Free Republic

The Daily Signal has been able to get 217 pages from the National Security Administration (NSA) under FOIA. Those pages show the huge effort to “torpedo” the Trump administration before they even took office with an effort to go after Gen. Michael Flynn, the man who would be National Security Advisor for President Donald Trump.Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador in the period between November 2016 and Jan. 2017 was intercepted by intelligence officials for the Obama administration, and then his name was unmasked.The Signal requested the information in March 2021 and didn’t get the documents until June 30, 2023.Some...

As President Joe Biden constructs his new administration, individuals from the Obama administration are quietly resurfacing in positions of power. Some of these people are well-known, others lesser so. But they all played critical roles at various times during the Obama administration. Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser and now the “top adviser to the president on domestic policy and related decisions,” has admitted to participating in the unmasking of members of the Trump transition team. Unmasking is the process in which a U.S. citizen’s identity is revealed from collected surveillance. Initially, Rice publicly denied the allegations, claiming that “I...

Tomorrow morning ends the tenure of Richard “Ric” Grenell as the acting Director of National Intelligence. At 12:15pm DNI John Ratcliffe will be sworn-in [LINK] and the declassification/sunlight baton will be passed to senate confirmed DNI John Ratcliffe. On the topic of the FBI capture and use of the December 29, 2016, Flynn-Kislyak phone call… First we had a hunch; then it became a suspicion… that evolved into a likelihood… that has now become a strong probability. The capture of the December 29th phone call, which generated the raw “CR cuts“, was an FBI summary, modified for a specific interpretation....

Republicans are broadening their investigation into special counsel Robert Mueller as the Obamagate controversy heats up. Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said fresh criminal referrals are imminent as more people come forward with information about what Trump allies view to have been a plot to undermine the president. "We’ve also expanded our investigation into the Mueller team and everything that happened with Mueller and the people at DOJ and FBI that were above Mueller. And so, we will be making criminal referrals in the coming weeks against the Mueller team. We're just now putting...

DEVELOPING: Declassified Rice email documenting WH meeting 1/5/2017 obtained @CBSNews

Catch-22 With Brady Exculpatory Evidence Powell notes that the prosecution refused to provide Flynn with the Brady material before he accepted the plea deal because he was not a defendant until he was formally charged. But then they claimed they didn’t need to provide him with the material after he had accepted the plea deal — since the guilty plea erased the obligation. It was a catch-22 that defeats the purpose of the Brady requirement. Powell charges FBI lawyer Lisa Page with altering the FD-302 write-up of Flynn’s interview. Peter Strzok, an FBI agent at the time and Page’s extramarital...

New documents in the Michael Flynn case cemented that a small cadre of high-level FBI agents set a perjury trap for President TrumpÂ’s then-national security advisor. The unsealing last week of a series of documents in the Michael Flynn criminal case cemented the reality that a small cadre of high-level FBI agents set a perjury trap for President TrumpÂ’s then-national security advisor. Beyond exposing the depth of this despicable personal and political hit job on a 30-year military veteran, the newly discovered documents hold great legal significance. HereÂ’s your legal primer.The Russiagate special counselÂ’s office charged Flynn with violating 18...

George Papadopoulos A junior member of the Trump foreign policy advisory team in 2016, George Papadopoulos was approached by FBI agents in Chicago, where he lived with his mother after the election while waiting for what he hoped would be an offer to join the new administration. The agents said they just wanted to talk to him about contacts he’d made with people in London during the campaign. He spoke to them without a lawyer or the benefit of notes, emails or a calendar to refresh his recollection — a decision he would later regret. One of the interviews was...

In February 2017, the Washington Post’s Miller had the lead byline on a story based on leaks of Trump’s conversations with Australia’s prime minister and Mexico’s president. Six months later, the Post published the entire transcripts of both conversations in another Miller story. It was through such national security correspondents that anti-Trump sources -- intelligence officials -- pushed leaks of classified information and other tidbits intended to damage Trump into the media. There it merged with other anti-Trump currents in nearly every corner of the press, where it blossomed into Russiagate. After a nearly two-year investigation, the special counsel found...

Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe told the White House in early February 2017 that the bureau was not considering the national security adviser at the time, Michael Flynn, for a potential Logan Act prosecution over conversations with the Russian ambassador before Donald Trump was sworn in as president, government records reviewed by Fox News indicate. McCabe was referring to the rarely prosecuted 200-year-old statute that bars American citizens from engaging with a foreign government without authorization from the current U.S. government. The records also indicate that Flynn reported, on two separate occasions, in the days leading up to his White...

Special counsel Robert Mueller on Monday night released a memo detailing then-national security adviser Michael Flynn's interview with FBI agents, in which Flynn repeatedly lied about his contacts with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The FBI officials who interviewed Flynn, including former agent Peter Strzok, gave him multiple opportunities to describe his conversations with Kislyak. Flynn denied that he spoke to the then-Russian ambassador about sanctions. The memo about the FBI interview was filed by Mueller in federal court in Washington, D.C. Flynn is set to be sentenced in that federal court on Tuesday. DEVELOPING

The hearing would be the former Trump national security adviser's first court appearance since pleading guilty more than seven months ago. A pair of legal filings suggesting that special counsel Robert Mueller's office is almost-but-not-quite ready to set a sentencing date for former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn have prompted a federal judge to order Flynn and lawyers for both sides to make an unexpected trip to court next week. than seven months ago. The hearing set for next Tuesday would be the first court appearance for Flynn since last December, when the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief appeared...

The FBI has put to bed a controversy whipped up by liberal critics of Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his contacts with foreign officials including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 presidential campaign. An FBI email released through the Freedom of Information Act said that Sessions had no obligation to reveal any contacts with foreign officials unless he “developed personal relationships” with them. AD 00:11 / 00:15 Al Franken should skip the ethics probe and resign over sexual misconduct Watch Full Screen The bottom line: His two contacts with Kislyak in 2016 did not have to be revealed to...

What do you call a system of government that cannot tolerate a transition of power without corrupt machinations by those unwilling to cede control? Banana Republic is a term that comes to mind. The Special Counsel was appointed to determine whether Russia colluded with Trump to steal the election. Michael Flynn was indicted for a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador on December 28, 2016, seven weeks after the election.

Jay Caruso noted that Senator Claire McCaskill had claimed early today never to have met with a Russian ambassador: Follow Claire McCaskill ✔ @clairecmc I've been on the Armed Services Com for 10 years.No call or meeting w/Russian ambassador. Ever. Ambassadors call members of Foreign Rel Com. 7:06 AM - 2 Mar 2017 13,293 13,293 Retweets 20,929 20,929 likes Then undeniable documentary and photographic evidence emerged that she had. I bet she wishes she could just airbrush that initial tweet from history — like it never happened. Kinda like the New York Times did today with her claim. They reported...

Turkish government intelligence has determined Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22 – the police officer who recently assassinated Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov while the ambassador was giving a speech to open an art gallery in Ankara – was a member of the Gulen organization, which claimed to be the same group that staged an unsuccessful coup in Turkey in July.... ....the Clinton Foundation was engaged in a pay-to-play scheme to obtain Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s support for the Obama administration decision to give asylum to Fetullah Gulen, a Turkish Muslim imam the Erdogan government holds responsible for the attempted coup July...

I keep thinking one of these days, politicians will remember the internet exists, and along with it, evidence of almost about everything they’ve said or done while in office (and often outside of the office, too — just ask David Wu). Alas… As the Trump cabinet targeting continues, Sen. Claire McCaskill stepped in a huge pile by claiming she never had a meeting or call with a Russian ambassador.

Well...that's embarrassing.... Oh, THAT, Ambassador! Dan already did a fine job of explaining why the whole “Sessions/Russia” flap is a big nothingburger, so I won’t rehash that here. What I will do is point out that the left seems to think this is chum in the political water. They’ve whipped themselves up in to a frenzy, fueled by anti-Trump hysteria and the hope that maybe - just maybe - they can finally get one of their conspiracy theories to stick.

Russian President Vladimir Putin joins a host of world leaders who have had to respond to brazen terror attacks on Monday. One of those attacks happened in Ankara, Turkey, where Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov was killed in cold blood by a police officer who was standing behind him during a speech in an art gallery. After he shot Karlov several times in the back, the killer screamed that he did it for Aleppo. The entire attack was caught on camera. Putin has vowed revenge. "A crime has been committed and it was without doubt a provocation aimed at spoiling the...

March 23, 2006 — Following are the ABC News Investigative Unit's summaries of five documents from Saddam Hussein's government, which the U.S. government has released. The documents discuss Osama bin Laden, weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda and more. The full documents can be found on the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office Web site: http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm. Note: Document titles were added by ABC News. "U.S. War Plan Leaked to Iraqis by Russian Ambassador" Documents dated March 5-8, 2003 Two Iraqi documents dated in March 2003 — on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion — and addressed to the secretary of...