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Al Gore's daughter among 23 arrested in Boston pipeline protest

BOSTON –   Former Vice President Al Gore's daughter was among 23 people arrested during a protest of a pipeline under construction.
The arrests happened Wednesday at the site of Spectra Energy's West Roxbury Lateral pipeline in Boston.
Karenna Gore was among demonstrators who tried to block construction activity on the site by lying in a trench dug for the pipeline and refusing to move until firefighters removed them, said protest group Resist the Pipeline & Stop the West Roxbury Lateral.
The group opposes the pipeline because of safety and climate change concerns.
Protesters facing trespassing and disturbing the peace charges were being arraigned Thursday.
Gore, who serves as director of the Center for Earth Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, and others facing resisting arrest charges will be arraigned Friday.

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Gore said in an email that she was honored to be part of the protest "as they made the case that there are higher moral principles at stake here that merit nonviolent civil disobedience."
"The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should be helping us transition to renewable energy like solar and wind but instead they almost always defer to the fossil fuel industry," she wrote.
Al Gore, who served as vice president under Democratic President Bill Clinton, said he was proud of his daughter.
"We are facing an existential crisis and should speed up the transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy and a decarbonized economy," he said through a spokeswoman.
Houston-based Spectra Energy Corp. said it does not condone actions that take first responders away from their duties.
"Our pipelines provide a vital source of reliable, affordable energy for the nation's homes, hospitals, businesses and schools. Low energy prices help everyone, particularly those least able to pay their bills," company spokesman Creighton Welch said in a statement.
The 5-mile pipeline is part of a larger, roughly $1 billion plan to expand natural gas capacity in New England.
Protesters said Buddhist, Jewish and Christian clergy members were among those charged with resisting arrest, as was noted climate change activist Tim DeChristopher, who a few years ago tried to stop drilling operations in Utah.
"We can no longer pretend like what Spectra is doing here in West Roxbury is anything other than digging a mass grave," DeChristopher said in remarks at the protest.
DeChristopher tried to thwart drilling near Utah's national parks by posing as a buyer during a 2008 government oil and gas lease auction. He served 21 months in federal prison, and his probation ended this April.

Trump doubles down on trade talk amid Chamber of Commerce feud

Donald Trump, in an interview with Fox News, doubled down on his criticism of U.S. trade policies while making clear he's not backing down from a simmering feud with the Chamber of Commerce over the issue.
“The trade deals are ripping our jobs apart,” Trump told Fox News on Wednesday. As for the chamber, he said the group is “totally controlled by the special interest groups.”
Trump and the Chamber of Commerce have been trading shots all week, underscoring a divide in the Republican Party on the trade issue. The chamber, a traditionally friendly group for mainstream GOP candidates, went after Trump hard on Tuesday over proposals the group said would cost jobs and hurt the economy.
Trump, though, reiterated Wednesday he believes new trade deals should be negotiated because foreign countries are taking advantage of the United States.
“I’ve got it, I understand it, you see the crowds I am getting, nobody has crowds like we have,” Trump told Fox News. “And it’s about, really, I think in this case trade.”
Trump initially went after the chamber on Tuesday during a rally in Bangor, Maine. The New York real estate developer accused the organization of being a special interest that only “wants to have the deals that they want to have.”

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“They want to have TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the worst deals, and it’ll be the worst deal since NAFTA,” Trump said, claiming the chamber’s motives were “pretty sinister.”
The chamber, the world’s largest business organization, represents the interests of more than 3 million businesses and has members ranging from mom-and-pop shops to large corporations. The group rejects the "special interest" charge.
Trump once again is waging somewhat of a two-front war, taking on traditional GOP allies while also facing the scorn of President Obama. On Wednesday, Obama slammed Trump’s call for a withdrawal from trade deals as “the wrong medicine.”
"Ordinary people who have concerns about trade have a legitimate gripe about globalization," Obama said pointing to "growing inequality and stagnant wages."
"The question is, what do you do about it? And the prescription of withdrawing from trade deals and focusing solely on your local market -- that's the wrong medicine," he said, during a trip to Canada to meet with North Americans heads of state.
Obama added that Trump’s idea is “not feasible” because local businesses would lose jobs if they didn’t have access to international markets.
For its part, the chamber ripped Trump’s Tuesday trade policy speech in real time on Twitter, picking it apart point by point. His comments were also slammed by the National Association of Manufacturers President Jay Timmons, who tweeted that Trump’s got “it backward.”
Trump’s comments also have not been received well by some wealthy Republican donors like billionaire Paul Singer, who told CNBC Wednesday that Trump's plan for trade deals would not end well.
"The most impactful of the economic policies that I recall him coming out for are these anti-trade policies," Singer said during a panel discussion at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.
But Trump’s tough talk has gotten the attention of some experts like Art Laffer, the former economic adviser to President Reagan.
Laffer told Newsweek while he didn’t like the “tone” of Trump’s Tuesday speech, he saw some improvements.
"I saw negotiating better trade deals rather than throwing away all the trade deals we have now. He points out the flaws in these trades, and that’s all true," Laffer said. "I don’t like the tone of it, but I dislike the tone less today than I did three weeks ago.”

Trump 'flabbergasted' by meeting between AG Lynch, Bill Clinton

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Thursday that reports of a private meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton left him "flabbergasted."
Lynch and Clinton met on Lynch's plane after she landed at the Phoenix airport Monday evening. Lynch has denied that the two spoke about the ongoing FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state. However, Republicans and Democrats have criticized her for creating a possible conflict of interest, and some lawmakers have called for Lynch to recuse herself from the investigation.
"I actually thought ... 'No way, there's no way that's gonna happen' and it happened." Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "I think it's amazing. I've never seen anything like that before."
The encounter between Lynch and Clinton took place the night before the House select committee investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi released its report. The investigation criticized the Obama administration for huddling to craft a public response to the video even as military assets waited hours to deploy to Libya.
"Who wouldn't have sent help after you got the first messages?" Trump asked Hannity. "[Hillary Clinton] has bad judgement. [Ambassador Chris Stevens] is asking for help."
"She lied," Trump said of Clinton. "That's what she does. She lies."

State Department seeks 27-month delay for release of Clinton Foundation emails

The State Department has sought to delay the court-ordered release of emails between four of Hillary Clinton's top aides and officials at the Clinton Foundation and a closely associated public relations firm.
The motion, filed in federal court by the Justice Department late Wednesday, seeks to put off the release of the emails by 27 months. It was first reported on by The Daily Caller.
In the filing, the State Department says it originally estimated that approximately 6,000 emails and other documents were exchanged between the aides — identified as former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Fuchs, former Ambassador-At-Large Melanne Verveer, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin — and the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a communications shop that former President Bill Clinton helped launch.
However, the State Department said that due to errors in the initial document search, the number of "potentially responsive documents" was in fact more than 34,000. The department estimated that it had more than 13,000 pages still left to review.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras had previously ordered the State Department to release the requested documents by July 21.
If the State Department request is granted, the emails would not be released until October 2018, nearly halfway through the first term of a potential Hillary Clinton presidency. The documents are being sought by the conservative nonprofit group Citizens United.
"The American people have a right to see these emails before the election," Citizens United President David Bossie told The Daily Caller, adding that the delay was "totally unacceptable."
The motion was filed two days after Attorney General Loretta Lynch met Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport. Lynch denied the meeting was anything other than a chance encounter, but Republicans and Democrats have criticized her for at least creating the appearance of a conflict of interest in the midst of a federal investigation into Hillary Clinton's time as America's top diplomat.
On Thursday, State Department spokesman John Kirby cited a surge in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in explaining the State Department extension request.
"The Department handles FOIA in an entirely nonpartisan manner," Kirby said.
The former secretary of state has come under scrutiny over whether she used her position to aid corporate and foreign government donors to the Clinton Foundation.
In addition, Abedin worked as an employee at Teneo while simultaneously working at the State Department while Mills held a position at the Clinton Foundation while also serving in the State Department. Both matters have been flagged by Congress as possible conflicts of interest.