Free Republic

Excellent interview (youtube video) with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia, who grew up in New Jersey and he doesn't even have a Jersey accent. :-) Do yourself a favor and watch it.

Oversight mechanisms for American aid to Ukraine are effectively preventing fraud and diversion, according to Congressional testimony from those involved. Nicole Angarella, the acting deputy inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said there is no evidence that direct assistance to embattled Kyiv has been fraudulently or otherwise diverted from its intended purposes. “I want to be clear that providing timely, impactful, and independent oversight of USAID’s Ukraine response is my office’s top priority,” Angarella said. “From our substantiated work that we’ve done thus far, we have not identified any instances of fraud or misuse with respect...

The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork ... Ambitious media frauds Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair crippled the reputations of the New Republic and New York Times, respectively, by slipping years of invented news stories into their pages. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we can welcome a new member to their infamous club: Hamilton 68. If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as...

A left-wing think tank erroneously claiming to track Russian online activity was responsible for thousands of bogus stories asserting the nation’s influence in US politics, according to the latest batch of Twitter Files. The Hamilton 68 “dashboard” was the brainchild of former FBI special agent and MSNBC contributor Clint Watts and operated under the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank founded in 2017 — shortly after former President Trump took office. The ASD Advisory Council included such figures as top Clinton ally John Podesta, Obama-era acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, and former...

Robert O’Brien, former national security adviser in the Trump administration, says that the Russians were willing to make a deal to release both Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed before Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. The Russians reneged on the deal after Biden was declared the winner of the election, according to O’Brien. The goal for the Russians was to improve relations between Washington and Moscow after a meeting in October 2020. But, when the election was called for Biden in November, the deal was off. The article in The Hill that reports on O’Brien’s comments does not mention an...

The infamous phone call between then-incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, like so many tales of Russian collusion, is not as it first appeared. In light of new evidence, it’s likely there’s no truth to the running narrative about the December 29, 2016 phone call that has been the basis of Flynn’s legal nightmare for more than three years. The case against the three-star general, concocted by Barack Obama’s corrupt FBI, centers on the accusation that Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions with Kislyak and later lied about it to the FBI. And now that we know...

Like many pundits, Michael McFaul took a quick break this past week from his usual area of “expertise.” Instead of pontificating 24/7 about the need to funnel massive amounts of uncontrolled arms into Ukraine, he adroitly pivoted to pontificating about the need to more stringently control arms in the US. McFaul, a former Ambassador to Russia who is currently working with the Ukraine government to formulate war-related policy recommendations, issued the following command: @McFaul To all the manufacturers of AR15s, please stop. Just do the right thing. And the rest of us might consider stopping to focus on a legislative...

Former US officials and diplomats in recent days have sharply criticized the Biden administration over a New York Times report based on conversations with senior officials that said US intelligence was helping Ukraine kill Russian generals. "Shut up about it," John Sipher, a former CIA officer who served in Russia, said in a tweet on the Times report. Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, in a tweet responding to Sipher said, "Exactly. No one should be talking to press about such things."

It’s not too much to ask that Congress debate and vote on whether to authorize a U.S. march to war that’s now well underway. The New York Times claimed this week that the United States is providing real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine that has enabled the Ukrainians to target and kill approximately a dozen Russian generals, and helped >locate and strike the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet last month. Described as a “classified effort,” the U.S. provision of targeting intelligence to Ukraine “also includes anticipated Russian troop movements gleaned from recent American assessments of Moscow’s secret battle plan for...

Last Friday I wrote an article titled, Seven Pillars of a Color Revolution. Here is a follow-up article to that piece. SNIP This is where we are in the Seven Pillars: 1. A semi-autocratic rather than fully autocratic regime – President Trump is not a semi-autocratic leader as proven by him not mandating edicts during the CCP Virus. However, our leaders from the Democrat party and Mainstream Media (MSM) are all calling him a Fascist, dictator, Nazi, blah, blah, blah. This step is done. 2. An unpopular incumbent – All we seem to hear from the MSM, Hollywood, and again...

Nothing will more effectively halt DemocratsÂ’ efforts at pushing our country into full-scale civil conflict than shining a bright light on their objectives for all to see. Democrats have been masters at messaging for decades. They focus on a single idea, they and their corrupt allies in the media magnify and propagate the idea, and then they all repeat it endlessly until it is accepted as fact. The idea Democrats are pushing today is that before voting has even begun, the 2020 presidential election is illegitimate.Why are Democrats working to undermine the election, rather than working to win it? On...

The prominent conservative figures — journalists and persons with ties to President Donald Trump — allegedly unlawfully monitored by the State Department in Ukraine at the request of ousted U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch include: Jack Posobiec Donald Trump Jr. Laura Ingraham Sean Hannity Michael McFaul (Obama’s ambassador to Russia) Dan Bongino Ryan Saavedra Rudy Giuliani Sebastian Gorka John Solomon Lou Dobbs Pamella Geller Sara Carter Judicial Watch continues its investigation of these matters and will update its reporting as the situation unfolds.

A staffer for Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence took a trip to Ukraine last month sponsored and organized by the Atlantic Council think tank. The Atlantic Council is funded by and routinely works in partnership with Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The Schiff staffer, Thomas Eager, is also currently one of 19 fellows at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Congressional Fellowship, a bipartisan program that says it “educates congressional staff on current events in the Eurasia region.” Eager’s trip to Ukraine last month was...

The origin of the Obama administration’s investigation of imaginary Trump-Russia collusion remains murky, but this much is clear: John Brennan, Obama’s Trump-hating CIA director, stands at the center of it. Brennan pushed for a multi-agency investigation of the Trump campaign, using as his pretext alleged intelligence from an unnamed Baltic state. That “intelligence” was supplied at the very moment Baltic officials had their own political motivation to smear Trump. “Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was – allegedly – a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US...

Watching Jack Bryan’s explosive documentary “Active Measures,” about Russia’s espionage program and the effect it had on the 2016 U.S. presidential election, could be likened to watching a 21st century version of Watergate. [snip] a bevy of interviews with key Washington figures including former CIA director James Woolsey, former United States Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former F.B.I. special agent Clint Watts, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Via these interviews “Active Measures” constructs a powerful argument as to how Soviet modern warfare tactics – “active measures” — shifted the 2016 U.S. presidential elections and weakened Western democracy. The film also...

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul discusses President Trump’s latest phone call with Vladimir Putin Watch TV shows, movies and more on Yahoo View

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul railed against President Trump on Thursday after he thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for ordering the U.S. to cut its diplomatic staff by 755 people. In his first comments on the move by Russia, Trump said he was thanking Putin because the decision allows the U.S. government to "cut down our payroll." “I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down our payroll and as far as I’m concerned I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll," Trump told...

"""Well Lookie Here=> Russian Lawyer Veselnitskaya is Pictured with Obama Ambassador to Russia – 8 Days After Trump Jr. Mtg."""" More information leaked out today on Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya told NBC News on Monday she was not with the Kremlin as was reported by The New York Times. She confirmed her meeting with Donald Trump Jr. was about Russian adoptions in the US. The law firm where Veselnitskaya is listed as managing partner, Kamerton Consulting, is based in a Moscow suburb and does not even have a website. A staff member at Kamerton told The Associated Press Veselnitskaya...

arly last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides. Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

Two op-ed columns, one from last week by former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and one from six years ago by CNN/Newsweek pundit Fareed Zakaria, highlight the mind-boggling failure of left-wing policy on Russia during the Obama administration, and indicate that our current president has led us down a dead-end street of endless disaster and disgrace. Fareed Zakaria On April 26, 2008, just as that year’s epic presidential campaign shifted into high gear, Newsweek’s Zakaria published a vicious, scathing personal attack on John McCain. Zakaria accused McCain of being mentally ill for advocating the ouster of Russia from the...