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Charlie Rose reportedly invited to join media elite at Idaho retreat

Disgraced host Charlie Rose was fired from his CBS and PBS jobs, but he may still be welcome among some of the media elite.
Rose is reportedly included on the guest list for next month’s Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Idaho.
The annual week-long retreat, where the media and finance worlds come together, is known for its lovely scenery and its “potential for furtive deal-making,” Vanity Fair reported.
If he attends, Rose -- who lost his "CBS This Morning" gig and eponymous public-television talk show over allegations of sexual misconduct -- would find himself in the company of media giants such as Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, CBS CEO Les Moonves, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and others, the magazine reported.
The news of Rose's possible re-emergence followed rumors that he was being considered for a #MeToo-inspired comeback series, a report said.
Page Six reported in April that producers pitched the idea of a show on which the likes of Louis C.K., Matt Lauer and others implicated in high-profile sexual misconduct scandals would be interviewed.
Editor and women's advocate Tina Brown, who ultimately passed on the idea, said at the Time 100 Gala that she was approached about co-hosting the #MeToo show with Rose.
But after word got out, social media users quickly posted their disapproval.
In May, a report revealed an additional 27 women had accused Rose of inappropriate sexual behavior over the years. A lawsuit filed that month by three former colleagues claimed the journalist sexually harassed female underlings and threatened their jobs.
Rose didn’t respond to Vanity Fair’s request to confirm whether he would attend the Idaho event.

Stewing about Trump, California tech group bets on distant ‘purple’ candidates

Democratic candidate for Michigan's 8th Congressional District Elissa Slotkin, a former Defense Department official and intelligence analyst, poses for a picture on her family farm in Holly, Michigan, U.S., April 12, 2018. Picture taken April 12, 2018. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

June 9, 2018
By Heather Somerville
MILL VALLEY, California (Reuters) – Sipping California zinfandel, munching deviled eggs and fretting about President Donald Trump, the guests attending a political fundraiser at a Silicon Valley executive’s home were the usual assortment of tech entrepreneurs and investors.
But the congressional candidate they had come to meet that March evening in the hills north of San Francisco was anything but typical.
Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat and former defense official, is running for Congress in Michigan’s 8th District, a pocket of Detroit suburbs, college campuses and farmland more than 2,000 miles (3,200 km) away. She is a gun owner, a supporter of constitutionally enshrined gun rights and a critic of single payer health care – hardly the kind of far-left candidate voters in the San Francisco Bay Area generally embrace.
But Slotkin, 41, and the party guests shared a goal: wresting control of the House of Representatives from Republicans in November’s congressional elections.
With no Bay Area Democrats facing serious challenges from Republicans, the party host, Brian Monahan, and a group of fellow technology and marketing executives have decided to look farther afield for candidates in swing districts that need financial support.
To focus their efforts, Monahan, technology investor Chris Albinson, executive recruiter Jon Love and a handful of others have formed a loose-knit organization they call Purple Project.
So far, the group has raised at least $210,000 for Democratic candidates in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. The sum is a pittance compared to the money being spent on key races by fundraising Political Action Committees (PACs), which represent corporations and political interest groups and contribute millions of dollars each election cycle. But in moderate districts with close races like Slotkin’s, such grassroots efforts can make a difference.
‘SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE’
Purple Project is one of a number of informal groups in solidly blue states such as California, Vermont and Massachusetts that have mobilized this year to back candidates in distant swing districts. So far, it has endorsed six candidates and plans to endorse 14 more by the end of July.
Love, a longtime executive recruiter for technology companies, spearheads candidate vetting. Many in the group have made the maximum allowable individual donation of $2,700 to each candidate.
For its participants, Purple Project is a way to channel months of political frustrations since Trump took office.
“Things are simply unacceptable and sitting on the sidelines just stewing on it isn’t helping anyone,” Monahan said. “You feel like out here in California your vote is worthless.”
That’s because House representatives from the San Francisco Bay Area are unwaveringly Democratic.
The group’s efforts could backfire, however, by opening candidates up to accusations of being beholden to outside interests and disconnected from their constituents, said Kyle Kondik, who studies House races for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“You might be able to attack Slotkin as not having deep enough roots in the district,” Kondik said.
To re-take the House, Democrats would need to take 23 seats held by Republicans, as well as keep all the districts they now hold. That means races like Slotkin’s, in a competitive district with a mix of Republican and Democratic counties stretching from north of Detroit to the state capitol, Lansing, are pivotal.
She faces a bruising battle, however, trying to unseat two-term Congressman Mike Bishop, who won with 56 percent of the vote in 2016.
Out-of-state money has been the financial lifeblood of Slotkin’s campaign, putting her far ahead of her competitor for the Democratic nomination and nearly neck-and-neck with Bishop. Slotkin had raised $1.5 million as of March 31, with just $304,000 coming from Michigan donors, approaching Bishop’s $317,000 in home-state contributions, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Slotkin raised more than $120,000 from individuals in the San Francisco Bay Area.
(Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2sjPBV1)
FEC filings generally do not include donations of $200 or less.
“Our campaign finance laws are so broken that in order to compete you have to raise a significant amount of money,” she told Reuters during a tour of her 400-acre farm in Holly, Michigan, when asked about Purple Project’s donations to her campaign. “If that means raising from outside the state I’d rather have that than the influence of a corporate PAC.”
At a house party in April in the small Michigan city of Brighton, about a dozen neighbors from a tidy middle-class neighborhood gathered to meet Slotkin and cheer her on, but not all were hopeful.
“I don’t give her much of a chance, but it’s good to have her there and maybe she’ll take a bite out of Bishop’s vote,” said Blake Lancaster, 74.
PERSONAL POLITICS
Purple Project is a political organization with a deeply personal origin. Albinson, co-founder of San Francisco technology investment firm Founders Circle, said he was unnerved to learn his father-in-law in Michigan, Jerry Smith, voted for Trump. After 18 years as a registered Republican, Albinson, also a Michigan native, became an independent voter following Trump’s nomination.
He set about finding moderate congressional candidates he and his friends in Silicon Valley could support, but who would also appeal to Smith.
After Albinson met Slotkin, he subjected her to a litmus test: she had to visit his father-in-law.
Smith, 72, describes himself as a “common-sense Republican” worried about his healthcare costs. A retired small business owner who lives on a 40-acre farm just outside the 8th District, Smith said he and his wife, Barb, fret about spending down their savings “just for the regular monthly bills.”
Slotkin won over Smith, who said he was impressed by her resume and decency, and her views on improving President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, the Affordable Care Act, to keep healthcare costs down. From there, Purple Project has grown, with members scattered across the country.
To win the group’s backing, candidates must be able to appeal to Trump supporters and must have past service in the military, government or non-profit sector. They also have to reject corporate PAC money and support affordable health care and infrastructure improvement, among other criteria.
The group offers more than money. Monahan, who was head of marketing at Walmart.com and an advertising executive at image-sharing and shopping website Pinterest, helps campaigns with digital marketing, for instance.
Last spring, Slotkin left Washington and a 15-year government career in defense and intelligence work to move back to the family farm in Holly. But some of her neighbors in this working-class town are not particularly interested in a newcomer Democrat.
Holly town supervisor George Kullis said he plans to vote for Bishop because the congressman helped him get federal funding for new signs for the national cemetery in town.
“Bishop has been good; he’s been ‘Johnny on the spot,'” Kullis said. “Besides, who is this Elissa Slotkin? I’ve never heard of her.”
(Reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Sue Horton and Ross Colvin)

President Trump: I’m Not Above the Law, No Reason to Pardon Myself

President Trump is doubling down on his claims there was no collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia. He is accusing Democrats of using the Russia investigation to undermine his presidency.
While speaking to reporters outside the White House Friday, the president hit back against the media, saying he does not believe he is above the law, however, he does have the executive power to pardon himself.
He added, a self-pardon is not needed because he did nothing wrong.
The president called the Russia probe a total ‘witch hunt’ and suggested that Democrats should be investigated for corruption in reference to the FBI’s alleged mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and SPYGATE.
“I do have an absolute right to pardon myself, but I’ll never have to do it because I didn’t do anything wrong and everybody knows it,” said President Trump. “There’s been no collusion, there’s been no obstruction — it’s all a made up fantasy, it’s a witch hunt.”
The special counsel’s Russia investigation entered its second year last month, and has so far cost taxpayers around $17 million.

Bid to block Bernie Sanders? DNC adopts rule change, wants only avowed Democrats to run

The Democratic National Committee adopted a new rule Friday aimed at preventing non-Democrats, such as independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, from seeking the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, reports said.
The rule change, adopted at a DNC meeting in Providence, R.I., requires all candidates for the party’s nomination to “run and serve” as Democrats, Yahoo News reported.
Some supporters of Sanders -- who caucuses with the Democrats despite declining to declare a party affiliation -- say the move was motivated by “spite” after Sanders gave Hillary Clinton a run for her money during the Democratic primaries in 2016.
But a source told Yahoo News it was actually part of a push to limit the power of so-called superdelegates -- which, ironically, has long been a goal of Sanders.'
Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, ultimately lost the nomination to Clinton when superdelegates from states he won chose not to vote for him at the party's 2016 convention in Philadelphia.
DNC Chairman Tom Perez on Tuesday floated a proposal to eliminate superdelegates on a presidential primary’s first voting ballot, the Washington Post reported. Party leaders would vote only if the contest required a second ballot.
“You had superdelegates voting for Hillary Clinton in states that I won pretty handsomely,” Sanders told Post this week. “And now there is agreement among Tom Perez and our people, and a lot of the Clinton people, to say we should reduce the number of superdelegates.”
Still, the rule change left some Sanders supporters puzzled as to why Democrats would want to make their party less inclusive.
“We just came off a devastating presidential loss in 2016,” Mark Longabaugh, a senior adviser to Sanders’ 2016 campaign, told Yahoo News. “It would seem to me the actual impetus would be to expand the Democratic Party. I, just for the life of me, don’t see any motivation for this beyond personal spite.”

"I just for the life of me don’t see any motivation for this beyond personal spite.”

A photo of a printout of the rule change was shared Friday in a Twitter message posted by DNC member Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
“At the time a presidential candidate announces their candidacy publicly, they must publicly affirm that they are a Democrat,” the printout says. "Each candidate must then affirm in writing that they: A. are a member of the Democratic Party; B. will accept the Democratic nomination; C. will run and serve as a member of the Democratic Party.”
But Sanders may be protected from the change thanks to a resolution passed in his home state, by which he is considered a Democrat, “for all purposes and [is] entitled to all the rights and privileges that come with such membership at the state and federal level,” Politico reported.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton clashed in a heated presidential primary.  (Associated Press)

DNC members will meet in August for a final vote on the proposal to eliminate superdelegates, Yahoo News reported.

State-level Dems funneled $84M to Clinton's campaign, lawsuit alleges

As many as 40 state-level Democratic parties may have been involved in a scheme to funnel as much as $84 million to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, a campaign finance lawyer contends.
Dan Backer, an attorney based in Virginia, has filed a lawsuit alleging that a plan was in place to circumvent campaign contribution limits set by the federal government, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
“You had individuals giving $300,000,” Backer told the newspaper Friday. “They’re not doing it because they care about Nevada’s or Arkansas’ state party. They’re doing it to curry favor with and buy influence with Hillary Clinton.”

“You had individuals giving $300,000. They’re not doing it because they care about Nevada’s or Arkansas’ state party. They’re doing it to curry favor with and buy influence with Hillary Clinton.”

Nevada’s Democratic Party may become the latest pulled into a federal lawsuit that Backer has filed, the paper reported. Backer represents the Committee to Defend the President, a pro-Donald Trump political action committee that initially lodged a complaint in December with the Federal Election Commission, the report says.
Backer told the paper he filed his lawsuit because the FEC failed to meet a deadline for taking action.
He said the Hillary Victory Fund reported transferring more than $1.7 million to the Nevada Democratic Party between December 2015 and November 2016. But the party reported receiving only $146,200, which it transferred to the DNC.
The remaining $1.6 million was sent by the Hillary Victory Fund to the Nevada party and received by the DNC and never appeared on the Nevada party’s reports, Backer contends.
But Nevada's Democratic Party disputed Backer's claims.
“This is nothing more than a bogus political stunt feebly designed to distract from vulnerable Republicans’ disastrous agenda,” Helen Kalla, a spokeswoman for the Nevada Democratic Party, told the Review Journal.

“This is nothing more than a bogus political stunt feebly designed to distract from vulnerable Republicans’ disastrous agenda.”
- Helen Kalla, spokeswoman, Nevada Democratic Party

In Idaho, Democrats allegedly contributed $1.6 million to the plan in a series of 13 transactions, the Idaho Statesman reported.
But local party officials might have been unaware of how the money was being handled, the paper reported.
It is "reasonably possible the Idaho State Democratic Party had no prior knowledge of, or control over, these transfers because they were handled entirely by HVF, the DNC, HFA, [Hillary Victory Fund, Democratic National Committee, Hillary for America] and/or their treasurers," states the 101-page complaint that Backer’s group filed in December, the Statesman reported.
The Idaho Democratic Party did not respond to the newspaper’s request for a comment.
In Delaware, the state Democratic Party received $2.4 million from the Hillary Victory Fund over 11 transactions, then transferred roughly the same amount to the DNC, WXDE-FM radio reported.
The handling of cash in Delaware “doesn’t pass the sniff test,” Backer told the station.