Free Republic

Fanatics can justify any action, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff this week demonstrated where that mindset leads. In his rush to paint Donald Trump as a lawbreaker, Mr. Schiff has himself trampled law and responsibility. That’s the bottom line in Mr. Schiff’s stunning decision to subpoena the phone records of Rudy Giuliani and others. Mr. Schiff divulged the phone logs this week in his Ukraine report, thereby revealing details about the communications of Trump attorneys Jay Sekulow and Mr. Giuliani, ranking Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes, reporter John Solomon and others. The media is treating this as a victory,...

“Under today’s process, Mr. Schiff gets to make up the rules as he goes along. Behold the Lord High Impeacher. Democrats view control over the narrative as essential, having learned from their Russia-collusion escapade the perils of transparency.”Behold the Lord High ImpeacherBy Kimberley StrasselThe Wall Street JournalOctober 24, 2019…Democrats keep their witnesses locked behind secure doors, then flood the press with carefully sculpted leaks and accusations, driving the Trump-corruption narrative. And so the party goes, galloping toward an impeachment vote that would overturn the will of the American voters—on a case built in secret.Conservative commentators keep noting that Mrs....

<p>This is why the former vice president’s promises that this scandal will fade are nonsense. True, the media is doing double-duty on his behalf. Its general line is that Mr. Biden’s conflicts are fine; asking about them is corrupt. We are seeing a lot of stories about how Democrats are determined not to let Republicans “Hillary” Mr. Biden—a historical rewrite that places the blame for Mrs. Clinton’s notorious ethical travails on her rivals. The “fact checkers” are out in force with soothing assurances that there’s no evidence any Biden broke the law.</p>

I just watched this video, which was first published on YouTube in February 2018, and found it completely riveting. In this speech, Ms. Strassel does an amazing job of bringing to light the scary depths of federal government corruption, while at the same time offering an optimistic view of what we can do and, more importantly, what is being done now under the Trump administration to drain the swamp. Or course, there's still much more to be done. In my opinion every Freeper should watch this video and share it whenever possible. LINK (56:01 and WELL worth the time!)

1) More big breaking news, which further undercuts the Ford accusation, as well as media handling of it. A source has given me the email that WaPo reporter Emma Brown sent to Mark Judge, one person Ford claims was at the party. This email is dated Sunday, Sept. 16, 2018.... 7) So first, huge problem: This was just a week ago, and we have Ford giving two different accounts of who was present. Four boys. No, three boys, one girl. Either way, therapist notes from 2012 definitively say four boys, which Ford didn't dispute. But now... a girl! 8) Other...

Okay—so, the Brett Kavanaugh drama is heating up. Christine Blasey Ford has lobbed a grenade at Judge Brett Kavanaugh, accusing him of a drunken episode in which he attempted to sexually assault her at a party some 30-plus years ago. Kavanaugh was 17-years-old. It’s a serious charge—and it should be dissected before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Give Ms. Ford her day to detail this episode…if she can find the time. The committee and Ford’s lawyers, one of which, Debra Katz, is publicly anti-Trump (she’s and more of an operative) are still trying to hash out the details. Par for the...

U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami took a few moments in his Tuesday statement about Michael Cohen’s plea deal to sing neutrality’s praise: “His day of reckoning serves as a reminder that we are a nation of laws, with one set of rules that applies equally to everyone.” Noble words, and they used to mean something. But a disparity of justice is at the heart of our current crisis of faith in institutions. Americans aren’t outraged that the Federal Bureau of Investigation felt obliged to investigate allegations leveled at campaigns, or that a special counsel is looking at Russian electoral interference. They...

Kimberley Strassel DISMANTLES Washington Post fact check of Bruce Ohr This is a must read thread from the WSJ’s Kimberley Strassel where she absolutely dismantles point-by-point the Washington Post’s fact check of senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr, a recent target of President Trump.Please have a read (21 in all):1) It is never fun to tackle fact checkers, but this one is a case study in that modern art of omitting details, stating unsupportable assertions as fact, slipping things in, manipulating a narrative. Opinion as "fact." So let's go through it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/08/16/who-is-bruce-ohr-why-does-trump-keep-tweeting-about-him/?utm_term=.e30d884f001c …2)"Ohr exists in a netherworld — a subject of fascination...

To hear the Federal Bureau of Investigation tell it, its decision to launch a counterintelligence probe into a major-party presidential campaign comes down to a foreign tip about a 28-year-old fourth-tier Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos. The FBI’s media scribes have dutifully reported the bare facts of that “intel.” We are told the infamous tip came from Alexander Downer, at the time the Australian ambassador to the U.K. Mr. Downer invited Mr. Papadopoulos for a drink in early May 2016, where the aide told the ambassador the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Word of this encounter at some point reached...

To hear the Federal Bureau of Investigation tell it, its decision to launch a counterintelligence probe into a major-party presidential campaign comes down to a foreign tip about a 28-year-old fourth-tier Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos. snip We are told the infamous tip came from Alexander Downer, at the time the Australian ambassador to the U.K. Mr. Downer invited Mr. Papadopoulos for a drink in early May 2016, where the aide told the ambassador the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. snip When Mr. Downer ended his service in the U.K. this April, he sat for an interview with the Australian,...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes appeared on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday, where he provided a potentially explosive hint at what’s driving his demand to see documents related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Trump-Russia probe. “If the campaign was somehow set up,” he told the hosts, “I think that would be a problem.” snip Think of the 2016 Trump-Russia narrative as two parallel strands—one politics, one law enforcement. The political side involves the actions of Fusion GPS, the Hillary Clinton campaign and Obama officials—all of whom were focused on destroying Donald Trump. The law-enforcement strand involves the FBI—and what...

In a tweetstorm, WSJ Strassel discussed how the leakers who had spied on the Trump campaign are using the New York Times to push their own narrative before the Inspector General releases his own findings, which will undoubtedly be damning. Strassel pointed out that the New York Times downplays the illegal spying activity of the Obama FBI to “fix” a U.S. election. Keep in mind that the liberal media — especially the NYTimes and CNN — brutally mocked President Trump when he insisted that the Obama administration had spied on him. “[The New York Times] makes it out like it...

Kim Strassel: FBI Got Caught Red Handed… Kim Strassel describes outrageous spying on Trump campaign WSJ reporter Kim Strassel on Fox News yesterday. Clip is set to begin at :55. ‘It’s completely outrageous that the FBI used human intelligence to spy on the Trump campaign.’

1)A few questions @Comey should have been asked--but wasn't:

The House Intelligence Committee memo about 2016 surveillance abuses, released Friday, lays out grave evidence that the FBI wasn’t fully forthcoming with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as it sought an order to wiretap former Trump adviser Carter Page. It’s possible the FBI’s lack of candor was even worse than the memo describes. Democrats are disputing the memo on lots of grounds, but they’ve said little about the FBI’s failure to inform the court that the bureau had itself decided one of its main sources, dossier author Christopher Steele, was unreliable. Mr. Steele in October 2016 gave Mother Jones an...

Full Title: Kimberley Strassel: Democrat's tactics in the Trump-Russia probe are starting to look a lot like McCarthyismDemocrats have spent weeks making the case that the Russia-Trump probes need to continue, piling on demands for more witnesses and documents. So desperate is the left to keep this Trump cudgel to hand that Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats have moved toward neo- McCarthyism. If that sounds hyperbolic, consider an email recently disclosed by the Young Turks Network, a progressive YouTube news channel. It’s dated Dec. 19, 2017, and its author is April Doss, senior counsel for the committee’s Democrats, including Vice Chairman...

The Steele dossier has already become a thing of John le Carré-like intrigue—British spies, Kremlin agents, legal cutouts, hidden bank accounts. What all this obscures is the more immediate point: The dossier amounts to one of the dirtiest tricks in U.S. political history. It was perpetrated by Team Clinton and yielded a vast payoff for Hillary’s campaign. “Details from the dossier were not reported before Election Day,” ran a recent CNN story. Hillary Clinton herself stressed the point in a recent “Daily Show” appearance. This is utterly untrue. In British court documents Mr. Steele has acknowledged he briefed U.S. reporters...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Kimberly Strassel is in the Wall Street Journal today with an amazing piece: "Trolling for Dirt on the President's List." Listen to this: "Here's what happens when the president of the United States publicly targets a private citizen for the crime of supporting his opponent. Frank VanderSloot is the CEO of Melaleuca Inc. The 63-year-old has run that wellness-products company for 26 years out of tiny Idaho Falls, Idaho. Last August, Mr. VanderSloot gave $1 million to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC that supports Mitt Romney. "Three weeks ago, an Obama campaign website, 'Keeping GOP Honest,'...

Team Obama was spying broadly on the incoming administration. California Rep. Adam Schiff may not offer much by way of substance, but give him marks for political flimflam. The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee was so successful at ginning up fake outrage over his Republican counterpart that he successfully buried this week’s only real (and bombshell) news. Mr. Schiff and fellow Democrats spent this week accusing Chairman Devin Nunes of carrying water for President Trump, undermining the committee’s Russia investigation, and hiding information. The press dutifully regurgitated the outrage, as well as Mr. Schiff’s calls for Mr. Nunes...

Defying physics, ObamaCare has managed to create energies where none existed before: confusion over policies, anger over lost doctors, panic over costs. Most amazing has been the law’s ability to produce entirely new Washington life forces. The scientific formula goes like this: Another day + Another ObamaCare disaster = A New Kay Hagan. Back in 2008, North Carolinians were introduced to Bipartisan Kay, a hope-and-change candidate who argued that Sen. Elizabeth Dole was a lackey for a partisan George W. Bush. “It is time for someone to reach across party lines,” explained Bipartisan Kay. “Voting 92% of time with the...