Absent Donald Trump steals Texas town hall spotlight

Donald Trump skipped a Republican presidential town hall in Texas hosted Wednesday night by Fox News nemesis Megyn Kelly, but still made his presence felt by bashing his GOP rivals on Twitter.
“Ted Cruz is lying again. Polls are showing that I do beat Hillary Clinton head to head,” the billionaire tweeted while the Texas senator was onstage.
Trump then proceeded to re-post several tweets from fans that blasted other GOP hopefuls, whom he trounced in the Nevada caucuses Tuesday night.
“A vote for @tedcruz or @marcorubio is a vote for corruption, special interests and lobbyists. Trump for POTUS!” one of the retweets read.
Earlier this week, Trump’s camp said he couldn’t make the “Face-to-Face” event at the Queensbury Theater in Houston because of a “conflicting campaign conflict,” Kelly said.
“They were very polite and cordial,” added a smiling Kelly, with whom Trump has feuded.
Cruz and Ben Carson appeared onstage at the town hall, fielding questions from Kelly and an audience of Texas voters. Marco Rubio and John Kasich took questions via satellite.

Donald Trump to Skip Fox News' Town Hall Event With Megyn Kelly

All of the other major GOP candidates are attending the event.

Donald Trump will not be a part of the Fox News town hall hosted by Megyn Kelly on Wednesday.
The GOP presidential frontrunner had a prior commitment that could not be changed on short notice, according to a Trump campaign spokeswoman.
"The campaign has a previous engagement in Virginia and then New York, which could not be rescheduled," Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks said in an email to The Hollywood Reporter. "Given this was just proposed at the last minute, it was not possible to change our plans in order to attend."
The two-hour voter summit taking place in Houston, The Kelly File: Face to Face With Candidates, will feature the four additional remaining Republican candidates, according to Fox News. Those men are Dr. Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. John Kasich, who will join the event via remote. Audience members will pose questions to the candidates who will be onstage one at a time, according to the network.
Trump has been critical of Kelly in the past and was vocal about his opposition to her moderating the second Fox News debate because he claimed she was biased against him. He ended up skipping that event. However, his campaign said Monday he "looks forward to participating in the next Fox News debate," which will be held March 3 in Detroit.
Trump currently has two victories under his belt so far this campaign season. The billionaire businessman finished first in both New Hampshire and South Carolina. He came in second to Cruz in Iowa during the first caucus of the season.

Lynch confirms career Justice Department attorneys involved in Clinton email probe

Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed to Congress Wednesday that career Justice Department attorneys are working with FBI agents on the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices and the handling of classified material.
Legal experts say the assignment of career Justice Department attorneys to the case shows the FBI probe has progressed beyond the initial referral, or "matured," giving agents access to the U.S. government’s full investigative tool box, including subpoena power for individuals, business or phone records, as well as witnesses.
The Associated Press reported earlier this month that career lawyers were involved, but Lynch's comments are the most expansive to Congress.
"If the FBI makes the case that Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information and put America's security at risk, will you prosecute the case?” Republican Congressman John Carter asked Lynch during a budget hearing.
"Do you know of any efforts underway to undermine the FBI's investigation? And please look the American people in the eye and tell us what your position is as you are the chief prosecutor of the United States," Carter pressed.
Lynch replied, "...that matter is being handled by career independent law enforcement agents, FBI agents as well as the career independent attorneys in the Department of Justice. They follow the evidence, they look at the law and they'll make a recommendation to me when the time is appropriate,"
She confirmed that the FBI criminal investigation is ongoing, and no recommendation or referral on possible charges had been made to her.
"I am not able to comment about the specific investigation at this time. But what I will say is again that this will be conducted as every other case. And we will review all the facts and all the evidence and come to an independent conclusion as to how to best handle it. And I'm also aware of no efforts to undermine our review or investigation into this matter at all."
The White House has been criticized for its public comments, including those of President Obama, that the transmission of classified information on Clinton's unsecured, personal server did not jeopardize national security.
Last month, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Clinton was not the target of the FBI probe, and it was not "trending" towards Clinton.
During congressional testimony in December, FBI Director James Comey was asked by Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, “Does the President get briefings on ongoing investigations by the FBI like this?” Comey replied, “No.”
National Security Defense attorney Edward MacMahon, who routinely handles classified information as part of his case work, said "Lynch appears to be sending a message that there is no need for a special prosecutor because she has assigned career Justice Department lawyers, and not political appointees, to work with FBI agents on the Clinton matter."
MacMahon who recently represented CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who was convicted of leaking intelligence to a New York Times reporter and is now serving a three- and-a-half-year prison sentence, said the pairing of FBI agents and Justice Department attorneys generally reflects the fact that the investigation has moved beyond an initial inquiry.
“As a general matter, a U.S. attorney is assigned as an FBI investigation progresses. The partnership with the U.S. attorney allows the FBI to use the investigation tools of the U.S. government, including subpoenas for evidence, business or phone records, as well as witnesses. And you need (a) U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury.”
It is not publicly known whether any of those actions have been taken.  But an intelligence source close to the FBI probe said the career professionals at the bureau "will be angry and walk off if no indictment recommendation is followed through."
At least 1,730 Clinton emails contain classified information, and the rest held by the State Department must be released by the end of the month based on a federal court imposed timetable.
One of the newly declassified 2012 emails sent four days after the Benghazi terrorist attack, includes highly sensitive information about the evacuation of Americans from Tunisia.
The email included a rare redaction for intelligence called the B 1.4 (g) exception which pertains to “vulnerabilities or capabilities” to “national security including defense against transnational terrorism.”
The email chain was forwarded, on Sept. 16, 2012 at 8:12 a.m, from Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills' government account to Clinton’s unsecured personal server. One of the emails early in the chain was sent by Denis McDonough, then Deputy National Security adviser. His address is redacted citing “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” and could also be a private account because other government accounts on the email chain are not redacted.

Obama reportedly considering Nevada Gov. Sandoval for Supreme Court nomination

President Obama reportedly is considering nominating Nevada Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval to the Supreme Court to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. 
The nomination of a Republican would be seen as an attempt by Obama to break the Senate GOP blockade of any of his choices. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said his 54-member GOP caucus is opposed to holding confirmation hearings or vote on Obama's pick, insisting that the choice rests with the next president.
The White House's consideration of Sandoval was first reported by The Washington Post and the Associated Press. The Post reported that Senate Republicans reaffirmed their vow to not consider any Obama nominee, regardless of party affiliation.
"This is not about the personality," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the paper. McConnel said in a statement to the Post that whoever replaces Scalia "will be determined by whoever wins the presidency in the fall."
Mari St. Martin, Sandoval's communications director, said Wednesday that the governor hasn't been contacted by the White House.
"Neither Gov. Sandoval nor his staff has been contacted by or talked to the Obama administration regarding any potential vetting for the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court," she said.
Sandoval met with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Monday in Washington while he was in town for a meeting of the National Governors Association.
Before Sandoval, 52, became the state's first Hispanic governor, he was the state's first Hispanic federal judge. He supports abortion, a position that might assuage some Democrats nervous about the nomination of a Republican. But liberal groups swiftly came out against the idea.
"Nominating Sandoval to the Supreme Court would not only prevent grassroots organizations like Democracy for America from supporting the president in this nomination fight, it could lead us to actively encouraging Senate Democrats to oppose his appointment," said Democracy for America.
Limited to two terms, Sandoval's final term as governor expires in early 2019. He announced last year that he would not seek Reid's seat, in this November's election, a race in which Sandoval would have been a strong favorite.
"My heart is here. My heart is in my job," Sandoval said at the time.
On Wednesday, Obama laid out his wish list for a Supreme Court nominee, writing in a post on "SCOTUSblog" that his ideal nominee should "approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice, a respect for precedent, and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand."
Obama also wrote that an ideal high court judge should view the law "not only as an intellectual exercise, but also grasps the way it affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times," a possible rebuttal against Scalia's doctrine of constitutional originalism.
A White House official told Fox News Wednesday that an invitation has been extended to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, for a consultative meeting on filling the vacancy. Grassley's office said he has received the invitation and it is "under consideration."

Rubio and Cruz say they'll stop Trump, Kasich and Carson vow to stay in race at Fox forum

Donald Trump's Republican rivals tried to present themselves Wednesday night as the ideal candidates to block the real estate billionaire's path to the GOP nomination and then beat Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the general election. 
Speaking at a special forum in Houston hosted by Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called on Republican voters Wednesday to unite around his campaign, saying that his was "the only campaign that can beat Donald [and] has beat Donald," a reference to his win in last month's Iowa caucuses.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson shrugged off calls for them to quit the race, with Kasich saying he would beat Trump in a head-to-head contest.
At one point, Kasich sparred with Kelly, who said Republicans "see you, even though they like you, struggling to get above bottom rung [and] question whether you're stealing votes from candidates who could actually win."

"I'm husbanding my resources," Kasich responded. "The people calling for me to get out are the people who are inside the Beltway ... I'm certainly not listening to a bunch of lobbyist insiders."
However, Kasich said that Trump would likely keep his run of victories going over the next couple of weeks, but claimed that the Republican Party's proportional system of delegate allocation would keep his campaign viable.
Carson noted that only a small fraction of the current delegates had been awarded through the first four contests, saying "We have a long way to go." Carson later encouraged an audience questioner to "stop listening to the pundits and listen for yourself. Look at the candidates running ... and you can see how consistent they are."
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has finished second in each of the last two nominating contests, acknowledged that Trump was "the frontrunner and I'm the underdog, but I've been an underdog my entire life." Rubio added that his campaign "would not allow the conservative movement to be defined by a nominee who isn't a conservative."
Rubio also took a shot at Trump, though he did not mention that candidate's name, for his remarks on Muslims.

"When you're president, you have an enormous megaphone," Rubio said, "You get to set the tone and agenda for the entire country. We already have a president that's incredibly divisive. We should not be pitting and dividing Americans against each other."
The forum was held six days before a dozen states hold primaries and caucuses as part of Super Tuesday, during which 595 delegates will be awarded.
"I think he's got a fairly low ceiling," Cruz said of Trump, who won Tuesday's Nevada Republican caucuses for this third straight convincing victory. "In the head-to-head polls, Donald consistently loses to [Democratic frontrunner] Hillary [Clinton]. I consistently beat Hillary."
"And if Donald does win the general election, who knows what the heck he'll do as president?" Cruz asked.
Cruz reserved his strongest language for Planned Parenthood, which he referred to as a "criminal enterprise" and the reason "millions of young boys and girls have never breathed a breath of fresh air."
He repeated his vow to order a Justice Department investigation of the healthcare provider "on day one" of his presidency and took another shot at Trump for saying that Planned Parenthood "does do wonderful things" during a debate in South Carolina earlier this month.
"There are a lot of things Donald has said that I disagree with," Cruz said, "and that is very near the top."
Carson got one of the biggest reactions of the evening when he explained his comment earlier this week that President Barack Obama was "raised white."

"He was raised by his white grandma in Hawaii in a very affluent area [with] a private school [education] and spent his formative years in Indonesia with his white mother," Carson said. "Now, if that's a typical black experience ..." as the audience broke out laughing.
Carson went on to call the media firestorm over his remarks "ridiculous analysis" designed "to ridicule me and divide wedges."

Establishment Republicans Cartoon

Republicans vow no vote, hearing on Obama Supreme Court pick

Key Republican senators vowed Tuesday not to vote or even hold a hearing on any Supreme Court nominee by President Obama to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia -- a move likely to put the replacement process in a holding pattern, for now. 
Though some GOP lawmakers appeared to waver in recent days in their opposition to considering a nominee, party leaders largely united Tuesday.
First, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said his party will not permit a vote. Then, every GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee penned a letter pledging not to even hold a hearing until the next president is sworn into office.
"[W]e wish to inform you of our intention to exercise our constitutional authority to withhold consent on any nominee to the Supreme Court submitted by this President to fill Justice Scalia’s vacancy,” they wrote in the letter to McConnell.
“Because our decision is based on constitutional principle and born of a necessity to protect the will of the American people, this Committee will not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee until after our next President is sworn in on January 20, 2017.”
When Republicans might ease their opposition is unclear. While the Judiciary Committee members want to wait until January, McConnell said Republicans won’t permit a vote on a nominee but would “revisit the matter” after November.
While McConnell acknowledged Obama can nominate a replacement, he said Republicans have a right to nix it -- and indicated he was also inclined to refuse a courtesy meeting with a nominee.
“Presidents have a right to nominate just as the Senate has its constitutional right to provide or withhold consent," the Majority Leader said in a speech on the Senate floor. "In this case, the Senate will withhold it."
“No hearing, no vote,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. told reporters after a meeting with McConnell.
"We believe the American people need to decide who is going to make this appointment rather than a lame-duck president," said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, also a member of the committee.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the Republicans' stance "unprecedented" but seemed to hold out hope that the Senate could hold hearings, pointing to a handful of lawmakers he said had expressed a willingness.
Democrats would appear to have few options. One of them, though, is for Democrats to try to force a floor vote on a nominee. It would still take 60 votes, however, to even proceed down that path, a steep climb considering Democrats have just 46 seats.
Republicans were fueled in part Tuesday by past remarks from Democrats who appeared to take a similar stance.
In McConnell's speech, the GOP Senate leader cited a 1992 speech by Vice President Joe Biden, who was then a Delaware senator, in which he said “once the political season is underway and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over.”
Although Biden was talking only hypothetically and there was no vacancy in 1992, Republicans have pointed to the speech as evidence of Democrats’ hypocrisy, and accused Biden of changing his tune depending on which party occupies the White House.
Scalia’s death on Feb. 13 has sparked a major political firestorm over whether Obama’s nominee for the seat on the court should even be considered with Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. accusing McConnell of taking his cue from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump – who told a debate audience the chamber should “delay, delay, delay.”

Nevada entrance polls show Trump winner among Hispanics

Hispanic voters in Nevada solidly backed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Tuesday night's Nevada caucuses, Fox News entrance polls showed. 
Despite Trump's hardline stance on immigration, especially illegal immigration, entrance polls found that the billionaire was supported by 45 percent of Hispanic voters. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was supported by 28 percent of Hispanic voters, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz garnered 18 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich earned 4 percent of the Hispanic vote, while retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson received 3 percent.
"You know what I really am happy about, because I've been saying it for a long time," Trump told supporters in his victory speech early Wednesday. "46 percent with the Hispanics ... number one with Hispanics!"
Despite the impressive-seeming result, Hispanic voters only made up 8 percent of Republican caucus-goers in Nevada. By contrast, 19 percent of caucus-goers in Saturday's Democratic contest were Hispanic.
The Fox News entrance poll was comprised of surveys of 1,573 Republican voters at 25 precincts across Nevada.