Free Republic

Chris Farrell, Judicial Watch. “They were running an operation to undermine a candidate for President of the U.S. These are all violations of law. This is intelligence tradecraft to steer an election. There’s nothing more grave when it comes to abuse of our intelligence system... ...This is a level of criminality beyond the pale. This is such a grave abuse of power and authority, it’s like nothing else we’ve seen in our history. This makes the Nixon Watergate burglary look like keystone cop stuff ....The greatest Witch Hunt in political history!https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1004171953404628998

Democratic leaders recently rolled out a new theme they hope will prove successful this November: President Donald Trump’s "culture of corruption." As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put it when announcing the new strategy in May, “The swamp has never been more foul or more feted than under this president.” Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, added: “Instead of delivering on his promise to drain the swamp, President Trump has become the swamp." It’s a pretty good strategy. With Democrats hoping to take the House back and maybe even the Senate, a progressive national platform in 2018 that...

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has postponed a hearing scheduled for next Tuesday regarding the long anticipated Department of Justice Inspector General report about FBI misconduct during the 2016 presidential election. The report was expected this week, but has not been released. The new date for the hearing, titled "Examining the Inspector General’s First Report on Justice Department and FBI Actions in Advance of the 2016 Presidential Election," is set for Monday, June 11 at 2:00 pm et. It will be streamed live and open to the public.

WASHINGTON - A close friend of Jared Kushner has come under scrutiny by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for his proximity to some key meetings between Trump associates and foreign officials, according to five people familiar with the matter. Richard Gerson, a hedge-fund manager in New York, was in the Seychelles in January 2017, less than two weeks before President Donald Trump's inauguration and around the time Trump associate Erik Prince secretly met with Russian and United Arab Emirates officials, including Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, four of the people said. While in the remote Indian Ocean...

Taxpayers have spent nearly $17 million on the Russia probe since Special Counsel Robert Mueller took over the investigation last year, according to a new spending report released Thursday by the Justice Department. About $10 million was spent between October and March, the document states. That includes $4.5 million spent by Mueller’s team and another $5.5 million spent by the Justice Department on other expenditures attributable to the investigations. ~snip~ “At what point does this soon to be $20,000,000 Witch Hunt, STOP!,” Trump asked in one tweet.

Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages. They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires. Dems must agree to Wall and new Border Protection for good of country...Bipartisan Bill! We have put a great team together for our talks with North Korea. Meetings are currently taking place concerning Summit, and more. Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New York. Solid response to my letter, thank you! “This investigation involved far more surveillance than we ever had any idea...

Political conversations have grown increasingly nasty in recent years, and it may be spawning something even worse: a growing number of people taking their vitriol to another level by threatening members of Congress. In the past couple of months, the Justice Department announced action in four cases involving people who threatened serious harm, or even death, to federal lawmakers. Most of those threats were made online, reflecting just one way people can convey their most vulgar feelings toward those on other sides of public policy disputes. Most of the targets have been Republican lawmakers, who are in the crosshairs of...

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump: “The 13 AngAngry Democrats in charge of the Russian Witch Hunt are starting to find out that there is a Court System in place that actually protects people from injustice...and just wait ‘till the Courts get to see your unrevealed Conflicts of Interest!” However, CNN promotes the Mueller team in an undated and interactive post online. Their description of 18 team members would lead the casual observer to believe that this is an experienced team full of competent individuals. What CNN does not share is that the investigation is unconstitutional for many reasons with one of...

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Tuesday he believes the FBI acted properly with its use of an informant to speak with several members of President Trump's 2016 campaign. "I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got, and that it has nothing to do with Donald Trump," Gowdy said on Fox News's "The Story."

Sunday on MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said President Donald Trump’s use of the term “witch hunt” to criticize the special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into allegations of Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election was a “tactic” from Russia itself. According to the California Democrat, Trump’s repeated use of “witch hunt” was an effort he learned from Russia to get people to believe it is a “witch hunt.”

President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had admitted that the FBI spied on his presidential campaign, further escalating his attacks on the law enforcement and intelligence communities charged with probing possible collusion with Russia. "Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign," Trump tweeted, referring to an interview Clapper did Tuesday on ABC's "The View." But that's false — Clapper did not say that. Responding to a direct question from one of the hosts, Joy Behar — "Was the FBI spying on Trump's campaign?" — Clapper said, "No, they were...

It doesn’t matter what you think about Donald Trump — revelations that a major party’s administration was spying on another one deserve a seriousness that’s lacking in major media coverage. A recent piece by CNN’s Chris Cillizza encapsulates many of the absurd talking points adopted by an extraordinarily incurious media. And when I say incurious, I mean they’ve taken to actively dismissing evidence regarding a story that would be a huge deal in any other era. The persistent claim that Trump is abusing power for engaging in actions that are well within his purview is especially galling coming from people...

... In recent days the president, in tandem with his allies in conservative media, has launched a full frontal attack on special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian election meddling and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. But the president has provided no evidence to support his allegations. This latest unproven claim of a spy scandal now joins of list of other bold allegations by the president that so far have not proven true, including his claim that President Barack Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped, that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election, and that President Obama was...

President Donald Trump has long complained about what he calls a "witch hunt" investigation into his 2016 presidential campaign by "deep state" actors in the law enforcement and intelligence communities — a probe that he says was first designed to deny him the presidency and, after he won, to delegitimize or even remove him. Now, with all the tools of that federal government at his disposal — including some of the very agencies he's cast as enemies of his presidency and the American public — he is weaponizing them to make his case that he is the victim of malfeasance...

President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe into obstruction of justice by the president will wrap up by Sept. 1 because allowing it to continue longer could improperly influence the mid-term elections in November, according to a report on Sunday.

Mr. Mueller give it up. The only collusion with Russia, sir, is that of Hillary Clinton, as her foundation receiving zillions of dollars in quid-pro-quo schemes in exchanges for the uranium she gave them I don’t know about you, but for me, the names of James Comey and Robert Mueller have become symbolic of a delusional paranoia to where I am continuously overwhelmed by a chronic persecution complex as though these two were following me around everywhere I go – mind you, not nice at all. Time to go to the shrink maybe. To add insult to injury, as far...

It was just over a week ago that President Donald Trump and his legal team in their eyes got vindication -- a federal judge that questioned the scope of special counsel Robert Mueller's now one-year-old probe. The judge, T.S. Ellis, questioned the scope of the probe as he presided over a second case involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Ellis, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, caught the attention of many in that early May hearing after he poked, prodded and even appeared to question the motives of the prosecutor arguing against the effort to have the case...

President Donald Trump and his supporters are circulating an explosive theory: The FBI, they say, may have planted a mole, or "spy," inside the 2016 campaign to bring him down. The unverified allegation has lit up conservative media and earned space on Trump's Twitter feed just as special counsel Robert Mueller enters his second year in the Russia probe. But where did the allegation come from? Like many conspiracy theories, it appeared to grow out of a less sensational truth: U.S. surveillance on foreign officials - a common practice in the world of spycraft - likely picked up what's called...

President Donald Trump's allegation that the Department of Justice put a "spy" inside his presidential campaign to frame him is being widely dismissed as absurd by current and former law enforcement officials. But it would not be absurd to think the FBI might have sent informants to speak to suspects in their counterintelligence investigation into whether anyone in the Trump orbit was working with Russia to interfere in the presidential election. In fact, it would have been accepted procedure for the FBI. "The notion of fully embedded government operatives inside a campaign is hard to imagine under these circumstances," said...

WASHINGTON - Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office notified a federal court in Virginia on Thursday it had filed under seal an unredacted memorandum that is expected to shed light on the scope of his wide-ranging probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The filing, made as part of Mueller’s criminal case against President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was requested by the judge, who told prosecutors earlier this month he wanted to see an unredacted copy of an August 2017 memo written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein which fleshed out Mueller’s investigative mandate. In a...