Free Republic

Experts were baffled by the Biden administration invoking the Hatch Act when asked whether President Biden or his son owned the cocaine found at the White House. The culprit behind the White House’s July snowstorm has yet to be found, and the Biden administration isn’t answering whether the president or Hunter Biden owned the Independence Day cocaine dominating the headlines this week. White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates was asked during a Thursday press gaggle whether the president can deny that he or his son owned the cocaine found at the White House – a charge leveled by former...

New government documents show that John Kerry’s wife, heiress of Heinz Ketchup, has millions of dollars in Chinese investments, leaving Biden’s climate change envoy facing an ethical dilemma. Kerry’s latest filing with the Office of Government Ethics in March shows his wife benefits from an investment of “at least $1 million” in a hedge fund that specializes in private partnerships and investments with Chinese government-controlled funds, the Daily Mail reports. Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz, is the widow of late senator John Heinz and heiress to the Heinz family fortune, which is estimated to be worth over $750 million. Kerry often...

Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, tore into Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over his plans for the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. "The oath of loyalty is to the United States of America, not to Donald Trump. These senators, Democrats and Republicans, have an obligation to hear the facts, to hear witnesses, and make a decision," Painter said Thursday on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. "And for Mitch McConnell to say he’s working with the White House, coordinating with the defendant in this trial before the trial has even begun, is atrocious....

Cheryl Moss Herman, an official with the United States Department of Energy, produced a detailed report in 2010 for a Russian nuclear company when she was a private energy and environmental consultant.The document Moss Herman wrote as a consultant in 2010 was for TENAM/Tenex, according to the consulting memorandum she provided to the Russian subsidiary and obtained by Circa. TENAM is a fully-owned U.S. subsidiary of Tenex, which is 100 percent owned by the Russian state controlled nuclear company Rosatom, according to public documentation.Titled “Policy/Legislative Issues Affecting the Business Climate in the U.S. for TENAM/Tenex,” the memorandum discussed the Department...

The misnamed Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) poses as a nonpartisan government watchdog, but it’s really functioned as a left wing-funded attack dog against Republicans over the past decade. This year, CREW has dialed it up going after the Trump Administration. Earlier this year, CREW sued the President under the foreign emoluments clause of the Constitution, which prohibits the President from receiving gifts from foreign states. CREW argued that Trump’s business ties violated this because foreign entities have leased space in Trump Tower in New York. But federal judge George Daniels—a Bill Clinton appointee—wasn’t buying what CREW...

Richard Painter has got to be the strangest dude in political TV. Just listen to the guy. Born in Philadelphia, went to a fancy prep school, degrees from Harvard and Yale, speaks with some kind of strange lockjaw. Anyhow, on MSNBC tonight, he did his best to discourage top lawyers from assisting President Trump. Painter threatened that any lawyer who helped Trump fire Robert Mueller would “end up making license plates . . . in jail.” Specifically, Painter tried to dissuade Emmet Flood, who currently serves as outside counsel to Trump, from replacing Don McGahn as White House counsel. Warned...

Alan Dershowitz and Richard Painter Get in Tense Clash: Mueller May Be a Good American But ‘You’re Not’An MSNBC debate between Alan Dershowitz and Senate candidate Richard Painter got tense and personal as they clashed over Robert Mueller. Painter praised Mueller as a “highly professional prosecutor” with a great record and said it’s a “tragedy” that the country now has to endure all of this. Dershowitz said the White House’s behavior may be a “tragedy” too, but so is Mueller’s office, and he described the special counsel as someone with a “mixed reputation” in Boston from before he headed the...

Richard Painter, a longtime Republican who was chief ethics lawyer for George W. Bush’s White House, intends to run for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota this year as a Democrat, according to a filing he made recently with federal elections officials. Painter, a persistent and frequent critic of President Donald Trump on national cable TV news appearances and on Twitter, is expected to announce his candidacy at a Monday news conference. He’s running for Democrat Al Franken’s former seat. Franken resigned Jan. 2 in the wake of numerous sexual harassment allegations.

Former President George W. Bush’s top ethics lawyer thanked President Trump for making special counsel Robert Mueller’s job “easier.” "Using Twitter on Christmas Eve to intimidate a witness (McCabe) in a criminal investigation is not a very Christian way to celebrate the holiday," Richard Painter tweeted Sunday. "But it does make Mr. Mueller’s job easier and that’s a nice thing to do. Merry Christmas!" Painter, who is now the vice-chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, served in the Bush administration from 2005 to 2007. CREW was up until recently embroiled in a high-profile lawsuit against Trump for...