Free Republic

A coalition of news outlets, including CNN, The New York Times, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post, want the federal judge presiding over the Paul Manafort trial to unseal the names and addresses of the jurors deliberating on the case. The judge, T.S. Ellis III, agreed to hear arguments about the disclosure during a hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday. “A thirsty press is essential to a free county,” Ellis said in court when addressing the media companies’ motion. He also urged the news outlets, which are being represented by the firm Ballard Spahr, to appeal his decision should he rule...

The anti-Trump cable news network has a long history of doxxing threats and harassment. In a motion filed in federal court on Thursday, CNN and several other media outlets requested that the court release the names and home addresses of all jurors in the Paul Manafort fraud case. Jurors haven not yet rendered a verdict on any of the 18 charges against Manafort, who briefly served as President Donald Trump’s campaign manager in 2016. The motion — filed on behalf of CNN, Washington Post, BuzzFeed, POLITICO, New York Times, NBC Universal, and the Associated Press — asks the court to...

The Trump White House is planning an event next week to honor federal immigration agents — even as more than 500 migrant children remain separated from their parents after being separated at the border. The “Salute to the Heroes of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs [and] Border Protection" is scheduled for Aug. 20 in the East Room, an administration official confirmed, in the latest signal that the Trump administration anticipates the midterm fallout from its zero-tolerance border policy very differently from its critics. The ceremony is ready-made to provoke ire from opponents of the zero tolerance policy, some...

Joe Biden is leading the Democratic field in some early polls asking voters about the party’s prospective presidential candidates in 2020. But in his old stomping grounds in the U.S. Senate, there are plenty of skeptics who point to the former vice president’s age, his support for the Iraq War and his two failed presidential bids as reasons to doubt he would be successful. “It’s hard to see someone [winning] who voted for the Iraq war. People are looking to turn the page,” one senior Democratic aide said. A second senior Democratic aide said “polls show that voters want someone...

Former presidential nominee Mitt Romney recently hosted a donor meeting for former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz who has been reportedly considering a run for president as a Democrat in 2020. Politico’s Ben Schrekinger said the event did not go well and that many left uninspired by the potential nominee. “Will there be some segment of the customer base that decides, ‘I’m not going to go to Starbucks anymore should he become a candidate,” Mark Kalinowski, president of Kalinowski Equity Research, asked Politico. “You have to think about the employees. You have to think about the shareholders, everybody who might be...

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz — who is contemplating a presidential run as a Democrat — recently attended a private gathering of political donors organized by Mitt Romney, according to a report at Politico. Politico’s Ben Schrekinger writes that the donors, “convened by” Romney, were unimpressed with the would-be candidate: Wall Street analysts are wary, and company leadership is nervous, about the effect a Democratic bid by its chairman emeritus could have on Starbucks’ business, given its bipartisan customer base. If that weren’t discouraging enough, his retirement last month set off a boomlet of pundits urging him not to run. And...

n a major story that came and went, President Obama shut down a major drug operation run by Hezb'allah because he didn't want to upset Iran's mullahs and endanger his Iran deal. Seems the Iran deal was considerably more important to his "legacy" than any concern about drug-dealing, the opioid epidemic, or just the idea of putting terrorists who finance themselves through the global drug trade out of business. Politico did the story about how Obama shut down Project Cassandra, so it should have gotten attention, yet it didn't. The whole thing recalls something security expert Rachel Ehrenfeld memorably told...

**SNIP** Many people wanted to know whether two-time cancer survivor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest and perhaps the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court, had enough gas in the tank to outlast the Trump presidency, or whether Trump would get a chance to fundamentally alter the balance of the court by replacing her, a possibility he dangled successfully to entice wary Republicans to vote him. **SNIP** Since Trump’s election, Ginsburg’s continued survival has become a matter of severe anxiety for liberals, many of whom pressured her in vain to resign during the Obama years to ensure that a Democrat...

Beto O’Rourke is running to replace Ted Cruz. Literally. Sweat pours off his lean, 6’ 4”-frame as the El Paso Democrat jogs along the southern bank of the Trinity River surrounded by 300-odd supporters and curious voters jogging along with him. Incredibly, they have shown up at 8 a.m. on a Sunday to join him for a double shot of politics and cardio. In between panting breaths, O’Rourke explains to me the origins of this novel campaign event, which has him running several miles under the Texas sun, stopping in the middle to take questions and lingering at the end...

Black female leaders and allies expressed their “deep disappointment“ with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for their “recent failure to protect“ Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) “from unwarranted attacks from the Trump administration and others in the GOP.“ “We write to share our profound indignation and deep disappointment over your recent failure to protect Congresswoman Waters from unwarranted attacks from the Trump Administration and others in the GOP,” the women wrote in a letter sent Tuesday. “That failure was further compounded by your decision to unfairly deride her as being ‘uncivil‘ and ‘un-American.‘“ “In doing...

Just when you thought contemporary journalism couldn't sink any lower, along comes Ali Watkins, now 26, a reporter for the New York Times whose rapid rise through reporting's corrupt and partisan ranks includes stints at the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Politico. Back in February, Ms. Watkins suddenly became the object of official attention when the feds seized her email and phone records as part of an investigation into a prominent Senate staffer, James Wolfe -- the former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee and a Democrat, of course. Then, in June, Wolfe was arrested and charged with lying...

A CBS News poll conducted between June 19 and June 22 provides the latest piece of good news for Republicans hoping to beat back a predicted "blue wave." Among likely voters, Trump has an approval rating of 53 percent in the poll while 48 percent disapprove of the president's job performance. The online survey of 1,002 registered voted - conducted for CBS News by YouGov - comes on the heels of a Politico poll released last week that had Trump at 48 percent approval in Florida and 49 percent disapproval. Factoring in the margin of error in both polls, Trump...

President Donald Trump heads to Capitol Hill Tuesday evening to rally House Republicans behind an immigration bill he panned just five days ago. Now Republicans have to decide: Which Trump do they believe? Speaker Paul Ryan and his top lieutenants are well aware that only the president can give conservatives cover to vote for a bill that includes a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers — a huge leap for those who once dismissed that idea as “amnesty.” It’s why leadership invited Trump for a rare meeting with the entire Republican conference, just days after he indicated he might veto the...

Talk about blaming the victim! Sarah Sanders tweeted today about having been kicked out of a restaurant by the owner because she works for President Trump. The Politico story on the incident quotes Sanders’ waiter confirming the incident. But instead of condemning the restaurant, Politico criticizes Sanders: “[T]he tweet qualified as an uncommonly specific attack from an official White House account on a private business.”Get the rest of the story here.

White House chief of staff John Kelly has loosened his grip amid a worsening relationship with President Trump, Politico reported late Sunday.The news outlet reported that Kelly has essentially given up on trying to control the president’s impulses. He told at least one person that he will let the president do what he wants, even if it results in impeachment. Kelly, who served as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary prior to becoming chief of staff, reportedly warned current DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen against attending Monday's White House press briefing. Nielsen fielded questions on the Trump administration's "zero tolerance"...

Mike Elk. He is the comedy gift that keeps on giving even after all these years. The former lethargic Politico labor reporter (whom they probably wish they never heard of) first came to our attention back in 2015 when the then 28 year old Elk was complaining about an incredible work load he had to endure: “I can’t work the kind of hours I did when I was 24.”

A former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee has been indicted and arrested on charges of making false statements to the FBI during an investigation into the leak of classified information, the Justice Department announced Thursday. As part of the investigation, law enforcement officials seized years worth of phone and email records of a New York Times reporter, Ali Watkins, who had previously been in a romantic relationship with the staffer, the newspaper reported Thursday evening. The Senate staffer, James A. Wolfe, was indicted on three counts of making false statements while he served as the committee’s director of...

The Department of Justice reportedly seized a New York Times reporter's phone and email records this year in an effort to probe the leaking of classified information, the first known instance of the DOJ going after a journalist's data under President Trump. The Times reported Thursday that the DOJ seized years' worth of records from journalist Ali Watkins's time as a reporter at BuzzFeed News and Politico before she joined The Times in 2017 as a federal law enforcement reporter, according to the report Thursday. Watkins was alerted by a prosecutor in February that the DOJ had years of records...

Imagine for a moment that Robert Mueller was never pressed into service as a special counsel and wasn’t a household name. Imagine that there had never been any prompt for his investigation — that Donald Trump hadn’t blown all those kisses at Vladimir Putin, that the stooges and grifters around Trump hadn’t swooned at the prospect of sucking on Mother Russia’s teat, or that there’d been no offer of milk in the first place. What would we be focusing on right now? Maybe the just-published Politico report of Trump’s deliberate, cavalier use of a cellphone that doesn’t have strict security...

President Donald Trump has repeatedly hurled insults at the FBI agents working on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 campaign. Rudy Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney who’s now Trump’s lawyer, has attacked them as “stormtroopers.” The vitriol is unsurprising. The agents are powering an investigation that has shadowed Trump’s entire presidency — and they are mostly unknown to the public, making them easy targets. They are a mix of bureau veterans and relative newcomers handpicked by Mueller and his prosecutors to handle the highest-profile and most sensitive federal investigation in a generation. To assemble this portrait of Mueller’s...