Free Republic

The new Foreign Malign Influence Center oversees efforts that span U.S. military, law enforcement, intelligence, and diplomatic agencies. WITHIN THE FEDERAL government, offices dedicated to fighting foreign disinformation are springing up like daisies, from the Pentagon’s new Influence and Perception Management Office to at least four organizations inside the Department of Homeland Security alone, as well as ones inside the FBI and State Department. To oversee the growing efforts — which arose in response to concerns about the impact of Russian meddling in the 2016 election but have now expanded — the director of national intelligence has created a new...

Donald Trump’s stunning election win has some Californians so upset that they want to secede from the United States. A group calling itself Yes California has organized a petition drive for a referendum in the spring 2019 election to demand a convention of states to approve “Calexit,” which would recreate the Republic of California of 1850. Louis Marinelli writes that the movement “is about California taking its place in the world, standing as an equal among nations.” Taking one’s place in the world is something Marinelli knows about, as the New York Times discovered. His place in the world isn’t...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Donald Trump’s election as president is giving a big social-media boost to an unlikely effort in the nation’s most populous state: a plan to vote on seceding from the union. The Yes California Independence Campaign hopes to put a question on the November 2018 ballot that would authorize a statewide independence vote for the spring of 2019. The effort drew little attention until Tuesday’s election, which also kept Trump’s fellow Republicans in charge of Congress and raised the possibility of a conservative shift on the U.S. Supreme Court. Any effort to get an issue on the ballot...

In February, Lebanese journalist Mohammed Shoaib was arrested on suspicion of collusion with Israel’s Mossad spy agency. The writer who worked for Al-Jaras, confessed that the notorious spy agency secretly paid him to author “dozens” of anti-Hezbollah articles, receiving a paltry $30 to $70 per article. In particular, Shoaib was tasked with writing hit jobs on the “Iranian occupation” of Lebanon, and falsely linking Hezbollah with the August 2020 Beirut port blast, drug trafficking, and murder of political activists. It is also alleged that Mossad specifically requested his work incite hostility towards Palestinian refugees in the country who number almost...

House lawmakers want the Trump administration to investigate reports that a wealthy foundation used an offshore shell company to give millions of dollars to environmental activists opposed to U.S. energy development. “If you connect the dots, it is clear that Russia is funding U.S. environmental groups in an effort to suppress our domestic oil and gas industry, specifically hydraulic fracking,” Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith said Friday. Smith and Texas Republican Rep. Randy Weber asked Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to investigate whether or not environmentalists were funneling money to U.S. environmental groups through a Bermuda-based shell company. Republicans are pitching...

A close friend, advisor and confidant of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was allegedly interviewed by the FBI in connection with the controversial dossier that was used ‘in part’ as evidence by the bureau to obtain a warrant to investigate members of President Trump’s campaign team, according to several sources who spoke to this reporter. Sidney Blumenthal, a former journalist and a close friend of Clinton, was interviewed by the FBI in 2016 regarding the dossier that alleged Trump colluded with Russia, the sources stated. Department of Justice officials, however, declined to comment on Blumenthal or the dossier. FBI officials declined...

Ukraine's main opposition chief back in race Reuters Kiev : Ukraine's main opposition leader, still undergoing treatment for a mystery ailment, has rejoined a campaign to overturn the scandal-plagued legacy of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma in a presidential election this month. Viktor Yushchenko, looking haggard and flushed, flew back to Kiev on Sunday after a second stay at an Austrian clinic where doctors failed to confirm his team's suspicions that he was poisoned to knock him out of the October 31 election. His main rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanuko-vich, is backed by Kuchma, whose decade in office has been marked...

If you googled “Invasion of South Ossetia” on Monday of this week one of the sites near the top of the list was the vitriolic anti Georgian propaganda web site “war.georgia.su” which detailed Georgian atrocities and planned atrocities against the peace loving people of South Ossetia. When I first saw it, the first thing that caught my eye (other than the over the top blood dripping pro anti Georian propaganda) was that the domain name itself. It did not end in “ge” as in Georgia but “su”, the domain name of sites in the former Soviet Union. This made me...

Stolen: A noted researcher and author of a new book on Democrat-tied voter fraud says the data indicate a “tsunami” of illegal balloting is likely to take place during the 2018 midterms, which could flip enough GOP seats for Democrats to regain control of the House. Eric Eggers of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) said in an interview with Breitbart Radio that narrow GOP election victories like the one in Ohio’s 12th district on Tuesday could flip enough seats that Democrats will regain congressional control when voter fraud is factored in. Even more unnerving: Eggers said there is enough documentation...

Actress and activist Alyssa Milano suggested that third-party votes in the Ohio special congressional election Tuesday evening could be the result of “Russian meddling.” In a close race, GOP candidate Troy Balderson led Democrat Danny O’Connor in a special election for Ohio’s 12th Congressional District on Tuesday evening. Balderson obtained 1,754 more votes than O’Connor. There are still 3,435 provisional ballots must still be counted, according to the New York Times. There are also more than 5,000 absentee ballots that were mailed to voters but not returned as of election day. Green Party candidate Joe Manchik secured approximately 1,127 votes,...

“To the barricades, comrades!” That could be Nancy Pelosi’s battle cry come November . . . if you believe Malcolm Nance, that is. Appearing on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show this morning, terrorism analyst Nance raised the specter of Russian meddling with the Dems’ “blue wave” in the 2018 elections, suggesting the Ruskies might even resort to “direct messing with the ballots.” Nance said that such meddling: “would be tantamount to setting the grounds for civil war. Really, to be quite honest.”Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

The liberals, the media, the Democrats, and some Republicans are very upset about Russia. They've had more positions on Russia than Stormy Daniels as far as I'm concerned. Let me point out some history -- this is very, very important. John McCain, God bless him, and others have said that what Trump did at that press conference is the worst interaction we've ever had with Russia, the worst diplomatic disaster ever. Forget about the media, I want you to know something: In 1945, Franklin Roosevelt sold out half of Europe to Stalin. He repeatedly praised Stalin. Franklin Roosevelt is the...

President Trump says in a new interview that he holds Russian President Vladimir Putin personally responsible for Russian meddling in the 2016 election, despite his refusal to condemn Putin publicly during a joint press conference earlier in the week. Trump told CBS News' Jeff Glor on Wednesday that he believes Putin is responsible "because he's in charge of the country." "Just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country," Trump said.

A federal judge has approved a request to tightly control how evidence is shared with a Russian company accused of funding an Internet trolling operation to mislead American voters in the 2016 election. The dispute over how to protect sensitive materials from disclosure had threatened to stall prosecution of the sole defendant to appear in court to face charges in the indictment of Russian entities under special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the District of Columbia said Friday that federal prosecutors gave “ample good cause” that identifying sources in the probe could tip...

The liberal media outrage over the last 24 hours is impressive. Predictable and stupid, but impressive. Donald Trump has been far tougher on Russia than obama ever was. Obama was a push over for Russia: Barack Obama sold out our Eastern European allies on missile defense. He slow-walked aid to Ukraine and did little more than shrug when Crimea was annexed. He said “never mind” on his own “red line” in Syria and turned a blind eye to Putin’s intervention there, in large part because of his obsessions with getting the Iran deal. The Russian meddling in our elections started...

In a piece published in the Wall Street Journal, the former AG for the George W. Bush administration speculated that Russian President Vladimir Putin never thought Trump would win the election and instead wanted to “send a warning” to Clinton that Russia could have information from her hacked personal email server. “Consider the Justice Department inspector general's report on the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of an unauthorized and vulnerable email server,” Mukasey wrote. “It found that the bureau had concluded the server could well have been penetrated without detection. Recall also that some of the people hacked by...

WASHINGTON — A Russian woman who tried to broker a secret meeting between Donald J. Trump and the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, during the 2016 presidential campaign was charged Monday and accused of working with Americans to carry out a secret Russian effort to influence American politics. At the behest of a senior Russian government official, the woman, Mariia Butina, made connections through the National Rifle Association, religious organizations and the National Prayer Breakfast to try to steer the Republican Party toward more pro-Russia policies, court records show.

Donald Trump did not say the Russians didn't meddle in the U.S. election.  Remember that when you read heated statements from leftist shills or people like Jeff Flake and John McCain.  The left is in full lie mode, and leftists will say anything while assuming that their audience will never actually hear the truth. Here's what really happened.  First Trump said: During today's meeting, I addressed directly with President Putin the issue of Russian interference in our elections. I felt this was a message best delivered in person.  I spent a great deal of time talking about it and President Putin may very...

Donald Trump did not say the Russians didn't meddle in the U.S. election. Remember that when you read heated statements from leftist shills or people like Jeff Flake and John McCain. The left is in full lie mode, and leftists will say anything while assuming that their audience will never actually hear the truth. Here's what really happened.

Part 1: George Papadopoulos and Josef Mifsud Inaction. It's been rattling around my head for a long time. Why was there no action? Why didn't obama do something? barack obama was warned about Russian meddling in 2014. The Obama administration received multiple warnings from national security officials between 2014 and 2016 that the Kremlin was ramping up its intelligence operations and building disinformation networks it could use to disrupt the U.S. political system, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials. As early as 2014, the administration received a report that quoted a well-connected Russian source as...