLeaks to publish hacked emails,” the judge wrote Tuesday. “The Court will grant defendants’ motions to dismiss, deny plaintiffs’ motion, and dismiss plaintiffs’ suit without prejudice.” The suit was brought by former Democratic National Committee finance chief of staff and former LGBT finance chair Scott Comer and two donors, Roy Cockrum and Eric Schoenberg. Comer’s claimed damages included that the Trump campaign caused his grandmother to...

Special counsel Robert Mueller is tapping additional Justice Department resources for help with new legal battles as his year-old investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 election continues to expand. As Mueller pursues his probe, he's making more use of career prosecutors from the offices of U.S. attorneys and from Justice Department headquarters, as well as FBI agents -- a sign that he may be laying the groundwork to hand off parts of his investigation eventually, several current and former U.S. officials said.

A Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee says he is worried that the Russians “never left,” raising the specter that Moscow is looking to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections through cyber or other means. “I am concerned that the Russians never left,” Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) told CBS News when asked about his concerns about threats to the 2018 midterm elections. Quigley also alleged that Russia-linked hackers breached “somewhere between 20 and 40 state board of elections,” including the Illinois voter database, in 2016 and alleged that states are not prepared for future interference efforts by Russia. “First, they...

full title - Rod Rosenstein’s Right-Hand-Man Who Oversees Mueller Probe Abruptly Resigning from Justice Department The Justice Department’s senior-most career attorney, Associate Deputy Attorney General Scott Schools, is planning to step down for a job in the private sector, according to a source familiar with the matter. Schools works under Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and has had a significant role helping manage special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. NPR previously reported his departure. As the highest-ranking career official, Schools has served as a key adviser on many sensitive matters within the department, including the firing of former FBI Deputy...

The hearing would be the former Trump national security adviser's first court appearance since pleading guilty more than seven months ago. A pair of legal filings suggesting that special counsel Robert Mueller's office is almost-but-not-quite ready to set a sentencing date for former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn have prompted a federal judge to order Flynn and lawyers for both sides to make an unexpected trip to court next week. than seven months ago. The hearing set for next Tuesday would be the first court appearance for Flynn since last December, when the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief appeared...

The most under covered story of Russia Gate is the interconnection between the Clinton campaign, an unregistered foreign agent of Russia headquartered in DC (Fusion GPS), and the Christopher Steele Orbis dossier. This connection has raised the question of whether Kremlin prepared the dossier as part of a disinformation campaign to sow chaos in the US political system. If ordered and paid for by Hillary Clinton associates, Russia Gate is turned on its head as collusion between Clinton operatives (not Trump’s) and Russian intelligence. Russia Gate becomes Hillary Gate. Neither the New York Times, Washington Post, nor CNN has covered...

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that President Donald Trump's campaign and former Trump adviser Roger Stone conspired with Russia and WikiLeaks to publish hacked Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 presidential race. U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle said in a ruling Tuesday evening that the suit's efforts to tie the Trump campaign and Stone's alleged actions to the nation's capital were too flimsy for the case to proceed in a Washington, D.C., court. "The Trump Campaign’s efforts to elect President Trump in D.C. are not suit-related contacts for those efforts did not involve acts taken...

The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that found Russia interfered in the 2016 election in an effort to help President Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton is "a sound intelligence product." The newly released, unclassified 7-page report -- whose conclusions the Republican-led committee previewed in May -- put to rest some questions that had arisen about the integrity of the assessment and the political agenda of the agencies that authored it. "The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason...

President Trump called the National Security Agency's recently announced mass-deletion of call records "a disgrace" Tuesday, and appeared to link the purge with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of possible campaign collusion with Russia. The NSA said last week that it began deleting call records on May 23 from a three-year period beginning in 2015 after "technical irregularities" resulted in "the production to NSA of some [call records] that NSA was not authorized to receive." Trump suggested there was more to the story.

In its everlasting quest to bring down President Trump, the MSM’s latest best hope is Michael Cohen. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Cohen said that he puts “my wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will. I put family and country first.” Trump foes are taking that to imply that, rather than being willing to take the proverbial bullet for Trump, Cohen is considering turning against the President. On today’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough, speaking with Emily Jane Fox, biographer of the Trump children, suggested that Cohen could become Trump’s “John Dean,” the Nixon...

Flynn Judge Fumes at Mueller, Demands Flynn be in Court Within Days for Likely Showdown; Could Flynn Walk? The federal judge in the Gen. Michael Flynn case is fuming at U.S. Special Robert Mueller. Judge Emmet Sullivan has scheduled a hearing for next week and directed Flynn to attend. The judge could be perturbed because Mueller has failed to initiate a pre-sentencing report from federal probation. Such a report is the backbone of all federal sentencings and according to the court docket, should have been completed months ago. Flynn cannot be sentenced without a pre-sentencing report where he is allowed...

The U.S. was in talks for a deal with Julian Assange but then FBI Director James Comey ordered an end to negotiations after Assange offered to prove Russia was not involved in the DNC leak, as Ray McGovern explains. An explosive report by investigative journalist John Solomon on the opinion page of Monday's edition of The Hill sheds a bright light on how Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and then-FBI Director James Comey collaborated to prevent WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange from discussing "technical evidence ruling out certain parties [read Russia]" in the controversial leak of Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks during...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., warned that if Obama administration officials he referred to a congressional task force for testimony on the Russia investigation refuse to cooperate, they will face subpoenas. Nunes wrote a letter Monday to House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., with a list of 10 names from the Obama-era State Department and White House on Monday, urging them to interview these individuals in an "open setting." During a Monday evening interview on Fox News, Nunes emphasized that because all the people on his list are American...

ABC News’ Brian Ross — who was suspended last year as chief investigative correspondent for a faulty report on Michael Flynn — is leaving the network, Page Six has exclusively learned. ABC suspended Ross last December for a month without pay for a botched report on ousted White House national security adviser Flynn that reported President Trump directed Flynn to make contact with Russian officials. The mistake even sent stocks tumbling, and ABC issued an apology saying: “We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error.”

Legal experts say it’s likely special counsel Robert Mueller secretly gained access to the National Rifle Association’s tax returns as part of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to a McClatchy report. Mueller’s team is reportedly looking into NRA donors with links to Russia and investigating whether some donors used the organization to illegally funnel foreign money to President Trump’s campaign. The NRA spent $30 million backing Trump in the 2016 presidential election. NRA officials maintain that the organization has not been contacted by the FBI, but legal experts told McClatchy D.C. that it would be...

Michael Cohen -- President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former executive vice president at the Trump Organization -- has always insisted he would remain loyal to the president. He was the fix-it guy, the pit bull so fiercely protective of his boss that he’d once described himself as "the guy who would take a bullet" for the president. But in his first in-depth interview since the FBI raided his office and homes in April, Cohen strongly signaled his willingness to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York -- even...