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Trump is top Republican for president

HAMDEN — Donald Trump is the clear leader for the republican nomination in the race for president, but he still trails the Democratic contenders by wide margins, according to a new poll released Thursday morning by Quinnipiac University.
At 20 percent, Trump has a seven point lead over Scott Walker.
Hillary Clinton is the top Democrat with 55 percent, and Bernie Sanders has 13 percent.
In a general election match up of Clinton versus Trump, Clinton would win 48 — 36, the poll says.
If the election were held today, the poll says, Republican voters would choose:

• Donald Trump 20%
• Scott Walker 13%
• Jeb Bush 10%
• Ben Carson 6%
• Rand Paul 6%
• Marco Rubio 6%
• Mike Huckabee 6%
• John Kasich 5%
• Ted Cruz 5%
• Chris Christie 3%
• Bobby Jindal 2%
• Rick Perry 2%
• Carly Fiorina 1%
• Lindsey Graham 1%
• George Pitaki 1%
• Rick Santorum 1%
• 13 percent said they didn’t know or they wouldn’t vote.

If the election were held today, the poll says, Democratic voters would choose:

• Hillary Clinton 55%
• Bernie Sanders 17%
• Joe Biden 13%
• Martin O’Malley 1%
• Jim Webb 1%
• 13 percent said they didn’t know or they wouldn’t vote.

It should be noted that Vice President Biden has not declared interest in running for president.

Information in classified Clinton emails came from multiple intelligence agencies, source says

Classified emails stored on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server contained information from multiple intelligence agencies in addition to data connected to the 2012 Benghazi attack, a source familiar with the investigation told Fox News.
The information came from the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National-Geospatial Agency, as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency, the source said.     
A random sampling of emails by the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General has identified five emails containing classified information. One of the classified emails was released in full by the State Department on its “reading room” public website for Clinton’s emails.
The official responsible for overseeing the government’s security classification system, John Fitzpatrick, told McClatchy Newspapers that while reviewing four years of Clinton’s emails, intelligence agencies grew concerned that State Department officials were not guarding classified information in screening documents for public release.
A congressional source told Fox News that in early July, Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s undersecretary for management, met with about a dozen staffers on Capitol Hill from the intelligence, homeland security and foreign affairs committees.
In the meeting, Kennedy made the argument that he had checked with CIA and the publicly released email had no classified information, but that the agency was not the originating agency for the intelligence and would have no say over the classification issue, the source said.  
Staffers however questioned why the meeting was held in a classified setting, the source told Fox News, adding that Kennedy carried the email with him in a locked black bag, reserved for classified information.
A CIA spokesperson had no public comment on Thursday to Fox News, while the ODNI referred calls to the inspector general of the intelligence community.

White ex-DC official sues city, claims he was called 'cracker' and fired over race

WASHINGTON –  A former District of Columbia official brought in to help straighten out mismanagement at the Department of Public Works is suing the city, claiming he was harassed, intimidated and then fired for being white. 
The former city worker says he was repeatedly called “cracker” and “white boy” by black members of the department while in the presence of other managers. On his last day on the job as a deputy fleet administrator, Christopher Lyons said he found a sign on his door that said, “Get Out White Boy!”
Lyons is suing the city for wrongful termination, claiming he was the victim of racial discrimination. He also believes he was targeted because he uncovered financial flaws and reported cover-ups. He’s suing his former employers for back pay and then some.
“I am surprised [the racial discrimination] happened at this level of government,” his lawyer Morris Fischer told FoxNews.com. “We’re all Americans. We all have to treat each other the same, and we have to put aside whatever differences we have.”
Lyons was hired on Jan. 17, 2012 as the first -- and at that time, only -- white supervisor for DPW’s Fleet Management Administration. The agency supports municipal operations by finding, fueling and maintaining thousands of D.C. government vehicles.
At a mechanics and managers meeting in March 2012, Lyons claims he was subjected to relentless name-calling. He was referred to regularly as “white boy,” “cracker” and “big white guy” at meetings, he says.
Lyons also said his truck, which he parked in the secure DPW lot, was spat on and damaged by his black colleagues. He claims they took turns throwing paint and trash. When he brought up the incident, he claims the same group of people filed false complaints against Lyons with their union. Those claims, according to court documents, were found “without merit.”
The taunts continued, and Lyons told Bill Howland, the longtime head of the Department of Public Works. But instead of responding to the concerns, court records claim Howland told several of the same workers accused of harassing Lyons that he would fire Lyons. And then he followed through.
On the day he was terminated, Lyons said he walked to his office door and saw a number of derogatory signs written by supervisors and mechanics, including one that said, “Get Out White Boy!”

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Former D.C. official Christopher Lyons says he found this note on his office door.

Howland, who abruptly resigned from his position in June, also allegedly refused to discipline the employees Lyon accused of harassing him because Howland “liked them,” according to court records.
Howland was at his post for 11 years – a lifetime in D.C. terms – and managed to survive four mayoral changes despite a long list of controversial proposals including the 2014 rollout of Supercans, which was initially pitched as a $9 million recycling campaign paid for by earmarked money from the city’s retiree health fund.
Von Trimble, Lyons’ immediate supervisor who is black, also was terminated. Asked about this, Lyons' attorney argued that he and Lyons were close, and the other employees didn't like that. “We contend that Howland was aware of that,” he said.
Fischer and Lyons claim another factor in the termination was Lyons' reporting of mismanagement, including a case involving 100 missing vehicles. The District last week convinced the D.C. Superior Court to dismiss the whistleblower count due to a statute of limitations issue. But Fischer argued that in doing so, the D.C. government "pretty much conceded" there are issues to resolve on the racial discrimination claims.
Officials with the D.C. attorney general and Department of Public Works offices told FoxNews.com they could not comment on pending litigation. However, spokeswoman Linda Grant says, "Department of Public Works is committed to equal employment opportunity and ensuring all employees are treated fairly."
Lyons says that, when asked why he was terminated in August 2012, Howland told him his termination was “not performance related.”
He was only provided with a reason for his dismissal after he filed a complaint with the D.C. Office of Human Rights. On Jan. 11, 2013, Lyons received a statement that he was let go because his performance level “fell far short of their targets.”

US long suspected Pakistan of sheltering late Taliban leader Mullah Omar, report says

U.S. intelligence officials suspected Pakistan of sheltering Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, one of the world's most wanted men, for years before his death, according to a published report.
On Wednesday, Afghan officials announced that they believed Omar had died in a Pakistan hospital sometime in 2013. On Thursday, the Taliban issued a statement confirming the death of the man known as "The Commander of the Faithful", but did not specify when or how he had died. The Taliban statement also specifically claimed that Mullah Omar never left Afghanistan, "even to go to Pakistan or to any other country."
However, the Washington Post, citing diplomatic and intelligence documents, reported that the CIA had a lead on the reclusive Omar's whereabouts several times in 2010 and 2011, always placing him in Pakistan. The suspicions are another example of the complex relationship between the U.S. and one of its key allies in the global war on terror.
One such document cited by the Post quotes then-Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute as telling Pakistani officials during a White House strategy review in 2010 "while Pakistan has done a lot to deny safe havens to terrorists ... senior leadership of the Quetta Shura [Council] including Mullah Omar resides between Karachi and Quetta."
Early the next year, the Post reports, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta informed Pakistan's then-President Asif Zardari that the CIA had learned that Omar was being treated at a hospital in the bustling port of Karachi. Zardari's reaction to Panetta's disclosure is not recorded in the Post report. However, the reported presence of Omar in a major city in Pakistan did nothing to assuage suspicions that he was there with at least tacit official approval.
A spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy in Washington who was contacted by the Post cited the Taliban statement in dismissing claims that Omar had ever been in Pakistan or that the Islamabad government had knowledge of his presence. However, a former Pakistani official tells the Post that some sections of the government may have wished to keep Mullah Omar's death a secret to preserve Islamabad's ability to influence peace talks between a united Taliban and Kabul. The official also said that Pakistan's powerful ISI intelligence agency told Pakistani leaders that Omar was alive as recently as March of this year.
Despite suspicions about his whereabouts, the search for Mullah Omar always took a backseat to the hunt for Usama bin Laden, who was killed by a team of Navy SEALs in May 2011. U.S. officials tell the Post that to the best of their knowledge, there was never any CIA plan to capture of kill the Taliban leader.
"We were overwhelmingly focused on Al Qaeda, and there were many fewer instances where we had what we thought was halfway-reliable information on the whereabouts of senior members of the Taliban," said Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan, told the Post. Grenier also said that the ISI intelligence agency proved less adept at tracking down members of the Taliban than apprehending members of Al Qaeda.
The ISI had long been accused by Afghanistan of protecting Mullah Omar, with former President Hamid Karzai making precisely that claim in a 2006 interview with the Associated Press. The ISI does have long links with Islamic militants in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, since at least the 1980s, when it funneled weapons and money to insurgents battling Soviet forces.