Suspected sniper dies from self-inflicted wound after standoff with Dallas police; five officers killed in attacks

DEVELOPING: A suspected sniper who was in a standoff with Dallas Police early Friday reportedly died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound hours after five officers were killed and several others were wounded in an attack targeting law enforcement officers during a protest march.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said the suspect that was holed up in a downtown parking garage had exchanged gunfire with officers for 45 minutes and claimed "the end is coming", as well as saying that he had planted bombs across Dallas and wanted to hurt more officers.
KDFW-TV reported the suspect shot himself at around 2:15 a.m. local time.
Brown also said authorities had earlier taken a woman into custody near the garage. Two men were also being questioned after police pursued their vehicle away from downtown onto Interstate 35.
Brown said "our assumption" is that the four suspects were "working together with rifles, triangulating at different positions." He had no information on a possible motive or the identities of any of the suspects. He also noted that police were not completely certain that every suspect was in custody.
Late Thursday, Brown confirmed the four fatalities — three Dallas PD officers and one transit officer — and said seven other officers and one civilian were wounded in the shooting. Three of the injured officers reportedly were in critical condition and two others were in surgery. The Dallas Police Association confirmed a fifth officer had died in a Tweet early Friday.
DART identified its fallen officer as Brent Thompson, 43. He is the first DART officer to be killed in the line of duty.
Brown said multiple shooters positioned themselves in two parking garages in downtown Dallas and "planned to injure and kill as many law enforcement officers as they could."
A Dallas police source estimated to Fox News that at least 60 rounds were fired over a "large kill zone." The source added that the shooting would have required considerable planning.
"It's a heartbreaking moment for the city of Dallas," Mayor Mike Rawlings said. "I ask everybody focus on one thing right now, and that is Dallas police officers, their families, those that are deceased [and] those that are in the hospital fighting for their lives."
Fox4 cameras captured protesters running away from the scene of the shooting shortly before 9 p.m. local time. A cameraman approached the scene and captured officers apparently lying on the ground.
Aerial images showed officers appearing to focus their search on a nearby parking garage, which may have served as the snipers’ perch.
Witness Carlos Harris told the Dallas Morning News the gunfire was "strategic. It was tap-tap-pause. Tap-tap-pause."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released a statement saying he has directed the Texas Department of Public Safety director to offer "whatever assistance the City of Dallas needs at this time."
"In times like this we must remember -- and emphasize -- the importance of uniting as Americans," Abbott said.
The protesters had gathered after a Minnesota officer on Wednesday fatally shot Philando Castile while he was in a car with a woman and a child in a St. Paul suburb. The aftermath of the shooting was purportedly livestreamed in a widely shared Facebook video.
A day earlier, Alton Sterling was shot in Louisiana after being pinned to the pavement by two white officers. That, too, was captured on a cellphone video.
Michael Bautista told KDFW the protest march had been "very peaceful" before the shooting started.
Brittany Peete, a demonstrator, told the Associated Press she didn't hear the gunshots, but she "saw people rushing back toward me saying there was an active shooter."
Peete said she saw a woman trip and nearly get trampled as people ran to get to safety.
"Everyone just started running," Devante Odom, 21, told The Dallas Morning News. "We lost touch with two of our friends just trying to get out of there."

When it comes to Hillary Clinton, American justice is blind, deaf and dumb

FBI Director James Comey was summoned to Capitol Hill on Thursday to explain why orange will not be Hillary Clinton's new black.
House Republicans grilled the FBI director for hours over his recommendation not to press charges against Bill Clinton's wife.
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The FBI determined she was extremely careless, but not criminal in her handling of confidential and classified emails. They said it was not her intent to break the law and put the entire nation in grave danger.
Be sure to use that defense the next time you get pulled over in Hog Jaw, Arkansas for running that red light. Let me know how that turns out for you.
We the People are held to a much different standard than high-falootin’ folks like Hillary Clinton. And this sordid email affair illustrates that Lady Justice is not only blind, but she's also deaf and dumb.
There was a lot of political showmanship on Capitol Hill and to be honest I doubt much will come of Thursday's proceedings. However, there were several moments of enlightenment.
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For example, Director Comey admitted that some of Mrs. Clinton's public comments about her emails were not true. In other words, she lied. She flat-out told some whoppers.
On the claim she never emailed classified material?
"That's not true," Comey replied. "There was classified material emailed."
How about that claim that she only used one device?
"She used multiple devices," Comey told lawmakers.
And it turns out she lied about turning over all work-related emails.
"We found work-related emails, thousands that were not returned," he said.
Bless her heart, but that woman wouldn't know the truth if it was a pant suit on the 50 percent-off rack at TJ Maxx.
“It’s apparent that she lied to the American people,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., later said of Clinton.
But the jaw-dropping revelation of the hearing involved Mrs. Clinton's sophistication level (and they weren't talking about her impressive collection of pant suits).
The FBI director said she may not have been “sophisticated enough” to understand the classified markings on her emails.
"I think it's possible, possible that she didn't understand what a (c) meant when she saw it in the body of an email like that," Comey told bewildered Republican lawmakers.
What did she think the (c) meant? Cheetos? Cauliflower? Or perhaps she thought the State Department monogramed all of her documents?
I mean - you would have to be as dumb as a door knob to not know something like that, right?
Is that what the FBI director was trying to tell us -- that the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party has the intelligence level of yard mulch.
Sweet mercy, America!

FBI chief’s testimony about Clinton emails torpedoes the bureau’s reputation

There is the bipartisan pretense that the FBI is the only government agency in Washington that is above reproach. Yet, this is the agency that collaborated with Lois Lerner and the IRS in an effort to criminally prosecute opponents of Barack Obama. Then, unsurprisingly, this same FBI (and Justice Department) found nothing worth prosecuting in their own blatant malfeasance.
Again, this is the same FBI whose Keystone Cops approach to counter-terrorism failed to prevent eminently preventable terrorist acts ranging from the Boston Marathon bombing to the Orlando massacre. In fact, we now know that an FBI supervisor actually told one Florida police department investigating Omar Mateen, “We do NOT believe he is a terrorist” [Emphasis in original]
How does an agency with this sort of record escape accountability? Quite simply, by doing favors for the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It is to politicians like Clinton and Obama that men such as Comey owe their jobs – and agencies such as the FBI owe their budgets. And so, they are subservient.
According to Comey’s testimony before the House Thursday, the Hillary Clinton lies, subterfuge, document destruction and national security violations that would, for starters, get you or any other non-political elitist drummed out of the FBI, shouldn’t even be considered for prosecution by a “reasonable prosecutor.” Well, not if that “reasonable prosecutor” owes his meal ticket and position of power to the likes (and dislikes) of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

What was perhaps most striking about Comey’s testimony on Thursday is how he carefully narrowed his investigation in a way that conveniently helps Hillary Clinton.

What was perhaps most striking about Comey’s testimony on Thursday is how he carefully narrowed his investigation in a way that conveniently helps Hillary Clinton.
Did Hillary Clinton lie to Congress about her email practices? Not part of the investigation. Did she conceal and illegally remove federal records? Not part of the investigation. And no word on the pay-for-play schemes with the Clinton Foundation and its donors. How did the classified material get on Clinton’s system? Comey confessed his FBI didn’t even investigate this basic question.
One analysis of Comey’s legal sophistry is that he saw that the fix was in and he wasn’t going to cause a crisis and put his job on the line by recommending a prosecution to a compromised and conflicted Obama Justice Department.
Comey may think he’s successfully threaded the political needle – highlighting Clinton’s malfeasance while giving her a get-out-of-jail-free card. But all he’s done is further lowered the reputation of the FBI in the eyes of the American people.

State Department reopens internal probe of Clinton emails

The State Department is re-opening an internal investigation into whether Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her top aides mishandled classified information, Fox News confirmed late Thursday.
The investigation, which was first reported by the Associated Press, focuses on how classified emails to and from Clinton's private server were categorized at the time they were sent.
The State Department started its review in January after declaring 22 emails from Clinton's private server to be "top secret." The investigation was halted after the FBI began investigating Clinton's so-called "homebrew" email setup last April. On Wednesday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said there would be no indictments resulting from the FBI probe.
"Given the Department of Justice has now made its announcement, the State Department intends to conduct its internal review," State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. "Our goal will be to be as transparent as possible about our results, while complying with our various legal obligations."
Kirby set no deadline for the investigation's completion.
Clinton was secretary of state until early 2013. Most of her top advisers left shortly thereafter.
Kirby said earlier this week that former officials can still face "administrative sanctions." The most serious of those penalties is loss of security clearances, which could complicate Clinton's naming of a national security team if she becomes president.
Beyond the Democratic front-runner, the probe is most likely examining confidants Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin, who wrote many of the emails to their boss that the various investigations have focused on. Mills, Clinton's chief of staff at the State Department, has been viewed as a possibility for the same job in the White House. There is speculation that Sullivan, Clinton's former policy chief, could be national security adviser.

The State Department says it won't identify former officials that still hold security clearances. But in an email Fox News made public in February, the department described Mills as still holding a valid clearance.