RNC head says Trump, Ryan to meet next week

Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said Thursday that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan would meet next week in an effort to clear the air after Ryan said he was "just not ready" to back Trump in the general election this fall.  
"I think it's going to work out," Priebus told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "In some cases people are not going to be instantly on board, and I now that can be frustrating for some people. But i think everyone has to ... allow a little bit of the steam to get out and get everybody settled down. And I think this is going to come together."
Priebus spoke hours after Ryan confirmed CNN that he was "just not ready" to support or endorse Trump. The Wisconsin Republican suggested that he wants the real estate mogul to do more to unify the party first, but added that he hoped to support Trump.
Trump fired back in a statement, saying, "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda."
"Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people," the statement continued. "They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first!"
Preibus told Hannity he had spoken to both Trump and Ryan Thursday and said both men were "committed to sitting down and actually talking this out."

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As the highest-ranking Republican lawmaker, Ryan's reluctance to offer his full-throated support signifies the immensity of the task ahead for Trump in unifying the party, especially considering Ryan will serve as chairman of the GOP convention in Cleveland.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign also has been eager to point out any rifts in the party, and quickly blasted out a message claiming Ryan had joined the “growing list of conservatives rebuking Trump."

 Also Thursday, the Associated Press reported that Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner will not endorse Trump in the general election and will not attend the convention. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who is expected to face a tough re-election fight against Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, has said he is also skipping the convention.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican chief executive in a traditionally Democratic state, declined again Thursday to endorse a GOP candidate, despite the departures this week of Ted Cruz and John Kasich that left Trump the last man standing.
"I said I was not going to get involved, and I would not endorse any candidate and that I was going to stay focused on Maryland," Hogan told reporters, according to The Washington Post. "And I’m not going to take any more stupid questions about Donald Trump."
By contrast, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who endorsed Cruz ahead of this week's primary, has said he will back Trump, telling TV station WTHI "I look forward to supporting our presumptive nominee. I think Donald Trump will do very well in the Hoosier State."
Fox News confirmed Thursday that 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney – a vocal Trump critic -- has no plans to attend the convention, while former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush both have confirmed they will not attend either. A source close to former Senator and 1996 Republican nominee Bob Dole said he would “briefly” attend the convention but primarily to attend a lunch hosted by his law firm.
"This was a very contentious primary," Priebus said. "I think it's going to take a little bit of time, but I think for the most part this is going to come together. Maybe not 100 percent, but i think we're going to get very close to that and i think people will fall in line."

State Dept. pushes back on Guccifer claims of breaching Clinton server

The State Department joined the Hillary Clinton campaign Thursday in pushing back on Romanian hacker Guccifer’s claims that he successfully breached the former secretary of state’s personal server.
Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News that he accessed Clinton’s server “like twice,” claiming that for him, “it was easy.”
Asked about the claims at Thursday’s press briefing, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he’s not aware of such an incident.
“We don’t have any reason to believe that it might be true,” he said.
At the same time, Toner repeatedly stressed he did not want to comment on the security of the server, citing ongoing investigations. Asked if he’s in a position to even know whether Lazar’s claims are true, Toner again said he did not want to comment.
The Clinton campaign issued a more definitive denial.
In response to Lazar’s claims, the Clinton campaign issued a statement Wednesday night saying, "There is absolutely no basis to believe the claims made by this criminal from his prison cell. In addition to the fact he offers no proof to support his claims, his descriptions of Secretary Clinton's server are inaccurate. It is unfathomable that he would have gained access to her emails and not leaked them the way he did to his other victims.”
However, Lazar provided extensive details about his hacking, in interviews from the Virginia jail where he is being held.
The 44-year-old Lazar said he first compromised Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal's AOL account, in March 2013, and used that as a stepping stone to the Clinton server. He said he accessed Clinton’s server “like twice,” though he described the contents as “not interest[ing]” to him at the time. 
“I was not paying attention. For me, it was not like the Hillary Clinton server, it was like an email server she and others were using with political voting stuff," Guccifer said.
The hacker spoke freely with Fox News from the detention center in Alexandria, Va., where he’s been held since his extradition to the U.S. on federal charges relating to other alleged cyber-crimes.
While Lazar's claims cannot be independently verified, three computer security specialists, including two former senior intelligence officials, said the process described is plausible and the Clinton server, now in FBI custody, may have an electronic record that would confirm or disprove Guccifer’s claims.
As recently as this week, Clinton said neither she nor her aides had been contacted by the FBI about the criminal investigation. Asked whether the server had been compromised by foreign hackers, she told MSNBC on Tuesday, “No, not at all.”
Recently extradited, Lazar faces trial Sept. 12 in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has pleaded not guilty to a nine-count federal indictment for his alleged hacking crimes in the U.S. Victims are not named in the indictment but reportedly include Colin Powell, a member of the Bush family and others including Blumenthal. 
Lazar also told Fox News that during his flight to the U.S. from Romania on or about March 31, he was accompanied by an FBI agent and a State Department official. He said he talked to the FBI and “wrote up eight pages of notes” during the flight, stressing that “I have nothing to hide.”
Lazar told Fox News that, while imprisoned in Romania where he was serving a seven-year sentence, he met several times with U.S. agents from the FBI, Secret Service and Treasury.
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump reacted to the report Thursday, calling the claim by Guccifer "very serious."
"If it's true it’s very serious," Trump told Fox News' Bret Baier. "It’s not a question of him. It’s what she did and why did she do it?"

Documents show State Department missed target date for special Benghazi unit

The State Department missed its own target date last year for the establishment of a special unit to review Benghazi documents, documents obtained by Fox News show.
The previously unpublished documents, generated by the House select committee that is investigating the 2012 terror attacks, detail how Rep. Trey Gowdy, the panel’s Republican chairman from South Carolina, began working behind the scenes early last year to help the department secure over $4 million in “reprogrammed” funds set aside by Congress for such a unit.
According to agreements worked out between Republican staff on the committee and top aides to Secretary of State John Kerry, including chief of staff Jonathan Finer, the document review unit was supposed to be “operational” in June 2015.
Yet the State Department, prompted by inquiries from Fox News, now acknowledges it missed that target date. “The Congressional Document Production unit began staffing up in mid-2015,” said State Department spokesman Mark Toner in an email late Thursday, “and is now fully operational.”
The records obtained by Fox News also show repeated refusals by Kerry’s aides, including Finer, to account for what happened to the appropriated funds when Gowdy’s staff made repeated inquiries about the matter back in mid-2015.
Gowdy told Fox News he sought the additional funding “so they could speed up document production to Congress and we could finish the investigation faster.”
Top administration officials, including white House spokesman Josh Earnest, have accused the committee of prolonging the investigation for “political” reasons – specifically, to try to damage Clinton’s presidential candidacy.
In his email to Fox News, Toner acknowledged that Gowdy and his staff had indeed “supported” the request for additional funding.
This prompted Gowdy, in an emailed statement of his own, to say he “appreciates” the Obama administration “finally confirming the Benghazi Committee went the extra mile to complete its investigation as soon as possible by helping the State Department get extra funding.”
According to the internal committee files, the State Department’s document review unit was supposed to encompass twelve full-time employees, including at least three lawyers, “case managers” to oversee responses to specific document requests, and an IT professional.
The State Department conveyed to the committee last year that it intended to use some of the U.S. personnel evacuated from Yemen last year to staff the unit, according to the documents.
On Thursday, Toner said the use of the personnel from Yemen was “never necessary” – but did not spell out why the evacuated personnel were considered superfluous when the department was having trouble meeting its own target date of mid-June for the unit to become operational.
Asked at Wednesday’s press briefing if he could attest that the reprogrammed funds had actually been spent for the intended purpose, Toner said he was “fairly certain” that they “would have been.”
Co-chaired by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Democrat from Maryland, the Benghazi committee has spent two years investigating the terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities on September 11, 2012 that killed America’s ambassador to Libya at the time, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans.
The committee unearthed the fact that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, used a private email server for all of her official email correspondence. Among the emails subsequently made public was one that showed Clinton giving her daughter an account of the attacks that differed sharply from the false narrative about them that the secretary of state, and other top administrations officials, were pressing publicly.
Toner noted that the department has already provided close to 100,000 pages of documents to the committee, which is expected to produce its final report next month.
Washington-based attorney Mark Paoletta, who spent a decade as the Republican chief counsel to a House investigating subcommittee, told Fox News the Obama administration is “notorious” for “slow-rolling” investigative panels like the Benghazi committee. He cited Clinton’s private email server as evidence of this pattern.
“How can you seriously say that you’re being transparent,” Paoletta said in an interview with Fox News, “when the secretary of state is running a private server and has deleted over 30,000 of those documents before anyone even knows that it’s in existence?”

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Conservative chasm: Some pundits vow to fight Trump till the bitter end

From the insular political system to the naysaying media culture, Donald Trump essentially clinching the Republican nomination is a stunning development, especially the swiftness with which his two remaining rivals gave up.
But for the anti-Trump folks, it is sheer torture.
In the wake of an Indiana victory that drove Ted Cruz and John Kasich from the race, they are left with a series of unpalatable choices that will have an impact on fall campaign—and on the GOP’s future.
Some are already declaring themselves to be in the #NeverNeverEverTrump camp. They will oppose the billionaire up to and until he raises his hand over the Bible next January.
In doing so, of course, they will tilt the election toward Hillary Clinton. But the diehards are willing to accept another four years out of power as a reasonable price to pay for blocking Trump.
Trump, for his part, says he doesn’t want or need the support of everyone in the party. The truth is—and this is hard for his detractors to accept—he is remaking the party in his own image. Trump is not a doctrinaire conservative, and for the moment, he is the face of the GOP.

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George Will, the syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor, casts the choice as a moral test:
“Donald Trump’s damage to the Republican Party, although already extensive, has barely begun. Republican quislings will multiply, slinking into support of the most anti-conservative presidential aspirant in their party’s history. These collaborationists will render themselves ineligible to participate in the party’s reconstruction.”
Trump fired back on “Morning Joe”: “Well, George is a major loser. You know, he’s a dour guy. Nobody watches him. Very few people listen to him. It’s over for him, and I never want his support.”
Steve Hayes, the Weekly Standard writer and Fox News contributor, quickly posted a piece titled “No Trump”:
“Trump's claim to be a unifier is not just specious, it's absurd. This casual dishonesty is a feature of his campaign. And it's one of many reasons so many Republicans and conservatives oppose Trump and will never support his candidacy. I'm one of them.”
Another Fox contributor, Townhall’s Guy Benson, tweeted: “Much to my deep chagrin (& astonishment ~8 months ago), for the 1st time in my life, I will not support the GOP nominee for president.”
Influential blogger Erick Erickson tweeted: “Reporters writing about the ‘Stop Trump’ effort get it wrong. It's ‘Never Trump’ as in come hell or high water we will never vote for Trump.”
The Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein: “There is just no question: I’d take a Tums and cast my ballot for Hillary — and I suspect so would many other life-long conservatives, whether they are willing to admit it now or not.”
There is a camp within this camp, led by the Standard’s Bill Kristol, that is actively encouraging a conservative third-party run. This would undoubtedly hand Hillary the keys to the White House. There is a fantasy that somehow it would throw the election into the House. But the Wall Street Journal editorial page, hardly a fan of Trump, calls this a truly bad idea.
An even smaller subset is finding Clinton, who is more hawkish than Trump, a better alternative. These include Mark Salter, once John McCain’s top strategist.
But there are other conservatives who are softening on Trump, saying that perhaps he wouldn’t be that bad. Some are acting out of party loyalty. Some want to clamber onto the winner's bandwagon (even after saying incredibly harsh things about him, according to Trump). Some think Clinton would be far worse. And some may be looking for jobs or contracts. I suspect this group will grow in size.
Here’s the bottom line for those on the right who still oppose Trump: How do they explain that he won one state after another, in some cases every county, before sweeping to seven straight victories? How do they explain that he beat 16 other senators and governors and assorted luminaries? How do they explain that his vision of conservatism proved more popular than theirs with Republican voters?
Maybe Trump’s critics are right that he will lead the party to a major defeat. The question now is how many will work toward that outcome.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

Kasich suspends his GOP presidential campaign

Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Wednesday suspended his Republican presidential campaign, ending his underdog bid and hinting at a life perhaps beyond elected office.
“As I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith, deeper faith that the lord will show me the way forward and fulfill the purpose of my life,” Kasich said in Columbus, Ohio.
In a subdued, roughly 15-minute speech, Kasich first thanked his wife Karen, then other family members, staffers, volunteers, Ohio residents and those who contributed to his campaign.
“Nobody has ever done more with less in the history of politics,” Kasich said about his team. “We just got up every day and did the best we could.”
An underdog from the start, Kasich held on to become the last candidate standing against front-runner Donald Trump, despite his inability to win any contests beyond Ohio.
His decision to end his campaign comes a day after his other remaining rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, announced that he was suspending his own campaign.

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Trump now has a clear path to the nomination. 
Touting his two terms as governor and 18 years in Congress, Kasich failed to gain traction with GOP voters in a race dominated by Trump's ability to seize on the electorate's anger and disdain of political insiders.
Kasich tried to pitch himself as the best Republican to take on Hillary Clinton and tried to take the GOP primary race to a contested convention.
Kasich, 63, now plans to return to Ohio, where his second term as governor ends in 2018.
He made no mention in the speech of Trump or any of the other 2016 presidential candidates, instead focusing on the inspiration he drew from Americans while on the campaign trail and on economic policy.
“The people of this country changed me,” Kasich said. “They changed me with the stories of their live.”
Kasich called economic growth “imperative” to the success of the country because, he said, “It gives people the opportunity to realize their hopes and dreams in life. … Some missed this message, it wasn’t sexy.”
As the race grew increasingly nasty on both sides, Kasich largely maintained his vow not to run a negative campaign, saying to voters that he would not "take the low road to the highest office in the land." 
The governor originally had planned to speak with reporters Wednesday morning at Dulles airport in northern Virginia.
However, Kasich failed to show up and his campaign later confirmed that he was not coming.

Kasich placed last in the GOP Indiana primary Tuesday night, though his campaign initially said it would keep going.
A Republican candidate needs 1,237 pledged delegates to secure the nomination.
Trump has not yet reached that number.

Former presidents Bush plan to sit out 2016 general election

The last two Republicans to hold the White House do not plan to endorse the party's presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, this year. 
Spokesmen for George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush told The Texas Tribune Wednesday that the 41st and 43rd presidents will stay on the sideline this time. 
George W. Bush's personal aide, Freddy Ford, said that his boss "does not plan to participate in or comment on the presidential campaign."
"At age 91, President Bush is retired from politics," Bush 41 spokesman Jim McGrath wrote in an email to the website. "He came out of retirement to do a few things for Jeb, but those were the exceptions that proved the rule."
According to the Tribune, the elder Bush has endorsed every GOP presidential nominee since losing his 1992 re-election bid to Bill Clinton. George W. Bush also campaigned on behalf of Sen. John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. 
Both Bushes campaigned heavily for Jeb Bush earlier this year, but he dropped out after disappointing results in the first three presidential contests. Neither former president made an endorsement during the rest of the primary season, though George W. Bush was recorded last year telling donors "I just don't like" Sen. Ted Cruz. 

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The younger Bush has also taken veiled jabs at Trump, telling a South Carolina audience in February that "we do not need someone in the Oval Office who mirrors and inflames our anger and frustration."
"Strength is not empty rhetoric," Bush also said at the time. "It is not bluster. It is not theatrics. Real strength, strength of purpose, comes from integrity and character. And, in my experience, the strongest person usually isn't the loudest one in the room."
Trump also attacked George W. Bush during the run-up to the South Carolina primary, blaming the former president for failing to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. The real estate mogul also said Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003 was "a big, fat mistake" and claimed his administration "lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none."

US Judge: Clinton may be ordered to testify in records case

A federal judge said Wednesday he may order Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton to testify under oath about whether she used a private email server as secretary of state to evade public records disclosures.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan signed an order granting a request from the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch to question six current and former State Department staffers about the creation and purpose of the private email system. Those on the list were some of Clinton's closest aides during her tenure as the nation's top diplomat, including former chief of staff Cheryl D. Mills, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and undersecretary Patrick F. Kennedy.
Also set to testify is Bryan Pagliano, the agency employee who was tasked with setting up the clintonemail.com server located in the basement of the New York home Clinton shares with her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Pagliano has previously refused to testify before Congress, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Based on what might be gleaned in those interviews, which are to be conducted over the next eight weeks, Sullivan says in his order a sworn deposition from Hillary Clinton "may be necessary."
That raises the possibility that Clinton could be ordered to testify in the midst of the presidential race. A campaign spokesman did not respond Wednesday to messages about whether Clinton would oppose any order to testify.
At issue is whether the State Department conducted an adequate search of public records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch in 2013 seeking records related to Abedin's outside work as a paid consultant for the Clintons' charitable foundation and a financial advisory firm with ties to the former first couple.
The department's initial search did not include the thousands of emails Clinton exchanged with her aides, including Abedin, using private email addresses. The department said it didn't have access to those emails at the time.

 Questions asked during the depositions are to be limited to the circumstances surrounding the 2009 creation of Clinton's private email system, including why she chose not to use a government account.

Sullivan said ordering depositions is appropriate in legal cases where a federal agency "may have purposefully attempted to skirt disclosure under FOIA."
"In sum, the circumstances surrounding approval of Mrs. Clinton's use of clintonemail.com for official government business, as well as the manner in which it was operated, are issues that need to be explored" to evaluate the adequacy of the department's records search.
There have been at least three dozen civil lawsuits filed, including one by The Associated Press, over public records requests related to Clinton's time as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
The FBI also is investigating whether sensitive information that flowed through Clinton's email server was mishandled. The inspectors general at the State Department and for U.S. intelligence agencies are separately investigating whether rules or laws were broken.
Critics of Clinton's decision to rely on the private server have suggested that it potentially made her communications more vulnerable to being stolen by hackers, including those working for foreign intelligence agencies.
Clinton has acknowledged in the campaign that her home-based email setup was a mistake, but insists she never sent or received any documents that were marked classified at the time.
In response to public records requests, the State Department has released more than 52,000 pages of her work-related emails, a small percentage of which have been withheld because they contain information considered sensitive to national security. Thousands of additional emails have been withheld by Clinton, whose lawyers say they contain personal messages unrelated to her government service.

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Carter sends message to Moscow: US ready to 'defend our allies'

STUTTGART, Germany –  Defense Secretary Ash Carter, in Germany to usher in a new U.S. military commander for Europe, used the opportunity Tuesday to send a blunt warning to Moscow not to provoke the NATO alliance – after recent encounters in the air and on the high seas. 
"We do not seek to make Russia an enemy. But make no mistake – we will defend our allies, the rules-based international order, and the positive future it affords us," Carter said at the U.S. military's European Command in Stuttgart, Germany.
Carter expressed a desire not to start a new Cold War with Russia – or a "hot" one. 
But he said Russia seeks to "erode" the peaceful order Europe and the rest of the West have enjoyed since the end of the Cold War. 
Carter, in vowing the U.S. would defend its allies, warned Russia is increasing its submarine patrols to the North Atlantic. He did not specifically mention the recent "barrel rolls" by Russian jets over U.S. military aircraft in the past few weeks but accused Russia's leaders of "nuclear saber-rattling" and putting the world at risk in the process. 
The Obama administration’s resolve to take on Russia remains a matter of dispute. President Obama was caught on an open microphone in 2012 assuring then-President Dmitry Medvedev he’d have more “flexibility” on the issue of missile defense after the election. Russia, under Vladimir Putin, later defied U.S. warnings with its takeover of Crimea and military involvement in Eastern Ukraine – and has complicated U.S. efforts in Syria with its intervention there.  
Carter this week traveled to Germany for the installation of Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti at the helm of U.S. European Command. There are more than 60,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in Europe, significantly less than during the Cold War, when more than 200,000 soldiers were stationed mostly in Germany.
Carter said Tuesday the Pentagon has pledged $3.4 billion in next year's budget, quadruple the spending from last year, to beef up NATO's eastern flank with its allies. Carter said a new armored brigade would be heading to Europe, though officials told Fox News it would not arrive until the end of 2017.
Carter said the increase in funds would support an additional U.S. Air Force F-15 squadron, more U.S. special operations forces to train in Europe, and more submarine-hunting aircraft to counter increased Russian submarine activity.
"Russia’s aggressive actions only serve to further its isolation, and unite our alliance," he said.  
Russia does not see it that way. Officials in Moscow believe the United States has violated a 1997 treaty that says NATO cannot amass forces along the border with Russia. The treaty does not specify how many forces are permissible.
En route to Germany on Monday, Carter told reporters the United States is considering putting more forces in Eastern Europe, but is waiting to consult with NATO officials before any final decisions are made. Carter said up to four battalions, or some 4,000 soldiers, could be added to Eastern Europe. 
A handful of NATO defense officials will be on hand for a counter-Islamic State meeting Wednesday with Carter in Stuttgart.
Despite some tough talk about Russia, Carter indicated he’s willing to work together in the future: "We’ll keep the door open for Russia. But it’s up to the Kremlin to decide."  
One example Carter used about past U.S.-Russian cooperation was Moscow's willingness to allow the United States and NATO to use a supply corridor in northern Afghanistan in the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the start of combat operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
That corridor has since been closed by Russia. 
In his remarks, the outgoing U.S. commander of European Command, Gen. Philip Breedlove, a career fighter pilot, said his career is ending where it began, with Russia in his sights.
"My career started here in a Cold War trying to keep the peace. I think my career is now ending here trying to prevent a Cold War and continue to keep the peace," he said.
His replacement, Scaparrotti, was asked about Russian jets buzzing U.S. Navy ships and aircraft, when he was on Capitol Hill a few weeks ago before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"Should we make an announcement to the Russians, that if they place the lives of our men and women on board Navy ships in danger, that we will take appropriate action?" committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., asked. 
"I believe that should be known, yes," Scaparrotti said.