Free Republic

Much has been made of the pre-dawn arrest of Roger Stone in his home in Fort Lauderdale. To make this arrest, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, probably having delegated the task to his subordinate Andrew Weissmann (who is known for this tactic), assembled a full-scale FBI SWAT team of 29 members, replete with long weapons, body armor, and even a flash-bang grenade or two. The arrest took place at "zero dark thirty" or 5:30 A.M. Nevertheless, a CNN crew was on hand to film the whole thing. Once upon a time, this level of force was considered necessary only to raid...

In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation. The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence. The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr....

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) is firing back at Christian Bale after the actor said during a Golden Globes acceptance speech that Satan inspired him when he played her father, Dick Cheney. While accepting an award in the “Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy” category late Sunday, the “Vice” star said to laughs from the crowd, “Thank you to Satan for giving me inspiration on how to play this role.” A chuckling Bale also blasted Dick Cheney and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as “charisma-free [expletive]” during his fiery remarks. After the awards ceremony, Liz Cheney, 52,...

President Trump on Friday said a Michigan congresswoman “dishonored herself” and disrespected the nation when she called him a “motherf–ker” while promising to impeach him. “I think she dishonored herself and I think she dishonored her family,” Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden, in response to Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s incendiary comments from the night before. “I thought it was highly disrespectful to the United States of America.” Tlaib dropped the expletive at a reception for the Move On campaign on Thursday night — just hours after she was sworn in.

Sometimes public silence can be deafening or, for that matter, misleading. For nearly two years now, the intelligence community has kept secret evidence in the Russia collusion case that directly undercuts the portrayal of retired Army general and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn as a Russian stooge. That silence was maintained even when former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates publicly claimed Flynn was possibly “compromised” by Moscow. And when a Democratic senator, Al Franken of Minnesota, suggested the former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) chief posed a “danger to this republic.” And even when some media outlets opined about...

The FBI has rejected a House Judiciary Committee documents deadline of Christmas Eve, saying it does not have the time or the resources amid the government shutdown to review redactions on 3,400 pages of transcripts related to an internal Justice Department investigation, The Washington Post reported. "Your committee has not afforded the FBI the time necessary to undertake a thorough review of this large volume of documents for classified, sensitive, and personally identifiable information," FBI Deputy Director David L. Bowdich wrote in his letter to House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., according to the Post. The documents related to the...

---snip--- "When we published the Steele Dossier in 2017, we were met with outrage from many corners -- a major news anchor and President Trump both deemed it 'fake news'; and several Russian businessmen, plus Michael Cohen, sued for defamation," Smith said. "As we have said from the start, a document that had been circulating at the highest levels of government, under active investigation by the FBI, and briefed to two successive presidents, is clearly the subject of 'official action.' Moreover, its publication has contributed to the the American people's understanding of what is happening in their country and their...

A specially appointed federal panel of judges has dismissed all 83 ethics complaints brought against Justice Brett Kavanaugh regarding his conduct at his confirmation hearings. The judges concluded that while the complaints "are serious," there is no existing authority that allows lower court judges to investigate or discipline Supreme Court justices. The complaints against Kavanaugh ranged from allegations that he had misled the Senate about some of his activities in the George W. Bush White House to his angry, partisan statements in denying charges of sexual assault in high school.

The Senate Judiciary Committee late Saturday released a 414-page report in which the panel members say they found no supporting evidence for any of the allegations of sexual misconduct made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh ahead of his confirmation. "Committee investigators spoke with 45 individuals and took 25 written statements relating to the various allegations made in the course of the #SCOTUS confirmation process," the Senate Judiciary Committee tweeted Saturday. "In neither the committee's investigation nor in the supplemental background investigation conducted by the FBI was there ANY evidence to substantiate or corroborate any of the allegations." The committee...

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Wednesday referred more than a dozen judicial misconduct complaints filed recently against Brett M. Kavanaugh to a federal appeals court in Colorado. The 15 complaints, related to statements Kavanaugh made during his Senate confirmation hearings, were initially filed with the federal appeals court in Washington, where Kavanaugh served for the last 12 years before his confirmation Saturday to the Supreme Court. The allegations center on whether Kavanaugh was dishonest and lacked judicial temperament during his Senate testimony, according to people familiar with the matter. Last month, a judge on the U.S. Court of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV019fkNOqs Michelle Malkin: 'Sincere' Christine Blasey Ford or Sincere BULLCRAP? ___________(snip)Michelle Malkin: “You know when certain phrases get repeated over and over again by the media herd .......we heard over and over again that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford seemed like a credible person, that she was sympathetic and seemed sincere ........ and maybe she isn’t totally lying, perhaps she’s just misremembering something ....” ******* LOL and BS! (THIS VIDEO is a great five minutes. We must not forget what these people tried to do, and they should be punished, or it will continue to happen.)

A writer for CBS's "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" on Sunday apologized for her "sarcasm" in a deleted tweet about newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Ariel Dumas on Saturday tweeted, "Whatever happens, I'm just glad we ruined Brett Kavanaugh's life." The post quickly went viral, as multiple conservative pundits retweeted it with critical commentary. Dumas the next day said the tweet was a "tone-deaf attempt at sarcasm." "The last couple of weeks have been hard for the country and for me personally," she wrote. "The complexity of frustration, anger and sadness can’t be accurately conveyed on twitter,...

The politically convenient, scientifically baseless theory that sexual assault so traumatized Christine Blasey Ford she mixed up her attacker is now something like common wisdom for many Republicans.

NSFW: https://twitter.com/svershbow/status/1048286595017834496 This person - Sophie Vershbow -- is the Social Media director for Penguin/Randomhouse. Their contact into: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/about-us/contact-us/

Democrats were cheered by the renewed FBI investigation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh and counted it as a win. Most Republicans were dismayed that the full Senate's vote on Judge Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court was delayed and saw this as a political misstep. They should change places. First, while the politically attuned understand this is just a delay game by the left, who are on record as willing to do anything to derail this nominee and force the appointment to be made after the November election, swing voters and many women do not. For them, there is no...

Before and immediately after the Senate narrowly voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court on Saturday, top Democrats vowed that they would continue to fight -- not only at the ballot box in November's midterm elections, but also through further investigations and potentially even impeachment proceedings afterwards. On Saturday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced she planned to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain documents related to the FBI's supplemental probe of Kavanaugh, which senators said showed no corroboration of the decades-old sexual misconduct allegations against him. FBI background checks on judicial nominees have...

Experts share what you can do for your mental health amid news that Brett Kavanaugh will likely be confirmed. Brett Kavanaugh is likely being confirmed to the Supreme Court. And for many, that news feels devastating. Several women have publicly accused Kavanaugh of sexually harassing or assaulting them when he was in high school and college in the 1980s. The discussion surrounding those accusations has been particularly difficult for sexual assault victims, who have heard politicians dismiss survivors’ pain amid a barrage of news coverage and heated conversations about Kavanaugh. The judge’s controversial Supreme Court bid has also triggered memories...

Pop icon and activist Cher declared that the Republican Party will “bite down hard” on the jugulars of Democrats and non-white people “till they bleed out” in a tweet sent Saturday. “HOW LIMP R DEMS WHERE DO THEY HIDE THEIR EVIL GOP CONG,SEX& [BEER] SCOTUS,& [PUSSY] GRABBING PRES IS MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL BUT GOP WILL BITE DOWN HARD ON DEMS,& NON WHITES JUGULAR’S,TILL THEY BLEED OUT” she tweeted, in an emoji-filled post. **SNIP** She has also tweeted that Trump is a “lying con man,” a “criminal,” a “conspirator, collusionist, traitor, imbecile, adulterer, hypocritical, narcissist, lecher, coward, charlatan, bully, decaying,...

Saturday Night Live has lampooned Senate Republicans, imagining them chugging beer in the Senate 'locker room' after successfully confirming Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The new SNL episode on Saturday aired just hours after the Senate voted 50-48 nearly along party lines to confirm Kavanaugh, who was then sworn in to the Supreme Court. The cold opened imagined the party-hearty hi-jinks of ecstatic Republican senators, led by a beer-chugging Lindsey Graham, portrayed by Kate McKinnon. 'How amazing is this? We made a lot of women real worried today, but I'm not getting pregnant so I don't care,' said McKinnon's Graham,...

More than 650 law professors, including 13 affiliated with Yale Law School and 21 with Harvard Law School, have signed a letter to the Senate arguing that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh should not be confirmed because of his “lack of judicial temperament.” The professors pointed to Kavanaugh’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week amid allegations of sexual misconduct, where the Yale Law School graduate defended himself and called the attacks a “grotesque and coordinated character assassination.” “The question at issue was of course painful for anyone. But Judge Kavanaugh exhibited a lack of commitment to judicious inquiry,”...