Presumptuous Politics

Saturday, May 14, 2016

DNC Chairwoman Schultz claims Clinton ‘not the target’ of FBI probe

Even in the face of the FBI boss scoffing at Hillary Clinton’s description of the “investigation” into her email practices as a “security inquiry,” the head of the Democratic Party is now insisting the front-running Democratic presidential candidate isn’t even a focus of the probe.
“Secretary Clinton isn’t even a target of this inquiry, investigation, whatever ‘I’ word you want to use,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told Fox News on Friday.
Asked to back up her statement, Schultz said she’s “repeatedly been told that” – though she did not say who might have told her.
But the claim that Clinton is not the focus would be appear to be challenged by recent developments in the case.
Senior aides to Hillary Clinton, including Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, have been interviewed by FBI agents in recent weeks.
Bryan Pagliano, the Clinton aide who installed the personal server used while she was secretary of state, has received a grant of immunity.
The bureau even confirmed in court documents earlier this year that the former secretary of state’s “use of a private e-mail server” is the focus. And when asked by Fox News earlier this week about Clinton’s repeated description of the probe as a mere security inquiry, FBI Director James Comey said he’s not familiar with that term.
“We’re conducting an investigation. … That’s what we do,” Comey told Fox News.
Schultz was asked by Fox News whether she was hearing different information from the FBI that would lead her to claim Clinton is not the focus.
“My understanding is that Secretary Clinton is not the target of this investigation. ... I am only repeating what my understanding is,” she said.
Top administration officials have said they are not on a timeline for finishing the probe. Comey, speaking with reporters on Wednesday, said he prefers doing the investigation “well” over promptly and said he’s not “tethered” to a schedule.
Meanwhile, Clinton has voiced confidence that no wrongdoing will be found.
Appearing on CBS News’ Face the Nation, Clinton downplayed the FBI criminal probe, saying it was simply a “security inquiry” and “there was never any material marked classified that was sent or received -- by me.”
“I look forward to this being wrapped up,” she said.
The FBI probe is proceeding as Clinton also tries to wrap up the Democratic presidential nomination. Though she leads by hundreds of delegates, she has not yet clinched the nomination and rival Bernie Sanders is vowing to take the fight to the convention – he fueled his own underdog bid with a primary win Tuesday in West Virginia.
Asked Friday about internal party calls for Sanders to drop out as well as concerns that his bid is preventing Clinton from being able to pivot to a general election battle against Donald Trump, Schultz brushed off the concerns.
“We are able to walk and chew gum at the same time,” she said.
Schultz, meanwhile, has made similar definitive statements before about the nature of the FBI investigation, telling “Fox News Sunday” last month that the idea Clinton could face any legal troubles over her private email server is “ludicrous.”
“How do you know that?” host Chris Wallace asked.
“I’m simply confident that – as the investigation continues, that Hillary Clinton has made it clear, and there are scores of individuals who are associated with the federal government that have indicated that – it’s clear that she conducted herself completely legally,” she said.

McCain in toughest Senate fight of his life

Eight years after he was the Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain appears headed toward his toughest re-election fight yet, in no small part because of presumptive GOP presidential standard-bearer Donald Trump.
Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, the Democratic Senate candidate who is neck-and-neck with McCain in polls, has relentlessly gone after McCain for the senator’s support – no matter how tepid – of Trump.
McCain has hardly shown enthusiasm for Trump, only saying he would support the party’s nominee (while planning to skip the GOP convention in Cleveland). And he’s privately warned that Trump could hurt his own bid. Politico reported on audio from a fundraiser where McCain is heard saying, “If Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket, here in Arizona, with over 30 percent of the vote being the Hispanic vote, no doubt that this may be the race of my life.”
But Kirkpatrick’s campaign is hammering any connection it can between McCain and Trump, settling for nothing short of denunciation by the sitting senator.
“John McCain’s supporting Donald Trump despite declaring Trump ‘dangerous’ and characterizing Trump's supporters as ‘crazies,’” Kirkpatrick campaign spokesman D.B. Mitchell told FoxNews.com. “It's clear McCain's 'straight talk' days are over.”
McCain’s campaign, meanwhile, has blasted Kirkpatrick as “siding with the liberal establishment.”
The race is a snapshot of the conflicted relationship high-profile Republican candidates across the country could have with the presumptive presidential nominee. The jury is out on whether, on balance, he would help or hurt congressional candidates.
But for McCain, Trump’s impact is even being felt in the Republican primary.
One of his opponents, Alex Meluskey, a businessman and talk radio host, cited an internal campaign poll showing most respondents would be more likely to vote for a businessman who never ran for office over a career politician – and claimed the “Trump phenomenon” would be good for him.
“Any time you have an outsider businessman, that absolutely favors us,” Meluskey told FoxNews.com.
McCain also is facing opposition from Kelli Ward, a doctor who resigned her state Senate seat last year to run full time for the U.S. Senate. She is touting a resounding GOP straw poll victory over McCain earlier this month at the Arizona Republican State Convention and is pushing a campaign theme of “bold, fresh and fearless,” to contrast McCain’s status as a longtime Washington insider.
The Republican primary is Aug. 30, just one day after McCain turns 80.
But it’s the expected November race that’s causing headaches for the senator this year. During his five decisive Senate victories, the relatively moderate McCain has rarely had a real challenge in the general election.
“He usually has more concern in the state over who his primary challenger will be," Barbara Norrander, a political science professor at the University of Arizona, told FoxNews.com. “Democrats have had a hard time recruiting someone viable to oppose him.”
This year could be different. A Merrill Poll in March found McCain leading Kirkpatrick by just one point, while a Behavior Research Center poll in April showed the two tied at 42-42 percent.
Kirkpatrick, a former Arizona state legislator, was first elected to the House in 2008. She was voted out of office during the Republican wave of 2010, then ran again and won in 2012 – and withstood another Republican wave in 2014 to keep her seat.
McCain has more than $5.5 million cash on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission. That overwhelms every other opponent, as Kirkpatrick has $1.3 million, Ward has $210,792 and Meluskey has $163,764, according to FEC reports as of March 31.
The McCain campaign is going after Kirkpatrick for her support of ObamaCare, and says Arizonans are facing a 21 percent increase in health insurance deductibles, while 59,000 Arizonans lost their insurance when the state’s co-op was removed from the federal marketplace.
“Even as independent analysts predict a dramatic rise in health care costs and more insurers contemplate exiting a crumbling marketplace, Congresswoman Kirkpatrick offers no solutions for the people of Arizona,” McCain campaign spokeswoman Lorna Romero said in a statement. “Instead, she is siding with the liberal establishment and ducking questions about President Obama’s failed health care law.”
On the issue McCain fears could be troublesome because of Trump, he and Kirkpatrick both agree on a pathway to citizenship for some 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, but clash on the so-called Dream Act. Further, Kirkpatrick doesn’t necessarily have an automatic advantage with Hispanic voters.
The U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce endorsed McCain in April. Last year, the liberal group Emily’s List, backing Kirkpatrick, criticized another Latino coalition endorsing McCain as a “taco shop,” and said McCain put on a “sombrero to pander.” The Arizona Republic editorial board denounced the Emily’s List stereotypes.

Friday, May 13, 2016

Obama Immigration Cartoons

Obama administration reportedly planning more deportation raids

Immigration officials are planning a fresh round of deportation raids targeting hundreds of Central American families who entered the U.S. illegally, according to a published report.
Reuters reported Thursday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has told field offices to make a 30-day arrest "surge" against mothers and children who have already been told to leave the country. Reuters also reported that the operation would target those who entered the U.S. as minors and have since turned 18.
The exact dates of the deportation raids were not immediately clear, but Reuters reported that they were expected to last through next month.
The planned raids come four months after a two-day operation that resulted in the detention of 121 people. Those raids focused on Texas, Georgia and North Carolina. It was not immediately clear where the latest raids would take place.
The operations are the latest effort to deter illegal immigrants from flooding the U.S.-Mexico border and straining federal resources, as happened in the summer of 2014. According to the latest Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures, agents detained 27,754 unaccompanied minors from Central America in the first six months of Fiscal Year 2016 (ending in March), almost double last year's total of 15,616 and just shy of the 2014 record of 28,579.
The numbers for immigrants traveling as families (defined as at least one parent and one child) is even higher, with 32,117 apprehended -- almost triple last year's total of 13,913 and well above the 2014 “surge” figure of 19,830.
Both Democratic presidential candidates expressed opposition to the planned raids Tuesday, with front-runner Hillary Clinton saying they are "not productive and do not reflect who we are as a country."
"Families fleeing violence in Central America must be given a full opportunity to seek relief," Clinton added. "And we need to take special care of children."
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a statement calling the raids "painful and inhumane" while asking President Obama to give Central American families temporary protective status through an executive order.
"Sending these people back into harm’s way is wrong," Sanders said.

Trump says Washington Post owner Bezos has 'huge antitrust problem'

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump lashed out at Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos Thursday, claiming that the founder of Amazon.com was using the newspaper as a tool to influence corporate tax policy.
"Every hour we're getting calls from reporters from The Washington Post asking ridiculous questions," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "And I will tell you, this is owned as a toy by Jeff Bezos ... Amazon is getting away with murder, tax-wise. He's using The Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don't tax Amazon like they should be taxed."
Trump was responding to Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward's disclosure that the newspaper has assigned 20 reporters to investigate the real estate mogul's life.
"We're going to do a book, we're doing articles about every phase of his life," Woodward told the National Association of Realtors convention Wednesday. The veteran reporter, best known for investigating the Watergate break-in that led to Richard Nixon's resignation, said he had begun investigating Trump's real estate deals in New York, which he called "more complex than the CIA."
Bezos, who bought the Post in 2013 from longtime owners the Graham family, has donated to both Democratic and Republican elected officials. According to the website OpenSecrets, Bezos and his wife gave $4,800 each to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., in 2009. The couple also gave $2.5 million to support a 2012 referendum legalizing gay marraige in Washington state.
More recently, however, Bezos donated $2,700 this past September to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.
"He thinks I'll go after him for antitrust," Trump said Thursday. "Because he's got a huge antitrust problem because he's controlling so much, Amazon is controlling so much of what they are doing.
"He's using The Washington Post, which is peanuts, he's using that for political purposes to save Amazon in terms of taxes and in terms of antitrust."
Neither Bezos nor Amazon had any immediate comment in response to Trump's claims.
Woodward said Wendesday that Bezos had urged the Post to run as many stories as possible about all the presidential candidates so that voters can't say they were uninformed when they select the next president.
"He said, 'Look, the job at the Washington Post has to be tell us everything about who the eventual nominee will be in both parties,'" Woodward said. "'15-part, 16-part series, 20-part series, we want to look at every part of their lives. And we're never going to get the whole story, of course, but we can get the best attainable."

Clinton charity aided Clinton friends

The Clinton Global Initiative, which arranges donations to help solve the world’s problems, set up a financial commitment that benefited a for-profit company part-owned by people with ties to the Clintons, including a current and a former Democratic official and a close friend of former President Bill Clinton.
The $2 million commitment was placed on the agenda for a September 2010 conference of the Clinton Global Initiative at Mr. Clinton’s urging, according to a document from the period and people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Clinton also personally endorsed the company, Energy Pioneer Solutions Inc., to then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu for a federal grant that year, said people with knowledge of the endorsement.
The company, whose business plan was to insulate people’s homes and let them pay via their utility bills, received an $812,000 Energy Department grant. Mr. Chu, now a professor at Stanford University, said he didn’t remember the conversation.
The Clinton Global Initiative is a program of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The foundation has been a focus of criticism this political season over donations received from governments and corporations that had business before Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state and that could be affected by decisions she would make as president. The foundation has said it “has strong donor integrity and transparency practices.”
The Clinton Global Initiative’s help for a for-profit company part-owned by Clinton friends poses a different issue. Under federal law, tax-exempt charitable organizations aren’t supposed to act in anyone’s private interest but instead in the public interest, on broad issues such as education or poverty.
“The organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests,” the Internal Revenue Service says on its website.
Energy Pioneer Solutions was founded in 2009 by Scott Kleeb, a Democrat who twice ran for Congress from Nebraska. An internal document from that year showed it as owned 29% by Mr. Kleeb; 29% by Jane Eckert, the owner of an art gallery in Pine Plains, N.Y.; and 29% by Julie Tauber McMahon of Chappaqua, N.Y., a close friend of Mr. Clinton, who also lives in Chappaqua.
Owning 5% each were Democratic National Committee treasurer Andrew Tobias and Mark Weiner, a supplier to political campaigns and former Rhode Island Democratic chairman, both longtime friends of the Clintons.

New email release shows Clinton chose not to use secure phone line, acknowledged Blackberry risk

Hillary Clinton playing word games with email investigation?

A new set of State Department documents released Thursday by the watchdog group Judicial Watch reveal then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the choice not to use a secure phone line amid a technical problem and acknowledged the risk of using a private Blackberry phone.
The documents contain a Feb. 22, 2009, email exchange between Clinton and her then-Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills attempting to communicate over a secure line after Clinton returned from an overseas trip.
When there were issues setting up a secure communication, Clinton wrote to Mills, “I called ops and they gave me your ‘secure’ cells… but only got a high-pitched whining sound.”
Mills then suggested that Clinton try the secure line again, but the former secretary wrote back, “I give up. Call me on my home #.”
Clinton's choice not to use a secure phone line is similar to a previous June, 17, 2011 email exchange with then-State Department deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, where she directed him to strip the classification markings of sensitive talking points and send through non-secure fax.
"They say they've had issues sending secure fax. They're working on it," Sullivan wrote to Clinton.
"If they can't, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure," Clinton responded.
In a separate email from Feb. 27, 2008 released Wednesday, Clinton apologized to health care activist/physician Mark Hyman for failing to respond to a message because, “no blackberry contact permitted in my office.”
The documents were obtained in response to a court order from a May 5, 2015 lawsuit filed against the State Department after it failed to respond to a March 18 Freedom of Information Act request.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Iran Deal Cartoons

House GOP ask top White House adviser to testify after Iran deal comments

House Republicans have invited a top White House adviser to testify on Capitol Hill after comments he made in a magazine interview about the Obama administration's efforts to promote the Iran nuclear deal sparked a firestorm in Washington.
Republican leaders of the House Oversight Committee want Ben Rhodes, one of President Obama's closest aides, to testify during a hearing next Tuesday named “White House narratives on the Iran nuclear deal,” committee spokeswoman M.J. Henshaw confirmed to Fox News Wednesday.
Henshaw added that Rhodes, who serves as deputy national security adviser, has not yet gotten back to the committee, and that no one else has been asked yet to appear.
An aide to House Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told The Hill newspaper, which first reported the hearing, that the congressman has threatened to use a subpoena to demand Rhodes'appearance.
The hearing comes nearly a week after Rhodes' comments to The New York Times Magazine ripped the Washington press corps, boasted of creating an "echo chamber" of supporters to sell the Iran nuclear deal and appeared to dismiss long-time foreign policy hands, including Hillary Clinton, as the Blob.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz on Wednesday accused Republicans of "seeking to relitigate that old political fight."
"With all the serious issues stuck in Congress right now - like preparing for Zika's arrival, helping Puerto Rico through their financial crisis, providing assistance to the people of Flint, or combatting the opioid epidemic - it is a shame that Chairman Chaffetz is choosing to take a page out of Darrell Issa's playbook to distract from all the work they should be doing," he said.

US won't seek death penalty against Benghazi suspect

What ever happen to a eye for an eye?

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department will not seek the death penalty against Ahmed Abu Khattala, the suspected Libyan militant charged in the Benghazi attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, federal officials announced Tuesday.
The department revealed its decision, which pushes the case forward toward trial, in a brief court filing that offered no additional explanation.
In a separate statement, spokeswoman Emily Pierce said Attorney General Loretta Lynch made the decision after reviewing the case and consulting with federal prosecutors. She said the department is "committed to ensuring that the defendant is held accountable" for the 2012 attacks.
Abu Khattala's attorneys, who have challenged the strength of the government's evidence, had implored the Justice Department to remove the death penalty as a possibility should he ultimately be convicted of any capital crimes at trial. With that punishment now off the table, he would face a maximum sentence of life in prison if found guilty.
"It was a decision that was the correct decision, but was also a courageous decision — so we're pleased," one of his attorneys, Eric Lewis, told The Associated Press.
Abu Khattala, captured by U.S. special forces in Libya two years ago and brought to the U.S. aboard a Navy ship, has been awaiting trial in federal court in Washington in connection with the September 2012 violence at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi. Prosecutors have described him as a ringleader of the attacks, which quickly emerged as a political flashpoint and became the topic of congressional hearings involving Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, secretary of state at the time of the rampage.
Assuming it doesn't resolve through a plea agreement, a trial of Abu Khattala would represent of the most significant terrorism prosecutions in recent years and also an illustration of the Obama administration's commitment to prosecuting suspected militants captured overseas in U.S. civilian courts.
The 18-count indictment arises from a burst of violence that began the night of Sept. 11, 2012, at a State Department diplomatic compound, an attack prosecutors say was aimed at murdering American personnel and plundering maps, documents and other property from the post.
U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in the first attack at the U.S. mission, along with Sean Patrick Smith, a State Department information management officer. Nearly eight hours later at a CIA complex nearby, two more Americans, contract security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, died in a mortar attack.
Abu Khattala has pleaded not guilty to charges including murder of an internationally protected person, providing material support to terrorists and destroying U.S. property while causing death.
The case is likely to continue to focus fresh attention on security at the diplomatic compound, an issue that provoked immediate political concern and was the subject of a daylong hearing last year organized by a congressional select committee investigating the attacks.
Since arriving in the United States, Abu Khattala has made multiple court appearances alongside his lawyers. He sought unsuccessfully to have the case against him dismissed last year, and a separate request for him to be returned to Libya was also denied.
The Justice Department's decision comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of death penalty protocols at the state and federal levels, although a federal jury in Boston last year sentenced Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death after the Justice Department sought that punishment. He is being held at the Supermax federal prison in Colorado.
Executions in the federal system are exceedingly rare; the last federal defendant put to death was in 2003, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
The Justice Department has said it is reviewing the policies, though nothing has been publicly announced, and President Barack Obama has said he's "deeply concerned" about the death penalty's implementation.
At her January 2015 confirmation hearing, Lynch said she thought the death penalty still can be an effective punishment.