Free Republic

During President Donald J. Trump’s years in the White House, his aides began to refer to the boxes full of papers and odds and ends he carted around with him almost everywhere as the “beautiful mind” material. It was a reference to the title of a book and movie depicting the life of John F. Nash Jr., the mathematician with schizophrenia played in the film by Russell Crowe, who covered his office with newspaper clippings, believing they held a Russian code he needed to crack. The phrase had a specific connotation. The aides employed it to capture a type of...

For decades, federal prosecutors have been told not to mount election fraud investigations in the final months before an election for fear they could depress voter turnout or erode confidence in the results. Now, the Justice Department has lifted that prohibition weeks before the presidential election. The move comes as President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr have promoted a false narrative that voter fraud is rampant, potentially undermining Americans’ faith in the election. A Justice Department lawyer in Washington said in a memo to prosecutors on Friday that they could investigate suspicions of election fraud before votes are...

WASHINGTON — The Democratic head of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, learned about the outlines of a C.I.A. officer’s concerns that President Trump had abused his power days before the officer filed a whistle-blower complaint, according to a spokesman and current and former American officials. The early account by the future whistle-blower shows how determined he was to make known his allegations that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine’s government to interfere on his behalf in the 2020 election. It also explains how Mr. Schiff knew to press for the complaint when the Trump administration initially blocked...

WASHINGTON — The White House has authorized the F.B.I. to expand its abbreviated investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh by interviewing anyone it deems necessary as long the review is finished by the end of the week, two people briefed on the matter said on Monday. The new directive came in the past 24 hours after a backlash from Democrats, who criticized the White House for limiting the scope of the bureau’s investigation into President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. The F.B.I. has already completed interviews with the four witnesses its agents were originally asked...

In early December, President Trump, furious over news reports about a new round of subpoenas from the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, told advisers in no uncertain terms that Mr. Mueller’s investigation had to be shut down. The president’s anger was fueled by reports that the subpoenas were for obtaining information about his business dealings with Deutsche Bank, according to interviews with eight White House officials, people close to the president and others familiar with the episode. To Mr. Trump, the subpoenas suggested that Mr. Mueller had expanded the investigation in a way that crossed the...

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for President Trump broached the idea of Mr. Trump pardoning two of his former top advisers, Michael T. Flynn and Paul Manafort, with their lawyers last year, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. The discussions came as the special counsel was building cases against both men, and they raise questions about whether the lawyer, John Dowd, who resigned last week, was offering pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation. The talks suggest that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were concerned about what Mr. Flynn and Mr. Manafort...

Comey confesses to leaking President Trump’s legal team may be prepared to show a trail of leaks to The New York Times by former FBI Director James Comey – dating back to at least March – in a pair of complaints set to be filed to the Justice Department inspector general and Senate Judiciary Committee, a source close to the team told Fox News. By Cody Derespina Published June 12, 2017 Fox News

There’s something odd about the explanation The New York Times offered for standing by a blockbuster report that former FBI Director James Comey characterized as “almost entirely wrong” in testimony before Congress Thursday. “Would it be fair to characterize that story as almost entirely wrong?” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton asked Comey during the hearing. “Yes,” Comey replied. And at another point in the hearing he said of the report, “in the main it was not true.” The paper of record reported Feb. 14 that U.S. intelligence officials had intercepted repeated communications between the Trump campaign and senior Russian intelligence officials...

Federal agents were still cataloging the classified information from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal email server last week when President Obama went on television and played down the matter. “I don’t think it posed a national security problem,” Mr. Obama said Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” He said it was a mistake for Mrs. Clinton to use a private email account when she was secretary of state, but his conclusion was unmistakable: “This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.” Those statements angered F.B.I. agents who have been working for months to determine whether Ms. Clinton’s email...

A string of emails that has been provided to the State Department raises new questions about whether Hillary Rodham Clinton has accurately described her use of a personal account when she was secretary of state.Mrs. Clinton has said that she retained no emails from her first two months in office because she used an account that she no longer has access to. She has said that on March 19, 2009, she began using the personal account — hdr22@clintonemail.com — that she relied on for the rest of her time in office.But on Friday, State Department officials said they had been...