Free Republic

In a lengthy letter to the inspector general of the Department of Justice (DOJ), two key senators demanded answers on whether anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele was ever paid by the Russian government or other Russian sources. The letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked Michael E. Horowitz, the DOJ inspector general, for answers to 31 sets of detailed questions related to DOJ’s handling of various Russia-related probes in 2016 and 2017. “What connections are there between Mr. Steele and the Russian government or Russian intelligence community?” the senators asked. “Has Mr. Steele ever been...

RUSH: One other point that I need to make on this Jane Mayer 15,000-word piece. If you’re just joining us, the left has decided they need to rehabilitate Christopher Steele, and the effort has begun with a 15,000-word article in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer who has written books trying to do great damage to Clarence Thomas. She has tried to do great damage to the TV show 24 and its creators for inspiring torture at Club Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. She also did a seek and destroy book on the Koch brothers. And now she’s out with this...

Former British spy and anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele once alleged that Russian agents “within the Democratic Party” were involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee. The New Yorker reports: On July 26, 2016, after WikiLeaks disseminated the D.N.C. e-mails, Steele filed yet another memo, this time claiming that the Kremlin was “behind” the hacking, which was part of a Russian cyber war against Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Many of the details seemed far-fetched: Steele’s sources claimed that the digital attack involved agents “within the Democratic Party structure itself,” as well as Russian émigrés in the U.S. and “associated offensive cyber...

This is the relevant language of 52 U.S.C. §30121, which covers “meddling” in U.S. elections by foreign nationals: (a) Prohibition: It shall be unlawful for— (1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make— (A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election; (B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or (C) an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of...

As the Wall Street Journal observes in the related editorial today (behind the Journal’s paywall): “The 37-page indictment contains no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, but it does show a systematic effort to discredit the result of the 2016 election. On the evidence so far, President Trump has been the biggest victim of that effort, and he ought to be furious at Vladimir Putin.” The Journal editorial asks a good question: “The indictment also makes us wonder what the Obama Administration was doing amid all of this. Where were top Obama spooks James Clapper and John...

So let’s restate the likely explanations. Why did the Russians do this? Because they could. It was useful for them to discover how much they could infiltrate the political process in the U.S., and above all to sow chaos. Actually favoring a Trump victory over Hillary makes little sense on substance, because most of Trump’s foreign policy positions—cheaper energy, expanded defense spending by us and NATO, more missile defense—are averse to Russian interests. But an election result that leaves chaos in its wake works perfectly well whether Hillary had won or Trump. In that sense, the Russian operation has been...

Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted foreign citizens for trying to influence the American public about an election because those citizens did not register as a foreign agent nor record their financial expenditures to the Federal Elections Commission. By that theory, when will Mueller indict Christopher Steele, FusionGPS, PerkinsCoie, the DNC and the Clinton Campaign? Mueller’s indictment against 13 Russian trolls claimed their social media political activity was criminal because: they were foreign citizens; they tried to influence an election; and they neither registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act nor reported their funding to the Federal Elections Commission. First, if...

May 27, 2015 Loretta Lynch's Justice Department unsealed a 47-count indictment Wednesday morning laden with racketeering, corruption and conspiracy charges against 14 people associated with FIFA, the world soccer association, and international soccer organizations.

Every day, we learn about more corruption on the part of Hillary.  Lying about Benghazi, selling 20% of our uranium to Russia, and using an unsecure email server and lying about it are only the most recent.  We can look back on Whitewater; FBI Filegate; Travelgate; and attacking the female victims of her husband, Bill Clinton.  There is so much corruption that we are becoming numb to more disclosures. The latest is that Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer, friends and associates of Hillary and Bill Clinton, supplied information to Christopher Steele for his smear job referred to as a "dossier." Congressman Trey...

Justice Department official Bruce Ohr did not disclose Fusion GSP was paying his wife Ohr was demoted from his post after the information emerged Willfully falsifying government ethics documents can result in jail time Bruce Ohr, the Department of Justice official who brought opposition research on President Donald Trump to the FBI, did not disclose that Fusion GPS, which performed that research at the Democratic National Committee’s behest, was paying his wife, and did not obtain a conflict of interest waiver from his superiors at the Justice Department, documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation show. The omission may...

"""Democratic Sen. Mark Warner texted with Russian oligarch lobbyist in effort to contact dossier author Christopher Steele""" EXCLUSIVE – Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been leading a congressional investigation into President Trump's alleged ties to Russia, had extensive contact last year with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch who was offering Warner access to former British spy and dossier author Christopher Steele, according to text messages obtained exclusively by Fox News.

FULL TITLE: Senator Mark Warner and Entire Senate Intelligence Committee Compromised, Corrupt and Finally Exposed Tonight Fox News is reporting on the efforts of Senator Mark Warner to make secret and off-the-record contact with Christopher Steele in March of 2017. Warner, a rabidly partisan Democrat, is the minority Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Majority Chairman is Richard Burr (R-NC) and also corrupt as hell. Not surprisingly, Burr is covering for Warner. –You can read the STORY HERE– Throughout the entire story-line behind the ongoing conspiracy to destabilize the presidency of Donald Trump we have pointed out that Mark...

The House Intelligence Committee memo about 2016 surveillance abuses, released Friday, lays out grave evidence that the FBI wasn’t fully forthcoming with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as it sought an order to wiretap former Trump adviser Carter Page. It’s possible the FBI’s lack of candor was even worse than the memo describes. Democrats are disputing the memo on lots of grounds, but they’ve said little about the FBI’s failure to inform the court that the bureau had itself decided one of its main sources, dossier author Christopher Steele, was unreliable. Mr. Steele in October 2016 gave Mother Jones an...

Former CIA Director John Brennan had harsh words for House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes on Sunday morning, calling the controversial four-page “FISA memo” created by Nunes’ staffers “exceptionally partisan” and that Nunes has “abused the office” by refusing to allow Democrats on his committee to make their own rebuttal document public. “That Devin Nunes and Republicans denied the ability of the minority, the Democratic members of that committee, to put out its report is just appalling. I think it, it really underscores just how partisan Mr. Nunes has been. He has abused the office of the chairmanship of HPSCI. And...

snip: On January 4, Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the crime and terrorism subcommittee, sent a criminal referral to the FBI and Justice Department concerning Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the Trump dossier. In a cover letter, Grassley and Graham suggested that Steele might have lied to the FBI during his association with the bureau as he compiled the dossier. That's all the cover letter said. The referral itself, which was classified, made the actual case about Steele. Grassley wrote an unclassified version of the referral for public release — finally, the public could understand...

If the “well-placed” source found by The Sydney Morning Herald is to be believed, it seems former President Bill Clinton went into Hulk mode on a Swiss hotel mirror after hearing Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup. The Morning Herald reports : “Bill Clinton looked anything but happy as he strode into the Savoy Baur en Ville hotel in Zurich in December 2010. The receptionists could tell he was irritated, but had no idea just how angry he was. After closing the door to his suite, he reached for an ornament on a table and threw it at a...

...Baumgartner had been working alongside Simpson as a Russian translator for a New York law firm defending a Russian holding company, Prevezon, in a money-laundering suit filed by the US Justice Department in Manhattan. Owned by Denis Katsyv, a Putin-tied oligarch, Prevezon was sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act. Also defending Prevezon was Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who Simpson helped lobby Congress to repeal the Magnitsky Act by attacking William Browder, the banker-turned-human-rights-activist who championed it. “He speaks Russian,” Simpson said of Baumgartner, after Senate Judiciary Committee staff asked about “subcontractors” he’d hired. “So he would work with the lawyers...

To understand the Four Page House Intelligence Memo at the heart of today’s FISA Abuse stories, it helps to understand why the memo is needed. We wrote about the issue in a March 2017 outline called: “The Nunes Paradox” – SEE HERE As the year-long story has unfolded, there are two central components at the heart of the political corruption and weaponization of the DOJ and FBI: ♦First, corruption within the DOJ and FBI that included their use of unlawful use of FISA-702 exploits; and ♦Second, how that intelligence information was extracted, passed along to those outside government, repackaged, and...

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) on Thursday denied that she ever said she was "pressured" to release private testimony of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson. Feinstein, who is the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the transcript without consulting Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and said Wednesday that she was "pressured" to do so. On Thursday, however, she said she was not pressured and denied ever having said that. "I made no statement to that effect," Feinstein said about being pressured. BuzzFeed reporter Emma Loop pressed the senator further, saying that there is a recording of...

A former Trump campaign adviser claims the Obama administration used false Russian propaganda underwritten by the Hillary Clinton campaign to illegally spy on him. The material, he says, was used to frame him as a Russian spy, in a scheme to derail Trump’s bid for the White House and later cripple his presidency. The aide’s name is Carter Page, a native New Yorker and the main target of the controversial anti-Trump dossier, which is now the subject of a congressional and possibly criminal investigation. Depending on who you believe, he is either an agent for the Russian government or a...