Free Republic

Michael Cohen testified Monday he secretly recorded Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 election, discussing plans to buy a Playboy model’s story about having an affair with the then-candidate. Cohen — who worked for Trump for more than a decade — told jurors in Manhattan Supreme Court that the Sept. 6, 2016, conversation, taped on the Voice Memos app on his iPhone, was the only time he surreptitiously recorded his former boss. “So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump could allegedly be heard saying on the nearly three-minute recording played in court by Assistant...

Former President Donald Trump is making a “heavy move into Minnesota,” hoping to flip the state red after it has consistently voted blue in the presidential election since 1976. Trump is heading to the blue state this week, speaking at the Minnesota Republican Party’s Lincoln Reagan dinner. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN), the Trump campaign’s state campaign chair, said the Minnesota GOP is “honored to welcome” Trump to the state: Honored to welcome the former and next President of the United States @realDonaldTrump to Minnesota! We are going to end the failed policies of the Biden Administration and get...

We’re barreling towards the 2024 election with few safeguards in place to stop the cheating from taking place again. Most politicians aren’t even talking about it, even though very few laws have been passed since 2020 to stop the cheating. In Arizona, because the governor is now Democrat Katie Hobbs — even though an exit poll from Rasmussen Reports showed Kari Lake beat her by 8 points — she vetoes any substantial election integrity bills. The only state that appears to have successfully passed any significant election integrity legislation since the 2020 election is Georgia. Surprisingly, Georgia’s RINO Governor Brian...

The Supreme Court last month denied Navarro's bid to leave prison early while he appealed the conviction. >Donald Trump Jr. visited ex-Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro in prison, he confirmed to ABC News.Navarro is currently incarcerated at a Miami federal prison while serving his sentence for contempt of Congress. He received a four-month sentence in January over his refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 Committee.Trump Jr. told the outlet that Navarro was in "good spirits" and that "It’s important to show support."The Supreme Court last month denied Navarro's bid to leave prison early while...

One of the burning questions of the 2024 presidential election so far — and Lord knows we haven’t had many burning questions — is that of whom Donald Trump will pick as his running mate. The former president has dropped a few hints, and there’s been plenty of speculation. But what do voters think? If somehow Trump put the question to his base, whom would they choose? A new poll from I&I/TIPP gives us an indication.The pollsters asked 538 Republicans (I don’t know if that number was on purpose or a happy coincidence) over the first weekend in May. The...

Ana Navarro told her co-hosts Monday on ABC’s “The View” that the election in November is a choice between President Joe Biden’s decency and the “evil” of former President Donald Trump. Navarro said, “I think this trial is helping Donald Trump because it’s keeping him off the trail and we are not focusing on the stupid stuff he says on a daily basis. And that is helping him. On Biden, look, you know, at first it was people saying, we don’t like our choices. What else? What other candidate? No third candidate. No knight in shining armor appeared.” She added,...

Melinda French Gates announced on Monday that she is leaving the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation next month.Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Melinda, his ex-wife, had tried to continue working together on projects at foundation, one of the largest private philanthropies in the world, following their 2021 divorce.“After careful thought and reflection, I have decided to resign from my role as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. My last day of work at the foundation will be June 7,” French Gates wrote on X on Monday. “This is not a decision I came to lightly."Gates said that she...

The Athens, AL Police Department is investigating a reported attack against Tara Johnson, a Trump volunteer, outside a local Republican Party headquarters in what is alleged to have been a “politically motivated attack.” Tara Johnson, described as a “dedicated Republican volunteer” in a press release from the Alabama Republican Party, was assaulted outside the Limestone County, AL GOP Trump Headquarters over the weekend. According to Alabama Republican Party communications director Jeannie Negrón Burniston, Johnson serves as the lead volunteer despite physical mobility challenges due to health issues.

Now more than ever, we need to make sure that our elections are fair, lawfully conducted, and free of foreign influence.Congressional Democrats insist that the SAVE Act — which requires proof of citizenship to establish eligibility to vote in federal elections — is unnecessary because federal law (18 USC § 611) already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Those making this argument ignore a glaring problem: the government officials who register voters and conduct federal elections aren’t allowed to require proof of citizenship. It’s therefore shockingly easy for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, leaving our elections dangerously vulnerable...

John Dean, former President Nixon’s White House counsel, said in an interview Saturday that the New York hush money criminal trial against former President Trump is “very powerful” ahead of highly anticipated testimony this week from Trump’s ex-fixer Michael Cohen. Dean said in a CNN interview that he has read the transcripts from the trial and thinks the prosecution has laid out a compelling case that can stand alone, independent from Cohen’s testimony. “It’s a very powerful case the government has put on in New York,” he said. “They have really filled in so many of the blanks, and they...

At least 21 people were shot, three of them fatally, during the weekend in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s (D) Chicago. Breitbart News reported that 16 people were shot in Chicago, two of them fatally, Friday into Saturday evening alone. One shooting fatality occurred Friday shortly before 7:30 p.m. and the second at 4:30 a.m. Saturday. Another fatal shooting occurred Saturday morning about 3:16 a.m. “in the 6200-block of South Campbell Avenue,” ABC 7 / Chicago Sun-Times noted. A man in his 30s or 40s was shot twice in the back and killed.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s paralegal testified on Friday that his office deleted from their evidence three pages of phone records between convicted liar Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson without notifying former President Donald Trump’s legal team, according to reports. Trump attorney Emil Bove questioned paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider on Friday about three pages of 2018 phone records between Davidson and Cohen that Bragg’s office had deleted, according to CNN. Additional phone records between Daniels manager Gina Rodriguez and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard regarding Daniels’ claim about her alleged affair were also deleted, according to The Epoch...

A company run by the daughter of the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s current New York case works for left-wing legal groups behind efforts to keep President Trump of the 2024 ballot and Chinese Communist Party-funded influence groups. These revelatory business affiliation of Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter Loren Merchan, president and partner of Authentic Campaigns, follow previous reporting on the firm’s work for Democratic politicians including President Joe Biden and Rep. Adam Schiff. Among the newly revealed clients of Judge Merchan’s daughter are the Brennan Center, which has filed lawsuits against the Trump administration and campaign over a dozen...

Green Bay’s law-bending elections chief is at it again, but this time City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys admits she didn’t understand the election law she was breaking. In response to a complaint filed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation on behalf of three Green Bay citizens, Jeffreys “concedes that she has not been strictly adhering to the statutory requirements in Wisconsin Statutes … but the failure to do so was inadvertent and due to a lack of awareness of the statutory requirements.” In short, the much-troubled clerk was ignorant, not willful, according to the legal response. It’s more of the same...

President Joe Biden’s policy of mass migration is forcing up housing inflation, so pushing up interest rates and mortgage rates, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Housing prices should have dropped amid the recent supply of new apartments and homes, but have “not behaved the way we thought it would,” said Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.. “I still think it will, but if it doesn’t, we’re going to have a hard time” bringing inflation back down to the target of 2 percent, Goolsbee told the Journal for a May 11 article.

It is election year and one candidate divides Americans like nobody else. Reviled with an intense fury by many, he is adored as a protector by many others aghast at developments being pushed by social radicals. His previous — and graceless — fall from power was accompanied by assurances from the great and good that his career was over and that he could never return. Now, thanks to his extraordinary political skills, he has recaptured and remade the Republican Party. In so doing, he has broadened its base by attracting voters from groups that were long part of the Democratic...

EXCLUSIVE — The Athens Neighborhood Health Center, Indiana Health Centers, and Mariposa Community Health Center collectively sit on over $58 million in assets and receive regular checks from the federal government. As federally qualified health centers registered as tax-exempt nonprofit organizations in Georgia, Indiana, and Arizona, respectively, they cater to low-income patients benefiting from Medicaid and Medicare. The FQHCs, along with their counterparts, are set for a windfall thanks to President Joe Biden earlier this year freeing up $4.4 billion for them, the most substantial annual funding increase in a decade. The taxpayer-backed health centers, however, also have something else...

We’ve seen politicians go to jail. We’ve seen a vice president of the United States — Spiro Agnew — resign to avoid any chance of going to jail. We have seen President Richard Nixon pardoned in order to keep him out of jail. What we have never seen is a former president of the United States in jail. But now that is a real possibility, because Donald Trump can’t shut up and abide by a simple gag order. Justice Juan Merchan has repeatedly tried to enforce his gag order with fines. Trump pays the fines and keeps violating the gag...

President Donald Trump is leading President Biden in five critical, toss-up swing states — all of which Biden had won in 2020, a new set of polls revealed. Surveys by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found that Trump was more popular than Biden among voters in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania, while Biden led among voters in only one battleground state, Wisconsin. [cut] Many of the voters polled even admitted that even while they dislike Trump, he would be the candidate to drive much-needed change. Trump and Biden are currently tied among 18 to...

Former President Donald Trump is leading President Biden in five critical, toss-up swing states — all of which Biden had won in 2020, a new set of polls revealed. Surveys by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found that Trump was more popular than Biden among voters in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania, while Biden led among voters in only one battleground state, Wisconsin. All six of the battleground states looked at in the polls were won by Biden in 2020, and victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2024 would be enough for Biden...