Free Republic

The House impeachment hearings ended a month ago, but congressional Democrats aren’t done inviting bureaucrats to share their negative opinions of President Donald Trump. Now it’s the turn of the Government Accountability Office. Traditionally GAO does its best to serve its congressional bosses. This is not a swipe at these particular swamp dwellers. Yes, the current head of GAO was nominated by President Barack Obama after a congressional commission presented a list of candidates. But the Supreme Court has explicitly found that GAO is subservient to the legislative branch. The 1986 decision is called Bowsher v. Synar. GAO staff try...

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) has stunned court-watchers by selecting David Kris -- a former Obama administration lawyer who has appeared on "The Rachel Maddow Show" and written extensively in support of the FBI's surveillance practices on the left-wing blog Lawfare -- to oversee the FBI's implementation of reforms in the wake of a damning Department of Justice Inspector general report last year. The development on Friday, first reported by independent journalist Mike Cernovich, has roiled Republicans who have demanded accountability at the FBI. House Intelligence Commitee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told The Daily Caller that Kris' appointment...

(snips) In the second half of Devin Nunes interview with Maria Bartiromo today he was asked his thoughts about the FISA Court selecting David Kris as an FBI surveillance and compliance monitor. The issue is quite important because the FBI FISA reforms and promises are essentially meaningless without some form of structural review process. However, the new 2020 FISC Presiding Judge James Boasberg selecting David Kris has been noted by several people as a rather weak effort on behalf of the court. As an outcome of our former FISA-702 reviews CTH has an entirely different reason for questioning the selection...

Was President Donald Trump’s short term campaign foreign policy volunteer Carter Page set up by an FBI informant or the informant’s handler at the FBI? On the The Sara Carter Show, Page discussed the recent revelations in Department of Justice’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report and his interview in The Federalist where questions surfaced regarding his first meeting with Stefan Halper, one of the FBI’s spies in the Trump campaign. Questions Linger Questions still loom regarding Halper’s and his FBI handler. It appears that Horowitz’s report raises more answers than questions, said Page, who was not given the opportunity to...

Spy Court Picks FISA Abuse Denier To Tackle FISA Abuse The appointment of a former official who served as an apologist for the FBI signals that the court isn't particularly concerned about the civil liberty violations catalogued by Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Mollie HemingwayBy Mollie Hemingway JANUARY 12, 2020 The nation’s top spy court appointed an Obama-era Justice Department official who has denied and downplayed FBI surveillance abuse to assess the FBI’s response to a scathing new report cataloguing problems with how the agency secured authority to spy on a Donald Trump campaign affiliate.

A private investigator who worked on Casey Anthony's murder case claims he has obtained Hunter Biden's bank account records and submitted them to court as part of Biden's paternity case with his Arkansas baby mama. Dominic Casey filed papers to Independence County on Friday, claiming he had provided Lunden Roberts with 'electronic access' to Biden's bank account records which are 'subject of known felonies including fraud and counterfeiting.'

President Donald Trump was elected on the pledge that he would “drain the swamp.” The swamp, as has been painfully obvious since day 1, has been fighting back. But not all of the swamp that thrives in Washington, DC, is in the intelligence community or actively working against the president. Much of it is institutional, bureaucratic, and more interested in scamming taxpayers out of as much money as possible. This part of the swamp, likely the largest part, operates under the radar, in offices with titles you’ve never heard of, overseen by the staffs of deputy assistant under secretaries of...

Moving federal agencies to the heartland would get struggling states hooked on big government

Must be nice to ‘run’ an investigation in such a way where you can try and remove a sitting president while protecting your own backside. Adam Schiff has definitely been very ‘careful’ about what he does and does not release to the public, and while we all know there has to be some very specific reason why … it’s hard to say for sure. Until now. Paul Sperry sent this tweet about Schiff withholding the transcript of ICIG Michael Atkinson from October 4 behind closed doors which lasted for eight hours. EIGHT HOURS. Gosh, that seems like a rather large...

by Mark Finkelstein January 3, 2006 - 07:58 Katie Couric's just-completed interview with NY Times Reporter James Risen, who broke the NSA surveillance story and is now publishing his book on the matter, 'State of War,' offered a treasure-trove of insights into the matter. And give Katie a gentlelady's 'C' for her questioning. Couric earned the bulk of her credit by posing this seminal line of questioning: "Did [the leakers] have any sympathy or understanding about this new climate this country finds itself in and the criticism the Bush administration took prior to 9/11 for not putting the pieces together...

It was evident several weeks ago that U.S. chargé d’affaires to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, is one of the current participants in the coup effort. It was Taylor who engaged in carefully planned text messages with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland to set-up a narrative helpful to Adam Schiff’s political coup effort. Bill Taylor was formerly U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (’06-’09) and later helped the Obama administration to design the laundry operation providing taxpayer financing to Ukraine in exchange for back-channel payments to U.S. politicians and their families. Today Rudy Giuliani has released a letter to Senator Lindsey Graham outlining how Bill...

President Donald Trump employs several of his family members to work within his White House administration and help him run his business. His daughter Ivanka Trump serves as an advisor, and her husband, Jared Kushner, serves as assistant to the president and senior advisor. Trump’s older sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are executive vice presidents of The Trump Organization. The Trump administration also employs the son of Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney. The White House pays him nearly six figures to serve as a sports liaison.

BALTIMORE — An 11-count federal indictment against former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was made public Wednesday morning. Pugh, 69, is federally charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, seven counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and two counts of tax evasion. Pugh was charged on Nov. 14 and the charges were made public Wednesday.

The escalation from the Swamp Wars to the coup d’état was a shift in the battle for the Soul of America Although the mainstream media is intent on presenting half a picture of reality, there is obviously another reality evident in the churning of the impeachment drama on the national stage. Recently, the point man for the “civil” coup d’état, Adam Schiff, stated that the impeachment proceedings would begin and the American people would be able to determine for themselves the motivation for initiating the impeachment inquiry. Actually, after the Democrat debacle last week, American citizens who have been able...

As the circus unfolds in Washington D.C., in what seems to be an attempt to cover up what the previous administration(s) have been doing in Ukraine, an ISIS leader is arrested, a high profile “kidnapping” takes place, resurrection of a bloody ISIS raid in Georgia linked to an apartment that was paid for by the U.S. Embassy in Armenia in 2009, an automobile manufacturer, and Burisma all converged in one day. It’s been a busy Saturday. There are no coincidences. ISIS is an entity we were funding and training, according to Former President Barack Hussein Obama, who proudly stated as...

In the hours after National Security Advisor John Bolton was fired by President Donald Trump on September 10th, he immediately began calling longtime political operatives in Washington, DC, sources tell The Chronicle. Many of those calls were made to Democrats and many of them in the national security establishment. ... “It’s go time,” he began those conversations, multiple sources tell The Chronicle, as if to suggest that Bolton’s patience with the President had worn thin, and even implying later in more than one conversation that a faction of neo-conservatives at the Central Intelligence Agency was ready to remove the President...

When the federal judge presiding over the trial against Roger Stone referred to the government’s star witness, Randy Credico, as “difficult” on Friday, none of the members of the jury or others in the Washington, D.C., court room overheard her pointed remarks. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson made the observation during a side bar discussion with lead government attorney Aaron Zelinsky and Stone lawyer Robert Bushchel, according to a transcript of the court proceedings obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Jackson made the remark after two days of testimony that saw Credico, a comedian and longtime frenemy of Stone’s,...

For months there were rumblings that Inspector General Horowitz was going to release his report anytime on his investigation of FISA Court abuse during the 2016 election and into 2017. And for months that news was delayed. In May Attorney General Bill Barr appointed John Durham to review the origins of the Russia inquiry and the FBI’s surveillance activities.

At the beginning of jury selection, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, said that she would not remove potential jurors solely on the basis that they work for the federal government or because of their views of Trump. That position was tested at the very start of jury selection at Stone’s trial, which recessed early after the longtime political operative fell ill. The potential juror served as a press secretary in the Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration, according to Politico and Reuters. She also admitted to having a negative view of Trump....

Even the Gray Lady admits the president is up against a powerful bureaucracy that wants him sunk.. The New York Times on Thursday published a remarkable piece that essentially acknowledged the existence of an American “deep state” and its implacable hostility to Donald Trump. ... American foreign policy has become the almost exclusive domain of unelected bureaucrats impervious to the views of elected officials—even presidents—who may harbor outlooks different from their own. This is a big deal because, even in today’s highly charged political environment, with a sitting president under constant guerrilla attack, few have been willing to acknowledge any...