Conservative Blogger
Monday, August 29, 2016
New emails reportedly show Clinton Foundation exec, State Dept. aide discussed access to China president
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| Chinese President Xi |
In emails dated December 2010, Clinton State Department aide Huma Abedin and then-top Clinton Foundation official Doug Band discussed potential guests for the lunch with the Chinese president -- including three executives from groups that had donated millions to the foundation, according to an ABC News report late Saturday.
Among the possible guests discussed were Bob McCann, then-president of wealth management at UBS; Judith Rodin, Rockefeller Foundation president, and Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek.
The emails reviewed by ABC News were obtained by the conservative group Citizens United through a Freedom of Information Act request.
UBS Wealth Management USA contributed $500,001 to $1 million to the foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation gave $10 million to $25 million and Western Union and its foundation gave $1 million to $5 million, according to ABC News.
Nearly two weeks after the Abedin-Band exchange, Band wrote a follow-up email that specifically asked that Rodin be seated at Vice President Biden’s table. "I'll ask," Abedin replied, according to the ABC News report.
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Josh Schwerin, a Hillary for American spokesman, said Sunday that the State Department’s actions under Clinton "were always taken with the intent to advance our foreign policy interests and with no other intent in mind than that."
Schwerin also repeated what the department has previously said: that its officials are "in touch with a wide range of outside individuals, organizations, nonprofits, NGOs, think tanks" and others as part of normal business.
An he called Citizens United "a right-wing group that's been attacking the Clintons since the 1990s" that is again "trying to make something out of nothing."
A representative for McCann told ABC News he did not attend the lunch. A representative for Ersek said he doesn't have a "record" of the event. And Rodin's office did not return a request for comment.
The State Department said it could not provide a list of attendees.
The new emails follow an Associated Press report last week that found more than half the people outside the government who met or spoke by telephone with Clinton while she was secretary of state had given money -- either personally or through companies or groups -- to the Clinton Foundation. The report was based on the review of a partial list of State Department schedules that the agency provided through a court order.
Earlier this month, newly-released documents showed the State Department, shortly after Clinton left the agency, considered buying land for a U.S. Embassy in Lagos from a company with ties to Gilbert Chagoury, who donated more than $1 million to the foundation. (The story was first reported by Fox News.)
And in 2011, foundation donor Rajiv K. Fernando was put on a sensitive U.S. intelligence advisory board without having any known related experience, according to ABC News. Fernando resigned within days, amid questions about his qualifications.
Clinton is the Democratic presidential nominee running against Republican nominee Donald Trump. She currently leads the race by 6 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics.com polls average.
Two killed in Louisiana bus crash, driver in US illegally, cops say
An out-of-control bus driven by an illegal immigrant carrying flood recovery volunteers hit a fire truck and firefighters who had responded to an earlier crash Sunday morning on a Louisiana interstate, killing two people and injuring 36, according to state police.
The ladder truck from St. John the Baptist Parish, located west of New Orleans, had parked across the right lane of Interstate 10 to block traffic while police investigated an earlier crash involving a pickup truck that had skidded on the wet road, crashing into both guardrails about 6:40 a.m., Trooper Melissa Matey told local media.
The bus hit the fire truck, then hit a car, and then veered behind the fire truck and into the pickup truck, knocking three firefighters who were standing near the guard rail into the water below, Matey said.
Matey said the driver, identified as Denis Yasmir Amaya Rodriguez, 37, of Honduras, was an employee of that company.
"He is in this country illegally from Honduras. He has no driver's license. He had minor injuries," she said.
Rodriguez will be booked in the St. John the Baptist jail and will be charged with two counts of negligent homicide, reckless operation, and no driver's license, Fox 8 reported. Police told the television station that additional charges are forthcoming.
Matey said the wreck killed Jermaine Starr, 21, of Moss Point, Mississippi, a back-seat passenger in the Camry, and St. John the Baptist Parish district Fire Chief Spencer Chauvin. The injured included the other two firefighters, the bus driver, 24 bus passengers and a total of nine people in the car and pickups.
Firefighter Nicholas Saale, 32, of Ponchatoula, and Camry passenger Vontravous Kelly of Moss Point, Mississippi, are in critical condition, she said. The Camry's other two occupants, driver Marcus Tate, 35, and David Jones, both of Moss Point, are in serious condition.
Other injuries — including the Titan's two occupants, who suffered minor injuries in the original crash — ranged from minor to moderate, Matey said.
Matey said the bus was taking flood recovery workers from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and belonged to a company with two names: AM Party Bus and Kristina's Transportation LLC, both at the same address in Jefferson, about 30 miles from New Orleans in Jefferson Parish, Matey said.
No listing in Jefferson was available. A call by the Associated Press to Kristina's Transportation in Destrehan, 12 miles from Jefferson in St. Charles Parish, was not answered Sunday. A woman who answered the phone at AM Party Bus of New Orleans told the AP was only authorized to take booking calls.
“This is a very sad day for all first responders in Louisiana,” Colonel Mike Edmonson, Louisiana State Police Superintendent said in a statement obtained by Fox 8. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the St. John the Baptist Fire Department. Louisiana has the “Move Over” law in place to protect our first responders on our roadways. Please adhere to this law and slow down when approaching emergency vehicles and disabled vehicles on the road.”
Trump says he'll deliver speech in Arizona on immigration
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| Kellyanne Conway on alt-right, keeping Trump on message |
The announcement of the speech, posted in a Tweet, was initially set for last week in Phoenix, but was pushed back as Trump and his team wrestled over the details of what he would propose. There has been debate within his campaign about immigrants who haven't committed crimes beyond their immigration offenses.
The candidate's evolving stance hasn't made it easy for top supporters and advisers, from his running mate on down, to defend him or explain some campaign positions.
On Sunday, Trump’s campaign and his supporters were challenged again to explain the candidate’s evolving policy but appeared to find solid ground in arguing it was the opposite of Hillary Clinton’s plan.
“There are very few issues where they're more different,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told “Fox News Sunday.” “In fact, Hillary Clinton is to the left of Barack Obama on immigration.”
Trump won the GOP primary largely by appealing to the party’s conservative base with vows to deport all of the country’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants and to build a wall along the entire southern-U.S. border and have Mexico pay for the construction.
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Conway said Trump indeed wants to find “the fair and humane way” to address the issue, which includes whether to separate families to enforce federal law.
But she made clear that Trump still intends to build the wall and that he supports neither amnesty nor legalization for people who entered the country illegally.
“We all learned in kindergarten to stand in line, to wait our turn,” said Conway, who argued Trump has stopped talking about a deportation “force” to remove people.
“Give Donald Trump credit for at least trying to address a complex issue and not pretending like Hillary Clinton does, that we don't have these problems,” she said.
“The real issue is look at the two plans,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told NBC’s “Meet the Press." “Look at where Hillary Clinton is. She wants to put Barack Obama's immigration plan on steroids. The issue is that this is an election of choices: One, allow everyone in through complete amnesty, or number two, a tough plan that's fair and humane.”
The Clinton campaign argues that Trump’s plan remains as “dangerous” as before, despite efforts to make it seem different.
“He may try to disguise his plans by throwing in words like ‘humane’ or ‘fair,' " said campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri. “But the reality remains that Trump’s agenda echoes the extreme right’s will -- one that is fueling a dangerous movement of hatred across the country.”
GOP vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence said Sunday the main tenets of Trump's immigration plan will include building the wall, no path to legalization or citizenship and stronger border enforcement.
The nominee and Indiana GOP governor also sought to distinguish Trump’s position from Clinton’s.
“It is going to be fair. It is going to be tough,” Pence told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “He has said that very consistently -- the contrast with Hillary Clinton, who supports amnesty, open borders, who wants to implement executive amnesty again on Day One, even though the Supreme Court of the United States rejected it.”
Pence did not answer questions on whether the campaign’s position, as Trump has said, is that children born to people who are in the U.S. illegally are not U.S. citizens.
Native-born children of immigrants, even those living illegally in the U.S., have been automatically considered American citizens since the adoption of the 14th Amendment in 1868.
Pence also could not definitively say whether Trump was sticking with his vow to remove those living in the U.S. illegally, with the help of a deportation force.
“What you heard him describe there, in his usual plainspoken, American way, was a mechanism, not a policy," the nominee said.
Trump has focused lately on deporting people who are in the U.S. illegally and who have committed crimes. But who Trump considers a criminal also remained unclear Sunday.
Pressed on the question, Priebus replied: "I just don't speak for Donald Trump."
Ex-Congressman Weiner embroiled in new sexting scandal
Former Congressman and New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner sent explicit photos to a woman multiple times over the past 19 months, according to a New York Post report published late Sunday.
Weiner, who is married to Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin, also admitted to sexually fantasizing and masturbating about the unidentified woman, calling her "literally a fantasy chick," according to the report.
At least one of the photos Weiner sent the woman showed his underwear-clad crotch as his son Jordan slept next to him in bed.
When contacted by the Post, Weiner admitted he and the woman "have been friends for some time," but added that their conversations were "private ... and were always appropriate."
Weiner, 51, added that he had never met the woman, despite repeatedly inviting her to visit him in New York.
Weiner spent 12 years in the House of Representatives before resigning in June 2011 after posting an explicit image of himself on his Twitter account. At the time, he admitted that he had "exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about six women over the last three years."
With Abedin's public support, Weiner entered the New York City mayoral race in 2013. However, his campaign collapsed when a second woman, Sydney Leathers, came forward to claim Weiner had sent her more explicit photos while using the alias "Carlos Danger." Weiner finished fifth in the Democratic primary with just five percent of the vote.
The woman, who described herself to the Post as a supporter of Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association, has two adult children and lives with a boyfriend who routinely travels for work.
The Post reported Sunday that Weiner was concerned that he had repeated his 2011 mistake and posted the photo of his son publicly.
"You do realize you can see you [sic] Weiner in that pic??" the woman messaged.
"Ooooooh ... I was scared. For half a second I thought I posted something," Weiner responded. "Stop looking at my crotch."
"Whatever. You did it on purpose," she replied, adding, "O [sic] I see you thought you posted on your TL [public timeline] not DM [direct messages]. S–t happens be careful."
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