Presumptuous Politics : Nov 1, 2016

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

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New email shows DNC boss giving Clinton camp debate question in advance

CNN distances themselves from Brazile after WikiLeaks email

Another leaked email has emerged showing Democratic National Committee boss and former CNN contributor Donna Brazile sharing a debate question in advance with the Hillary Clinton campaign -- despite Brazile's persistent claims to the contrary.
CNN announced in a statement soon after the email became public Monday that Brazile had tendered her resignation and the network accepted it on Oct. 14, days after the controversy over Brazile tipping off the Clinton campaign initially broke.

According to documents released Monday by WikiLeaks, Brazile sent Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri an email titled, “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” the night before the March 6 CNN primary debate in Flint, Mich.
“Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint,” Brazile wrote.
BRAZILE DENIES RECEIVING QUESTION BEFORE MARCH TOWN HALL
The following night, Lee-Anne Walters, a mom whose twin boys stopped growing and whose daughter lost her hair during the Flint water contamination crisis, posed a question to both Clinton, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, and her primary opponent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“After my family, the city of Flint and the children in D.C. were poisoned by lead, will you make a personal promise to me right now that, as president, in your first 100 days in office, you will make it a requirement that all public water systems must remove all lead service lines throughout the entire United States, and notification made to the — the citizens that have said service lines?” Walters asked.
Clinton responded with a lengthy answer that moderator Anderson Cooper had to twice interrupt in an attempt to keep to the agreed-upon time limit. Clinton’s remarks drew applause from the crowd, though she wound up ultimately losing the state’s primary to Sanders two days later.
The apparent email tip-off was included in the latest trove of messages hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account and posted by WikiLeaks.
Brazile had been under fire over an earlier email chain appearing to show her tipping off the campaign before a town hall event later that same month. That exchange began with Brazile sending Palmieri the text of a question about the death penalty in an email with the subject line: “From time to time I get the questions in advance.”
After Palmieri responded, Brazile wrote back: “I’ll send a few more.”
Roland Martin asked the death penalty question verbatim the next night during a CNN town hall.
Brazile's role as a CNN contributor was suspended when she took over as interim DNC head in July, but on Oct. 14, in light of the email revelations, CNN said it accepted her full resignation.

Thank you @CNN. Honored to be a Democratic Strategist and commentator on the network. Godspeed to all my former colleagues.
— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) October 31, 2016

"We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor," the network said Monday in a statement.
Brazile on Monday tweeted a "thank you" to CNN and in a second tweet told the media to refer to an Oct. 11 statement she gave to Politico about the controversy.
“As a longtime political activist with deep ties to our party, I supported all of our candidates for president," Brazile's statement said. "I often shared my thoughts with each and every campaign, and any suggestions that indicate otherwise are simply untrue. As it pertains to the CNN Debates, I never had access to questions and would never have shared them with the candidates if I did."
Brazile, in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly on Oct. 19, again denied aiding Clinton during the primaries.
“Well, Kelly, since I play straight up and I play straight up with you, I did not receive any questions from CNN,” she said.
When Kelly pressed, Brazile said she was being persecuted and questioned the credibility of the hacked files.
“As a Christian woman, I understand persecution, but I will not sit here and be persecuted,” Brazile said. “Your information is totally false.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called out the DNC head over the emails at a rally Monday in Grand Rapids, Mich.
“[Brazile] should be fired from the DNC," he said. "What would happen if I did that? The electric chair, I think."

Controversial Dem operative 'close' to Clinton campaign boss, email claims

Robby Mook responds to FBI's October surprise

A Democratic operative who bragged about getting orders from Hillary Clinton to execute a bizarre stunt aimed at Donald Trump and was linked to a covert operation to incite the Republican presidential nominee’s supporters was “close” to Clinton’s campaign manager, according to an email released Sunday by WikiLeaks – despite the campaign’s denial of any “relationship” with the consultant.
Democracy Partners co-founder Mike Lux made the eyebrow-raising assertion in a Dec. 17, 2015 email to Center for American Progress leader Neera Tanden. The message, found in a trove hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s account and posted by WikiLeaks, refers to an alleged connection between Democracy Partners head Robert Creamer and Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook.
“Just wanted to pass along this note I sent to Bob Creamer, who as you may know is consulting for the DNC and is close to Robby Mook,” Lux wrote in a note about outreach to grassroots progressives.
DEM OPERATIVES LOSE JOBS AFTER UNDERCOVER VIDEO COMMENTS
Mook previously denied any ties between the Clinton campaign and Creamer after undercover video surfaced appearing to tie Creamer to schemes to incite brawls at Trump rallies and illegally bus voters to polling stations.
“These individuals no longer have any relationship with the DNC. They’ve never had a relationship with the Clinton campaign,” Mook said on CNN on Oct. 23. “And my understanding is that the events that are referenced happened in February of last year, they did not have a contract with the DNC until June. But putting all that aside, this was again, a video that was leaked out for the purpose of damaging the campaign.”
But Lux’s email would appear to call most of that statement into question. Mook stated Democracy Partners didn’t “have a contract with the DNC until June [2016],” though Lux clearly asserts Creamer is “consulting for the DNC” as of December 2015. Lux’s characterization of Mook and Creamer as “close,” and Creamer’s own boast in one video of getting a directive from Clinton, also raise questions about Mook’s response.
Asked about any relationship between Creamer and Mook, Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin told FoxNews.com in an email that the Clinton camp was not authenticating individual emails from the Podesta hack. Instead, Caplin blasted Trump for not standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose government many intelligence analysts blame for the email theft.
Creamer earlier this month said he was “stepping back” from efforts to elect Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee following the release of the undercover, edited Project Veritas video in which a Democracy Partners subcontractor appeared to describe a push to incite Trump supporters to violence. Another video emerged last week that showed Creamer twice bragging that Clinton personally approved plans to place Donald Duck-suited activists at Trump rallies.
Amid separate reports finding Creamer made hundreds of White House visits, the email released Sunday provided yet another link between the highest levels of the Democratic Party and the operative.
The GOP quickly posted to its website the text of the email alongside Mook’s recent denial. Trump has referenced the Project Veritas videos on the campaign trail and during the third presidential debate.
“I was wondering what happened with my rally in Chicago and other rallies where we had such violence,” Trump said during the Oct. 19 debate. “[Clinton’s] the one, and [President] Obama, that caused the violence. They hired people, they paid them $1,500, and they’re on tape saying, be violent, cause fights, do bad things.”
The DNC and Clinton campaign have steadfastly disavowed the actions discussed in the videos, produced by controversial conservative activist James O’Keefe.
“While Project Veritas has been known to offer misleading video out of context, some of the language and tactics referenced in the video are troubling even as a theory or proposal never executed,” Clinton campaign spokesman Zac Petkanas said earlier this month.

Clinton aide left classified info behind on 2010 China trip

An unnamed “senior aide” to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left classified information unsecured and unattended in a hotel room during a 2010 trip to China, one of several overseas lapses by Clinton’s inner circle, Fox News has learned.
Confirmation of the alarming violation comes as Clinton herself is under a renewed FBI probe for mishandling sensitive information on a private server and her longtime senior aide, Huma Abedin, also faces scrutiny as part of the investigation. It was not known which of Clinton’s aides left the information exposed.
“In May 2010, Secretary Clinton was on official travel in Beijing, China, accompanied by senior staff. Upon Secretary Clinton’s departure, a routine security sweep by Diplomatic Security agents identified classified documents in a staff member’s suite,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told Fox News in a statement, issued several weeks after a Freedom of Information Act request was filed with the agency.
Diplomatic Security, which protects the Secretary of State in the U.S. and abroad, as well as high-ranking foreign dignitaries and officials visiting the United States, wrote up the incident on a Form 117, while the Marine Security Guards filed a separate formal report, the source said.
The information came to light when the FBI was investigating whether Clinton or her staff violated the US Espionage Act by mishandling classified and top secret information.
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., citing a whistleblower who separately came to him with an allegation it was Clinton who left the material out, wrote to the FBI director on Monday asking for more information.
“I …understand that former Secretary Clinton left classified documents in her hotel room in China and that U.S. Marine Corps security officials filed a report related to the possible compromise of the documents,” Nunes wrote to FBI director James Comey.
Additionally, Nunes said an email released in response to a FOIA request described Abedin asking another staffer to remove “burnstuff” Abedin had left in a car during a trip to India.
Kirby told Fox News that incident may not have involved classified material.
“This email exchange does not show that classified information was left in a motorcade car,” Kirby said of that incident. “Sensitive But Unclassified material is routinely disposed of in burn bags. As the regulations state, Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) and Personally identifiable information (PII) documents are often burned. So it’s not accurate that any reference to a document going to a burn bag is a document that includes classified material.”
As for the China incident, Kirby insisted that Clinton had nothing to do with the matter.
“To be clear – this was not Secretary Clinton’s hotel room and no citation whatsoever was given to Secretary Clinton, nor were any reports written about Secretary Clinton’s conduct,” Kirby said in the statement.
At the time of the security sweep, the suite was still inside of a Diplomatic Security-controlled area, Kirby said, and under the direct control of a Diplomatic Security agent posted outside the room.
“Ultimately, Diplomatic Security concluded that classified information had been improperly secured, but that the evidence did not support assigning culpability to any individual. Furthermore, the Diplomatic Security investigation concluded that due to the fact that the documents were found within a Diplomatic Security controlled area, the likelihood that the information was compromised was remote.”
Leaving out classified or top secret information is a serious offense, a former state department staffer told FoxNews.com.
“Diplomatic Security and the Marine Security Guard takes exposure of classified information very seriously,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy research at the Center for Immigration Studies. “You can lose your security clearance if you’re caught more than once, and that means you might lose your job. It’s a big deal.”
As FoxNews.com reported Sept. 30, a top aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found herself in hot water in 2013 with the agency’s security and law enforcement arm when she lost classified information while accompanying her boss on a diplomatic trip to Moscow, an incident that the FBI also revisited earlier this year when it probed Clinton’s own problems handling sensitive data.
Monica Hanley, Clinton’s “confidential assistant” at the state department, was reprimanded and given “verbal counseling” by Diplomatic Security after she left classified material behind in the Moscow hotel, FBI documents show. The FBI spoke to Hanley, 35, in January as a part of its investigation into Clinton’s handling of top-secret and classified information when she was Secretary of State.
During her trip with Clinton to Russia, Hanley was given a “diplomatic pouch” that held Clinton’s briefing book and schedule for her Russian trip. Hanley brought the pouch and its contents into the Russian hotel suite, which she shared with Clinton, but she left behind some of those classified documents, the FBI report revealed.
Diplomatic Security found the classified document in that suite during a routine sweep after Clinton and Hanley left the hotel. Agents subsequently informed Hanley “the briefing book and document should never have been in the suite.”

Huma's email testimony could haunt her as FBI renews probe

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Scrutiny of top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin intensified Monday amid speculation that claims she made in her FBI interview and a separate sworn deposition could come back to haunt her as the bureau gains access to emails on her estranged husband’s computer.
Abedin, one of Clinton’s most trusted advisers, is married to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner. An unrelated investigation into allegations Weiner sexted with a 15-year-old North Carolina girl purportedly led investigators to a new email cache that have since kicked the Clinton email server probe back to life.
While Abedin has stepped off the campaign trail since the FBI's stunning announcement on Friday, her emails are now at the center of attention.
"Thank you, Huma!" Donald Trump declared at a Michigan rally on Monday afternoon.
FBI Director James Comey stressed in his letter to Congress Friday that investigators don't know how significant the new emails may be. But even if they don't implicate the Democratic presidential nominee, their mere existence could call into question testimony Abedin gave months ago about the email system.
FBI records reflect that she told investigators "that she lost most of her old emails as a result of the transition."
During a June 28, 2016 deposition with the conservative Judicial Watch, Abedin also swore she looked for and turned over all devices she thought contained government work to the State Department.
“I looked for all the devices that may have any of my State Department work on it and returned – returned – gave them to my attorneys for them to review for all relevant documents,” Abedin said. “And gave them devices and paper.”
Abedin claimed she handed over two laptops, a BlackBerry, and other files she found in her apartment. She also said she wasn’t involved in the process of what specific files would be handed over to the State Department.
These statements were made before the FBI initially announced in July that it was not pursuing charges in the investigation. The bureau since 2015 had been looking into Clinton’s personal email system, trying to find every electronic device that Clinton and her aides used.
The Republican National Committee sent out an email Saturday saying reports about Abedin’s past statements now raise questions on whether she had “perjured herself.”
Karl Rove, Fox News analyst and former George W. Bush adviser, told Fox News on Friday that the issue may be “a question of her veracity” and whether the emails contradict what Abedin told investigators.
Abedin has not spoken publicly about the newly found emails, though the Clinton campaign is urging Comey to provide more information as soon as possible. Democratic lawmakers have sharply criticized the FBI director's decision to make this announcement so close to the general election.
Meanwhile, the campaign is publicly standing behind Abedin.
Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta said Sunday on CNN that Abedin "absolutely" is still with the campaign and has "played a central and vital role."
Campaign Manager Robby Mook also played down the Abedin connection on "Fox News Sunday."
"There's nothing about Huma Abedin in the letter that was sent out," he said.
Abedin seemed to be a no-show Monday on the campaign trail. She also did not travel with Clinton over the weekend to the battleground state of Florida.