Free Republic

<p>President Biden cited executive privilege Thursday to block the House Oversight Committee from getting copies of five hours of audio recordings from his interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur on Oct. 8-9, 2023, as well as tapes of ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer allegedly admitting to deleting incriminating recordings of Biden discussing classified information.</p>

The “West Point for Democratic operatives,” which credits itself for aiding President Biden’s victory, hired a digital director, who previously shared that “terrorism is the dream of politics.” Johannah King-Slutzky landed the digital director gig at the Democratic-aligned The Arena during the Fall in 2019, a few years after she had made a post discussing “terrorism” on her personal blog. “Terrorism is the dream of politics — ultimate togetherness, ultimate realness — in a way that neuters criticism,” the post on JKS’s personal blog said prior to her hire. “The point is this: Terrorism (and American anti-terrorism) are compelling because...

Headline-chasing Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s vanity project of a trial against former president Donald Trump comes at a high cost for New Yorkers. The time and expense Bragg has devoted to the flimsy-as-a-cobweb Trump charges are indefensible given how many dangerous crimes go unprosecuted. Criminals roam the streets with little fear of facing jail time. Manhattan’s crime clearance rate is an abysmal 29.8%. In 2023, NYC’s 109,303 prosecuted arrests resulted in an imprisonment rate of less than 7%. While Trump is going to trial and faces six to eight weeks of “embarrassing evidence,” most New York criminal cases summarily...

Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson are investigating whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office misused federal funds. The two Republican senators highlighted multiple reports accusing Willis’ office of squandering funds, including from the Justice Department Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and other initiatives, on frivolous items such as “swag” and unrelated travel. “In Fiscal Year (FY) 2020, OJJDP awarded Fulton County nearly $500,000 to establish the Fulton County Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention,” Grassley (R-Iowa) and Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote in a letter to Willis Wednesday. “The Center has yet to open and the ‘building...

Car manufacturers are slowing their transition to producing electric vehicles (EVs), because of low customer demand and production problems. Mercedes-Benz announced to investors in March of this year that it is going back on its pledge to sell only fully electric cars by 2030. Instead, investors were told that the company plans to continue to make gasoline-powered cars well into the next decade. Fully electric cars and hybrids will account for only up to half of its sales by 2030. It appears that carmakers are suffering after committing wholeheartedly to the ideological fad of EVs, rather than introducing them as...

A teen robbery crew ambushed more than a dozen victims — most around their own age — during a months-long violent mugging spree in and around the Bronx’s Claremont Park, police said this week. Three boys, 13, 14 and 17, plus an 18-year-old, Sincere Johnson, have been arrested in connection to the string of callous crimes that began back in January, the NYPD said — adding cops are still hunting for at least two more suspects. Most of the victims — some of whom were punched or threatened with knives during the muggings — were teenagers, as young as 14,...

Utah farm boy Dylan Rounds’ cause of death was revealed Wednesday as the “killer squatter” accused in the disappearance and death of the teen in 2022 pleaded guilty to murder. James Brenner, appearing in Utah’s First District Court for a preliminary hearing, pleaded guilty to a felony murder charge and two counts of possession of a firearm by a restricted person related to Rounds’ disappearance on Memorial Day weekend two years ago. During the preliminary hearing, Rounds’ cause of death was revealed as a gunshot wound to the head. As part of a plea deal, Brenner’s first-degree felony aggravated murder...

A bill aimed at booting illegal immigrants out of the U.S. if they assault a police officer passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening. It's one of several pieces of legislation that House Republican leaders are putting up for a vote this week as part of National Police Week. The bill passed with a 265 to 148 vote, with 54 Democrats voting with the GOP. The bill is called the Detain and Deport Illegal Aliens Who Assault Cops Act and is led by Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J. He said in February when the bill was being introduced, "There...

The Madison Police and DNA Doe Project have identified skeletal remains found in a chimney in a music store in 1989. The remains were identified as Ronnie Joe Kirk from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Kirk according to investigators, was born in 1942, was adopted and raised by family members and attended high school in Tulsa. He was married and divorced twice, and fathered children. He had ties to Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, Alabama and Wisconsin. Kirk's remains were found on September 3, 1989. Speaking to Madison Magazine's Doug Moe in 2022, Good n' Loud Music owner Steve Liethen said he was working in...

The governing body that oversees high-school athletics in Florida could soon approve a proposal that would lead to high-school athletes getting paid through business agreements such as endorsement deals. The Florida High School Athletic Association held a discussion Tuesday about a potential change to the organization’s bylaws that would allow student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness under what is commonly known as an NIL policy. The 13-member board, which includes eight members appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in August, is slated to vote on the proposal during a June 4 meeting. “Student-athletes and their parents/guardians will be...

Mothers, law-enforcement officers and veterans are among people included in a new $5 million statewide ad campaign aimed at boosting support for a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow recreational use of marijuana in Florida, supporters of the measure announced Tuesday. Four ads will run on broadcast, cable, streaming, radio and digital platforms, according to the Smart & Safe Florida political committee, which has led efforts to pass what will appear as Amendment 3 on the November ballot. The ads say, in part, that regulated recreational marijuana is a better alternative to cannabis products sold on the black market.

* Keante Harris, an assistant principal at McAdory Middle, was cuffed Wednesday * His arrest stemmed from the January 2013 murders of two men and a woman * The three were lured to a home and tortured by Harris and others, cops said ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ An Alabama middle school principal has been arrested and charged in the cold-case deaths of three people that occurred more than a decade ago. Keante Harris, an assistant principal at McAdory Middle School, surrendered to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office Wednesday, on a fugitive of justice warrant. His arrest stemmed from the January 2013 murders of...

Four students were stabbed and slashed in three separate clashes on the grounds of Big Apple high schools Tuesday afternoon, cops and sources said. The wave of violence in a little more than an hour saw two students knife each other in Hell’s Kitchen at a building that houses several schools, another student slashed in a gang attack inside the Evander Childs Educational Campus in the Bronx and fourth person stabbed at the Queens High School of Teaching, Liberal Arts and the Sciences. The Hell’s Kitchen incident erupted during a 1:20 p.m. fracas where two boys were knifed — one...

The journey from cucumber to pickle is long, arduous journey.Some stars only get their big break after putting in years of work. Pedro Pascal played numerous bit parts before making it big on “Game of Thrones.” Bryan Cranston only became a household name after “Malcolm in the Middle.” Pickles, after struggling for decades, became a viral celebrity after starring in Dr Pepper. Empty cans of Dr. Pepper soda sit stacked in the warehouse before being filled at the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group Inc. bottling plant in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., on Tuesday, April 21, 2015.Pickles and Dr Pepper — the latest...

Texas murder suspect Karon Fisher was seen running over victim Steven Anderson twice before kissing and stabbing him on Woodridge Square Drive. https://abc7chicago.com/post/houston-... VIDEO AT LINK...................

A “woke” Washington, DC, judge is facing backlash after he opted to cut loose an 18-year-old accused of firing more than two dozen rounds from an AR-15 into a car full of people. Lloyd U. Nolan Jr., a judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, last week ordered Amonte Moody to be released on house arrest ahead of his trial — despite acknowledging that the teen’s alleged actions could have killed someone. Moody, who was slapped with charges including assault with a dangerous weapon, had allegedly sprayed 26 shots at an SUV carrying four people on Independence...

A second amended complaint filed Friday in Manhattan federal court by six victims of Jeffrey Epstein who are suing the V.I. government for alleged violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act claims territory officials actively conspired with the late multimillionaire to perpetuate his sex-trafficking scheme for their own gain. In effect, the U.S. Virgin Islands became “a government-sanctioned sanctuary” for wealthy men who paid Epstein “substantial” sums of money to travel from New York to engage in commercial sex acts with women also traveling from that state, the amended suit alleges. Epstein would then deposit the funds in his New...

ATLANTA — Several other co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case have filed their own appeals over the ruling that allowed the Fulton County District Attorney to stay on the case and are asking that Fani Willis be removed from the case. Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, Cathy Latham, and Michael Roman all filed appeals Monday in the case. They now join former President Donald Trump and former Georgia GOP head David Shafer in appealing the ruling. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Willis could stay on the case if former special prosecutor Nathan Wade stepped down after...

Crews are expected to conduct a controlled demolition Monday evening to break down the largest remaining steel span of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, a major step in the cleanup as officials seek to fully reopen the port’s busy shipping channel by the end of the month.

A postal carrier who federal prosecutors said was caught on camera stealing cash, lottery tickets, gift cards and other items from the mail in western New York has avoided a prison sentence. After community members in Rochester complained to the U.S. Postal Service that “their mail had been tampered with,” surveillance cameras were installed in the employee’s delivery vehicles and recorded her from January 2022 to November 2023, according to court documents. On 38 separate occasions, the mail carrier was seen rifling through nearly 90 pieces of mail she was meant to deliver along her route, court documents said. After...