Free Republic

Ukraine’s shortage of ammunition and military equipment resulting from the US and its allies’ struggle to resupply the country’s military is having an increasingly dire effect on the battlefield, US and NATO officials are warning, as Russia intensifies its attacks on Kyiv’s dwindling air defenses knowing that they likely won’t be replenished anytime soon. The Ukrainian military is “experiencing shortages in air defense munitions, mostly in the medium to long range,” a NATO official said on Wednesday. “It’s not just that we know that. It’s that Russia knows that. So Russia is using drones and missiles in ways that are...

What should be the attitude of the media towards someone notable for being the purveyor of the biggest election 2020 fake news story? Shun them? That would be the correct attitude for such journalism malpractice. However, in the case of CNN it actually promoted such a person. Natasha Bertrand who was the main person behind promoting the fake news story in Politico that the New York Post report in October 2020 revealing the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop was a result of Russian disinformation.The CNN announcement on Tuesday of Bertrand's promotion on X (which everyone still calls Twitter) went over...

Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week’s revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents. Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. Blinken and Morell...

Russia has been capturing some of the US and NATO-provided weapons and equipment left on the battlefield in Ukraine and sending them to Iran, where the US believes Tehran will try to reverse-engineer the systems, four sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Over the last year, US, NATO and other Western officials have seen several instances of Russian forces seizing smaller, shoulder-fired weapons equipment including Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft systems that Ukrainian forces have at times been forced to leave behind on the battlefield, the sources told CNN. In many of those cases, Russia has then flown the...

Russia carried out a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears to have failed while President Joe Biden was in Ukraine on Monday, according to two US officials familiar with the matter. Russia notified the United States in advance of the launch through deconfliction lines, one official said. Another official said that the test did not pose a risk to the United States and that the US did not view the test as an anomaly or an escalation. The test of the heavy SARMAT missile – nicknamed the Satan II in the West and capable of delivering multiple nuclear...

It's now an infamous headline among conservatives and a sore spot for Politico. But at the time, the October 19, 2020, story by Natasha Bertrand had its intended bombshell effect with this headline: "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." Now former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says Politico "deliberately distorted" the letter he and more than 50 others – many of them open Joe Biden supporters – signed. Critics are wondering why the players in the story are speaking out more than two years later – just as House Republicans are investigating the...

Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Cliff Sims on Monday ripped Politico for publishing a “fake headline” that claimed the “Biden admin offers to brief Trump officials on past Chinese spy balloon incursions.” To distract from President Joe Biden’s hesitation to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon until it crossed the continental United States, the establishment media has claimed in recent days that at least three Chinese spy balloons flew over U.S. airspace during the Trump administration. Former Trump administration officials have denied those claims. The Politico article from Sunday alleged the “Biden administration is willing to brief former...

The US Treasury Department will designate the Russian mercenary organization Wagner Group as a “transnational criminal organization” and will impose additional sanctions next week against the group and its support network across the world, the White House said on Friday. “These actions recognize the transcontinental threat that Wagner poses, including through its ongoing pattern of serious criminal activity,” National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told reporters on Friday, ahead of the Treasury Department announcement. Along with the new sanctions, the US has released newly declassified photos of Russian railcars traveling from Russia to North Korea and back...

In the buildup to the current Ukrainian counteroffensive, the US urged Kyiv to keep the operation limited in both its objectives and its geography to avoid getting overextended and bogged down on multiple fronts, multiple US and western officials and Ukrainian sources tell CNN. Those discussions involved engaging in "war-gaming" with Kyiv, the sources said -- analytical exercises that were intended to help the Ukrainian forces understand what force levels they would need to muster to be successful in different scenarios. The Ukrainians were initially considering a broader counteroffensive, but narrowed their mission to the south, in the Kherson region,...

White House officials are losing confidence that Ukraine will ever be able to take back all of the land it has lost to Russia over the past four months of war, US officials told CNN, even with the heavier and more sophisticated weaponry the US and its allies plan to send. Advisers to President Joe Biden have begun debating internally how and whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should shift his definition of a Ukrainian “victory” – adjusting for the possibility that his country has shrunk irreversibly.

The Biden administration is preparing to step up the kind of weaponry it is offering Ukraine by sending advanced, long-range rocket systems that are now the top request from Ukrainian officials, multiple officials say. The administration is leaning toward sending the systems as part of a larger package of military and security assistance to Ukraine, which could be announced as soon as next week.

A White House staffer and former Texas state representative are among those suing several participants of a "Trump Train" that allegedly harassed a Biden campaign bus last October in Texas, claiming in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the Trump supporters engaged in coordinated, illegal political intimidation in violation of the Ku Klux Klan Act. The complaint was filed on behalf White House staffer, David Gins; former Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis; former Biden campaign volunteer Eric Cervini; and the driver of the Biden campaign bus, Timothy Holloway. The plaintiffs wrote in their complaint filed in the Western District of Texas...

John Brennan’s long-time advisor Nick Shapiro put out a statement yesterday at the conclusion of Brennan’s eight-hour interview with John Durham and his investigators. It might all be true. All I have are opinions on the text and circumstances. But I also know that the CIA is an institution designed to engage in manipulation using lies and deception — in a good way. It’s how they accomplish their mission in defense of the country. John Brennan is an embodiment of the CIA — it’s all he’s ever known. Its ethos oozes from his pores. John Brennan wanted to send a...

Senior Counterterrorism White House official Kash Patel has filed a $25 million defamation lawsuit in Virginia court, accusing Rep. Adam Schiff of acting "in concert" with Politico by illegally leaking false information relating to the ongoing impeachment inquiry. The lawsuit was filed against Politico reporter Natasha Bertrand and publisher/executive chairman Robert Allbritton and accuses them of defaming Patel.

EXCLUSIVE: The impeachment inquiry against President Trump has triggered a wave of charges, countercharges, court battles, subpoenas and legal threats. Now it has produced its first libel suit. A White House official on Monday sued Politico and one of its reporters over stories and tweets that he says falsely accuse him of “lying, deceit and unethical conduct.” Kash Patel, the National Security Council’s senior counterterrorism director, is seeking more than $25 million in damages in the suit filed in Virginia. We have reached out to Politico for comment. The lawsuit also names Natasha Bertrand, a Politico reporter and MSNBC contributor,...

President Donald Trump’s new pick to lead the country’s vast intelligence apparatus fell into favor with the White House as a longtime, vocal critic of the Russia investigation and the officials who launched it. But John Ratcliffe, the congressman Trump has tapped to fight the “deep state” from within, has worked closely with one of the men Russian President Vladimir Putin wants most to see in prison: Bill Browder, an American-born businessman who has been on a decade-long campaign to expose Russian corruption. Ratcliffe was one of our lawyers at Ashcroft dealing with the fallout from Magnitsky,” Browder told POLITICO...

Perhaps no single reaction Friday night to the conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation rivaled that of MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews, who was apoplectic, inconsolable, and irate at the notion the Mueller team will not offer any further indictments in hopes of criminal charges concerning Russian collusion. And even his most adored guests couldn’t avoid his scorn. Somewhere along the way, it never occurred to MSNBC that maybe a call should have been placed to Barack Obama to help calm Matthews down. Maybe that would have helped. It was clear that Matthews was having a hard time when...

Former Infowars editor and author Jerome Corsi has told CNN he will reject a plea deal that has been offered to him by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. “They can put me in prison the rest of my life. I am not going to sign a lie,” Corsi said in a phone call with CNN. When asked what would happen now that he is refusing the plea deal, Corsi responded: “I don’t know.” According to The Atlantic staff writer, Natasha Bertrand, Corsi told her he would not accept Mueller’s plea deal on one count of perjury because it would require him...

Here’s a little tidbit from yesterday’s Michael Cohen hearing that’s pretty interesting… According to reports from inside the courtroom, Judge Kimba Wood was ready to allow Michael Cohen to submit the name of his 3rd client — who we now know is Sean Hannity — under seal, but an attorney for CNN and the New York Times convinced her otherwise. From Natasha Bertrand, The Atlantic:

Special counsel Robert Mueller has abruptly reversed course on a bail agreement his office struck with Paul Manafort's legal team last week that would have allowed him to be released from GPS monitoring. Manafort evidently failed to tell the government that he was ghost-writing a draft op-ed about his work in Ukraine as late as November 30. He was working on it with "a longtime Russian colleague" who is "assessed to have ties to Russian intelligence," according to the special counsel's court filing. That colleague was likely Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian-Ukrainian citizen and longtime protege of Manafort who he had...