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Sanders, O'Malley jab Clinton ahead of first Democratic debate

Democratic presidential candidates on Sunday staked out their positions against front-runner Hillary Clinton ahead of the party’s first primary debate, challenging her stances of such issues as trade, domestic oil and gay marriage.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, ahead of the debate Tuesday, made the case that he has been steady in his views on U.S. trade deals and other policy issues while Clinton, a former secretary of state, has flip-flopped.
“People will have to contrast my consistency against the secretary’s,” Sanders said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Sanders, Clinton’s closest challenger, also argued that he has never liked a single U.S. trade deal, while Clinton last week opposed President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, which she backed as the country’s top diplomat.
Clinton leads Sanders, an Independent, by double digits in essentially every national poll, but trails him 41-to-32 percent among likely Democratic voters in early-voting state New Hampshire, according to a NBC News/Marist poll released last week.
Vice President Joe Biden, who still has an open invitation to join Tuesday’s debate from host CNN, got 16 percent in New Hampshire, in the poll.
Reporters are essentially following Biden’s every public move this weekend in his home state of Delaware should he make an unscheduled announcement about his plans.
While Clinton and Sanders have so far declined to attack each other and are not expected to during the debate, the other Democratic candidates will likely be much more aggressive.
"I didn't shift positions right on the eve of the first Democratic debate," challenger and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said about Clinton on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Clinton also has shifted her support for same-sex marriage and more recently opposed the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, moves largely considered attempts to appeal to the more liberal or progressive voters attracted to Sanders, a Socialist.
O’Malley, who also opposes the TPP trade deal, is polling at about 1 or 2 percent, according to essentially every major survey.
O’Malley, Clinton and Sanders -- who are all calling for more gun control in the wake of another mass shooting on campus -- will be joined on the debate stage in Las Vegas by former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and former Rhode Island governor and Sen. Lincoln Chaffee.
Webb and Chaffee also are polling at about 1 percent.
O'Malley also told CNN that he’s not worried about his low poll numbers heading into the CNN/Facebook Democratic debate.
"This race is really just beginning for the Democratic Party," he said.
Also on Sunday, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Florida, said the party is open to a Biden run.
O’Malley has criticized the DNC and its leader for not having more than six sanctioned debates, suggesting the limited number protects the front-running Clinton. Sanders has called for more debates, too.

Powerful, conservative Republican caucus open to Ryan as next speaker

The leader of the House Republicans’ most powerful conservative caucus said Sunday that his group would consider Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan as the chamber’s next speaker.
“Paul Ryan is a good man,” Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told “Fox News Sunday.” “If he gets in the race, certainly our group would look favorably on him.”
The caucus, which was influential in ousting House Speaker John Boehner last month, has officially endorsed Florida Rep. Daniel Webster, one of the caucus' roughly 40 members.
However, Jordan said the group would consider Ryan, who as a veteran House committee chairman and 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate is now widely considered the Republicans' best choice to unite the fractured caucus and become the next speaker.
Ryan, now chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has so far declined to accept invitations, even from Boehner and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
However, he appears to be considering his options while Congress is in recess this week.
Jordan on Sunday said that Ryan -- or whoever becomes the next speaker -- can no longer run the chamber from an authoritarian, top-down style.
“No more business as usual,” said Jordan, whose group wants to see more bills from rank-and-file members get full floor votes and House leaders awarding committee chairmanships to a wider range of members.
He pointed out that in 2012 Boehner removed conservative Rep. Tim Huelskamp, of Kansas, from assignments on the Budget and Agriculture committees, after Huelskamp voted against a budget proposed by Ryan, who was then the Budget committee chairman.
“That kind of stuff has to stop,” Jordan said. “This place has got to change.”
Jordan also dismissed criticism that his group refuses to compromise on a new leader, despite having only about 40 of the 218 votes needed to appoint a House speaker.
The GOP House conference postponed its internal speakership vote last week after the presumptive favorite, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, abruptly quit the race, amid speculation he didn’t have the support or votes. However, the full chamber vote is still scheduled for Oct. 29.
“Of course we’re willing to compromise,” Jordan said.

Gowdy: Fired Benghazi panel staffer decided to 'run to the press' after failed effort to get money

The leader of the Republican-led special Benghazi committee tried Sunday to discredit a former staffer’s claim that he was fired for not joining in a partisan-driven effort to tarnish Hillary Clinton, saying he never even spoke to the ex-staffer.
South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said he never met with the staffer, investigator and Air Force Reserves officer Bradley F. Podliska, and that Podliska was, in fact, warned about his own efforts to discredit Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
“Because I do not know him, and cannot recall ever speaking to him, I can say for certain he was never instructed by me to focus on Clinton, nor would he be a credible person to speak on my behalf,” Gowdy said.
He also said Podliska has never mentioned Clinton -- from when he was counseled about his “deficient performance” to when he was fired and through the entire legal mediation process.
Furthermore, Gowdy said, Podliska has “run to the press with his new salacious allegations” after failing to get money from the committee.
The mediation process is scheduled to conclude Tuesday.
Podliska’s complaint was reported first on Saturday by The New York Times.
The committee was formed last year to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed.
However, Democrats argue the committee was really formed to attack the Democratic presidential front-runner.
Party leaders got a foothold on efforts to dismantle the committee a few weeks ago when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested that Clinton’s poll numbers have dropped as the committee continues to investigate her role in the tragedy and her related use of a private server and emails to conduct official State Department business.
And they appear to be taking advantage of Podliska’s allegations and purported lawsuit to further their efforts.
“These are extremely serious whistle-blower charges,” said Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee’s top Democrat. “Republicans have been abusing millions of taxpayer dollars for the illegitimate purpose of damaging Hillary Clinton’s bid for president.”
Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans -- Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods -- were killed in the 2012 attacks.
Gowdy said Podliska mishandled classified information and was told as far back as April that he was “improperly” focused on Clinton and told to stop.
He also said the committee denied Podliska’s request to use interns for a project focused on Clinton and the National Security Council, saying Podliska was hired to focus on intelligence, “not the politics of White House talking points.”
Gowdy is also refuting Podliska’s claims that committee leaders retaliated against him for taking leave to go on active duty, which if true would be a violation of federal law.
He also argued that the committee has interviewed 44 new witnesses and recovered more than 50,000 pages of new documents, while “only half of one interview” has focused on Clinton’s server-email arrangement since news about it broke this spring.
“This committee always has been and will be focused on the four brave Americans we lost in Benghazi and providing the final, definitive accounting of the Benghazi terrorist attacks for the American people,” Gowdy said.

Obama says Clinton email server a 'mistake', but denies national security jeopardized

President Barack Obama said Sunday that Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server to conduct her correspondence while secretary of state was a "mistake", but denied that U.S. national security had been jeopardized as a result. 
"She made a mistake. She has acknowledged it. I do think that the way it's been ginned up is in part because of politics,"Obama said in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes". "I think she'd be the first to acknowledge that maybe she could have handled the original decision better and the disclosures more quickly."
Obama added that he was not initially aware that Clinton was using the private server, which was kept at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y. as opposed to a professional data center. When CBS' Steve Kroft pointed out that the Obama administration has prosecuted people for having classified material on their private computers, the president said he didn't get the impression there was an intent to "hide something or to squirrel away information."
The FBI is currently investigating whether classified information that passed through Clinton's server was mishandled. Last week, the bureau extended its investigation to obtaining data from a second tech company, which had been hired by another firm in 2013 to back up data on Clinton's server.
Meanwhile, the State Department is in the process of releasing monthly batches of the 30,000 emails Clinton deemed "work-related" and handed over following her tenure as America's top diplomat. Clinton has said that she deemed another 30,000 messages on the server to be "personal" and deleted them from the server. An  intelligence source close to the investigation told Fox News last month that the FBI has "the highest degree of confidence" that those "personal" emails are being recovered.
Republicans have demanded to know if any of those emails were really work-related emails that should have been turned over to the State Department along with other federal records.

More on this...

• Trey Gowdy goes on offensive against Hillary Clinton

• Hillary Clinton distances herself from President Obama

In addition, Senate investigators recently discovered that Clinton's private server was subjected to unspecified hacking attempts in 2013 from China, South Korea and Germany.
Clinton, who remains the front-runner for the Democratic nomination despite seeing her once-overwhelming lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders shrink in the polls, has yet to answer specific questions about the security protections in her unusual email setup.
"What I think is that it is important for her to answer these questions to the satisfaction of the American public," Obama said Sunday. "And they can make their own judgment."