Free Republic

It is amazing the degree to which seemingly intelligent people hold an unshakable belief the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the election. Blind to the trumped up narrative unraveling all around them, oblivious to the absence of any evidence or even a substantive allegation of a deal between Trump and Russians, unmoved by every error and scandal the media stumbles into trying to push the story, they simply know it’s true. They smugly sneer and disdain anyone who points out the holes in collusion conspiracy. Last week’s guilty plea by Trump’s short lived national security advisor Michael Flynn...

CIA Director Mike Pompeo still believes Russia was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee, the agency said Tuesday amid reports that Pompeo met a skeptic at President Trump’s urging. William Binney, who worked more than three decades at the National Security Agency before stepping down as technical director in 2001, met with Pompeo on Oct. 24 to discuss a July report he co-authored suggesting DNC emails were leaked, rather than hacked. “I thought it was a pretty good hourlong meeting,” Binney told the Washington Examiner.

Hillary Clinton said she wouldn’t rule out challenging the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election if Russian interference turned out to be deeper than previously thought. “No, I wouldn't rule it out,” she said in an interview with NPR published Monday. The defeated Democratic nominee stressed, however, that she does not believe there is a means to officially challenge the election’s outcome.

In recent weeks, officials inside Germany’s security agencies have been fondly circulating an article from the website of Foreign Policy magazine that was published on Aug. 3 with the headline, “Russian Hackers Can’t Beat German Democracy.” The article speculates about what Russia could do to disrupt the German federal election, which takes place on Sept. 24, and argues that the Russians will certainly attempt to interfere. Notably, though, the magazine concludes that the Kremlin is unlikely to succeed. Germany, the article argues, is excellently prepared for dealing with any attack because politicians and voters alike have been sensitized to the...

CNN executives explicitly told their investigative team to stop looking into potential ties between the Trump administration and Russia following a series of high profile reporting errors led that to the resignation of three journalists in June. Executives transferred all reporting duties associated with the Trump-Russia narrative to CNN’s Washington, D.C. team in the wake of a retracted June report, members of the CNN staff told The New York Times. The report in question was removed from CNN’s website after the network admitted it could not stand by information that tied then Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci to a Russian investment...