Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Pleading the 5th Cartoons






Ivanka Trump: US must 'catch up with the times' on guaranteed maternity leave

Ivanka Trump on the importance of child-care reforms
Ivanka Trump told Fox News' Megyn Kelly Tuesday night that the U.S. must "catch up with the times" and offer guaranteed paid maternity leave.
"Cost of childcare is the single largest expense affecting American families ... even exceeding housing," Trump said on "The Kelly File." "The United States is the only country in the world that does not offer guaranteed maternity care."
Ivanka Trump spoke shortly after her father, Republican nominee Donald Trump, called for guaranteeing new mothers six weeks of paid maternity leave and suggested new incentives for employers to provide their workers with childcare.
Building on earlier proposals, Trump proposed allowing families with a stay-at-home parent to deduct the average cost of child care from their taxes, as well as costs associated with caring for elderly dependent relatives. The deduction would apply only to individuals earning $250,000 or less, or $500,000 or less if filing jointly.
"The tax codes were written at a time when American women weren’t part of the work force, so there have to be reforms," Ivanka Trump said Tuesday evening. "This is what the Trump presidency promises, new solutions, fresh solutions to existing problems."

The real estate mogul also called for the creation of "Dependent Care Savings Accounts" that would allow families to set aside money to look after children or elderly parents.

The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics.
Trump's Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, has called for 12 weeks parental leave for both mothers and fathers paid for by taxes on the wealthy. In response, Ivanka Trump said that childcare was an issue "the Democrats talk about, but they don't own."

Donald Trump has credited Ivanka, the second of his three children with ex-wife Ivana, with pushing him to formulate a policy on the issue.
"She is the one who has been pushing for it so hard: 'Daddy, Daddy we have to do this,'" Trump said in Iowa earlier Tuesday. "She's very smart, and she's right."

Clinton IT specialist ignores subpoena for House hearing; other witnesses plead 5th

Former Clinton aide Pagliano a no-show at email hearing
The former State Department IT specialist who set up Hillary Clinton’s private server ignored a subpoena to appear Tuesday before a House committee hearing, while other tech experts who helped maintain the system asserted their Fifth Amendment right not to testify – frustrating Republican lawmakers trying to dig deeper into the former secretary of state’s email setup.
House oversight committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said he’ll now consider a “full range of options” to address IT aide Bryan Pagliano’s “failure” to attend.
“He should be here. … It is not optional,” Chaffetz said. “His attendance is required here.”
Pagliano is considered a vital witness in the Clinton email case. He spoke previously to the FBI under immunity, telling the bureau there were no successful security breaches of the server. Pagliano also refused to answer questions last year before a House panel investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. His lawyers said at the time that Pagliano did not want to relinquish his rights under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.
Republicans on Tuesday questioned why Pagliano would avoid the latest hearing if he had immunity, though Democrats pushed back. According to Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., Pagliano’s lawyer said the request was an “abuse of process.”
Two other officials from Platte River Networks, Bill Thornton and Paul Combetta, did comply with subpoenas to appear. However, when it came time to answer questions, they pleaded the Fifth. The Denver-based technology company maintained Clinton’s server when it was moved from her Chappaqua, New York, home to a data center in northern New Jersey.
Combetta took the Fifth six times and Thornton took the Fifth four times, before both witnesses were excused.
After each question, they recited a variation of the line: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer and assert my Fifth Amendment constitutional privilege.”
Cummings said he could “understand” why they were not addressing questions.
But Chaffetz voiced frustration when Thornton declined to even answer whether he’d been questioned by the FBI. GOP lawmakers have wanted to question tech officials on the deletion of email records and other alleged attempts to destroy devices.
Chaffetz also said there will be consequences for Pagliano's refusal to appear and for "thumbing his nose at Congress." He didn't specify what the penalties would be but said, "We're not letting go of this."
A letter from Pagliano's attorney released by the committee says Pagliano will continue to assert his constitutional right not to testify.
The only witness remaining after the unfruitful initial questioning was Bill Clinton aide Justin Cooper, who answered lawmakers’ questions.
During that process, he confirmed that he had access to the Clinton server but did not hold a security clearance.
The email issue has shadowed Clinton's candidacy, and Republicans have been steadfast in focusing on her use of a private server for government business, with several high-profile hearings leading up to the election. Democrats insist the sole purpose of the hearings is to undermine Clinton's bid for the presidency.
Chaffetz on Monday escalated the GOP's battle with the FBI after its decision in July not to recommend criminal charges against Clinton for her use of the private email system by serving a top FBI official with a subpoena for the full case file. Chaffetz and other Republicans on the panel said the bureau has withheld summaries of interviews with witnesses and unnecessarily blacked out material from documents sent last month.
“We are entitled to the full file," he said.
Dismissing the "emergency" hearing held late on a Monday, Cummings said: "As far as I can tell, the only `emergency' is that the election is less than two months away."
Chaffetz issued the subpoena to Jason Herring, the acting assistant FBI director for congressional affairs. Herring and six other Obama administration officials appeared before the committee to discuss the investigative files. The witnesses on several occasions said they could not answer the questions from lawmakers in an open forum.

BIAS ALERT: CBS edits out Bill Clinton slip on Hillary health

Hillary Clinton 'didnt think pneumonia was a big deal
CBS Evening News edited out what sure sounded like a Freudian slip and a lawyerly correction when Bill Clinton was talking about how often his wife collapses from dehydration.
“She’s been well, if it is it’s a mystery to me and all of her doctors, because frequently, not frequently, rarely, but on more than one occasion, over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing has happened to her where she got severely dehydrated,” the former president said of Hillary Clinton, who is seeking the office he once held.
The CBS News website posted video showing the exchange, and Clinton’s mid-sentence correction. But when the exchange with Charlie Rose occurred during the nightly newscast, the “frequently, not frequently, rarely” part edited out.
For folks who wonder if the public is being told all there is to know about the former secretary of state’s health, Clinton’s full sentence seemed to hold a tantalizing clue. By the time other news channels, including Fox, picked up the comment, the slipup was gone.
The Daily Caller was first to compare the ex-president’s full statement to the one that aired, and NewsBusters followed up with a side-by-side comparison.
CBS backpedaled Tuesday and included the full quote on their morning newscast. NewsBusters claimed it was only the latest example of deft editing by the liberal media to make Hillary Clinton look good, or her opponent, Donald Trump, look bad.
"The clip in question from former President Clinton’s interview with Charlie Rose ran in its entirety on CBS THIS MORNING, CBSNews.com and on CBSN, CBS News’ 24/7 digital streaming news service," Richard Huff, Executive Director of Communications for CBS News, said in a statement. "One clip that ran on CBS Evening News was edited purely for time while on deadline for the live broadcast."
Last month, CNN edited Trump Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway speaking on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” to make it appear that Conway promised Trump would refrain from personal attacks. In fact, Conway said she didn’t approve of personal insults by candidates, but made no pledges on behalf of Trump.

Powell warned Clinton not to make him fall guy over email scandal, leaked messages reveal

Wall of silence at Clinton email hearing
Colin Powell attempted to persuade Hillary Clinton and her aides to not use him as a scapegoat for the controversy surrounding her private email server, according to leaked emails hacked from the former secretary of state’s Gmail account.
In the emails, which were obtained by The Intercept, Powell wrote to at least one confidant about his repeated warning to Clinton not to blame him for the scandal.
“I told her staff three times not to try that gambit. I had to throw a mini tantrum at a Hampton’s party to get their attention. She keeps tripping into these ‘character’ minefields,” he wrote. He also had tried to settle the matter in a meeting with Clinton aide Cheryl Mills in August.
In a separate email, Powell said he “warned her staff three times over the past two years not to try to connect it to me. I am not sure HRC even knew or understood what was going on in the basement.”
Powell had previously accused Clinton of trying to “pin” the scandal on him after Clinton told federal authorities in July that Powell had detailed to her his email practices under George W. Bush, according to a New York Times report in August.
The paper cited a passage from an upcoming book about Bill Clinton’s post-presidency that read, “Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer.”
Powell’s emails from his Gmail account were leaked by D.C. Leaks, a website that releases hacked emails from U.S. military officials and politicians and is said to have ties to Guccifer 2.0, who some believe has tied to Russian Intelligence.
According to The Intercept, Powell regularly exchanged emails with reporters and friends about Clinton’s server controversy, explaining that his situation had been different than Clinton’s. Powell never setup a private server and used a government computer for classified matters.
The Clinton campaign’s attempt to try to say Powell had encouraged the use of a private server left him deeply troubled.
“They are going to dick up the legitimate and necessary use of emails with friggin (sic) record rules. I saw email more like a telephone than a cable machine,” Powell wrote to business partner Jeffrey Leeds. “As long as the stuff is unclassified. I had a secure State.gov machine. Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.”
Clinton had sought Powell’s advice about his private email account during a June 2009 dinner at former Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s house. Powell gave Clinton “written guidance on why and how [he] had been doing it.”
A spokesperson for Powell said in a statement last month that he had talked to Clinton about describing his use of his personal AOL account for “unclassified messages and how it vastly improved communications within the State Department. At the time there was no equivalent system within the Department.
"He used a secure State computer on his desk to manage classified information," the statement added.

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