Ticket prices plunge for Bill and Hillary Clinton’s speaking tour

Tickets to the latest stop on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s speaking tour were going for as little as $20 on the secondary market as their 13-city adventure continued to struggle to find an audience.
The best seats in the house at Seattle’s WaMu Theater on Friday could be had for $829, a steep 54% drop from the $1,785 that the former first couple fetched when the tour was announced in early November.
But organizers soon had to slash listed prices and even offer discount ducats through Groupon to boost sales.
The official prices for Friday’s appearance ranged from $66.50 to $519, the Seattle Times reported.
“I really believe that we are in a crisis, a constitutional crisis,” Hillary Clinton opined during the 90-minute performance, presented as an interview of her and her husband by actor Bradley Whitford. “This is a test for our country.”

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White House Lawyer: Mueller report written like law school paper, very political

The White House is taking issue with political statements made in the special counsel’s report, which have been used by the left to smear the president and his associates.
White House lawyer Emmet Flood outlined his concerns in a letter to Attorney General William Barr last month, which was made public on Thursday. The letter zeroes in on a line found in Volume II of the report in which Mueller’s teams said the evidence prevented them from “conclusively determining no criminal conduct occurred.”
Flood argued this was not the job of the special counsel, which is a concern echoed by the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
“It also does not exonerate him, prosecutors never say that, that’s kind of close to an improper statement,” said Giuliani.

The Mueller report is pictured. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Flood said prosecutors are not in “the business of establishing innocence” or of “exonerating investigated persons” because the American justice system already presumes innocence.
Flood explained the danger of applying this standard nationwide, which would force any accused person to prove beyond a shadow of doubt their own innocence. He said the job of prosecutors is to fully investigate a situation then decide if it merits recommending charges.
To this end, Flood believes the special counsel fell short because it did not reach a conclusive decision on obstruction. He questioned whether this was deliberately done to give Congress a sort of “road map” to take action against the president as they openly discuss impeachment.
Despite the unfairness with which Democrats have treated President Trump over the last two-years, Flood explained how he has remained as transparent as possible. That’s because much of the information Mueller’s team got their hands on is classified as “privileged material,” meaning it could have been withheld with an executive order.
After laying out his case to Barr, Flood explained the purpose of his letter is to make sure this investigation does not set a precedent for future proceedings.

New tent cities in Texas designed to expand shelter for illegal immigrants

FILE – Migrants walk along a highway as a caravan of several hundred people sets off from San Pedro Sula, Honduras in hopes of reaching the distant United States. (AP Photo/Delmer Martinez, File)

Just across the southern border in Texas, the U.S. government built two large tents in the hopes of providing some additional shelter to the overwhelming number of migrants crossing the border. Officials said they are having a hard time coping with the lack of space for migrants, which has led those crossing the border to sleep on the floors of Border Patrol stations or in military-style tents.
The tents, located in El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley, are each designed to hold 500 people with bathrooms, recreation areas and sleeping quarters.
In a recent statement, officials said the tents were built “to support efforts to process, care for, and transfer the unprecedented number of families and unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally each day.”
The tents are slated to be in use for at least the next four-months, and come with a price tag. The government estimates it will cost around $37 million to operate the facilities.
El Paso has reportedly become the center of the Central American migrant crisis, with thousands flocking to the border each day.

“These installations are for 500 people. It’s not going to solve the problem we’re seeing, which is the large number of apprehensions that we have seen in this sector since October last year. This will help us to process a little bit better.”

— Ramiro Cordero, Border Patrol agent

On Tuesday, Border Patrol agents reported arresting around 1,100 migrants in the El Paso sector. Additionally, Border Patrol said it closed down drug enforcement checkpoints around El Paso. Officials said the checkpoints are now being used to process illegal immigrants. The agency said the checkpoints can be reopened if the flow of migrants slows down.

Comey defends FBI's investigation in response to NYT 'spying' report

Former FBI Director James Comey on Friday defended the bureau actions alleged a day earlier that an informant portrayed a research assistant in order to investigate a Trump foreign policy adviser in 2016.
In a lengthy interview with a Los Angeles radio station, Charles Feldman mentioned the New York Times report and asked Comey about Trump supporters' reaction to it.
“Already some Trump supporters are saying, 'Aha! You see? We are right! The president is right!" Feldman said to Comey. "The FBI and the … so-called deep state, they were spying on an American presidential campaign -- and this story is proof of that.’”
Comey hesitated at first to respond to the KNX 1070 AM host before justifying the FBI’s actions.
“Really? What would you have the FBI do? We discover in the middle of June of 2016 that the Russians were engaged in a massive effort to mess with this democracy to interfere in the election. We're focused on that and at the end of July we learn that a Trump campaign adviser -- two months earlier, before any of this was public -- had talked to a Russian representative about the fact that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton and wanted to arrange to share it with the Trump campaign,” Comey said.

"What should the FBI do when it gets that information? It should investigate to figure out whether any Americans are hooked up with this massive interference effort. And that's what we did."
— James Comey, former FBI director

According to the Times report, an informant working for U.S. intelligence posed as a Cambridge University research assistant in September 2016 to try to probe George Papadopoulos, then a Trump foreign policy adviser, on the campaign's possible ties to Russia.
Papadopoulos told Fox News on Thursday that the informant tried to "seduce" him as part of the "bizarre" episode.
The Times report cited individuals familiar with the Justice Department's ongoing Inspector General (IG) review of the intelligence community's actions in the run-up to Donald Trump's election as president.
Attorney General William Barr received harsh partisan blowback for suggesting that "spying did occur" during the presidential race, but doubled down during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Comey said the FBI was just doing its job.
“What should the FBI do when it gets that information? It should investigate to figure out whether any Americans are hooked up with this massive interference effort. And that's what we did.” Comey said.
The fired director told Republicans who were outraged by the report to “breathe into a paper bag,” saying the FBI used “limited tools” to find the truth.
"There's no way you would do other than what we did, which is use limited tools to try to understand, 'Is this true?' And that's what the investigation was about,” Comey said.

"A foreign adversary intervened in America to damage our democracy. ... So, they will be back again, they will work to re-elect Donald Trump."
— James Comey, former FBI director

Comey argued that Republicans would be outraged if the FBI did not react if a similar situation had emerged involving former President Barack Obama and Iran during the 2012 election.
The former FBI head also warned that the Russians would again work to re-elect President Trump, saying their initial actions were "an act of war" and criticized the president for "refusing to accept that."
"A foreign adversary intervened in America to damage our democracy to hurt one of our two candidates for president and to help the other. That's an act of war. And they not only did it, they exceeded their wildest expectations because look at where we are as a country now, how we are at each other's throats. So, they will be back again, they will work to re-elect Donald Trump," Comey said.
Fox News' Gregg Re and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Joe Biden's son invested in Chinese app that spies on Muslims, as US condemns China over 'concentration camps'

An investment fund backed by Hunter Biden, son of 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden, invested in a surveillance system used to spy on Muslims in China, a new report claims.
The former vice president has been facing scrutiny over his son’s business dealings in Ukraine and other countries, with reports focusing on Hunter Biden’s role in the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
The company employed the younger Biden as a board member as the U.S. and the Obama administration were mulling a course of action amid Russia's invasion in Eastern Ukraine. Biden also apparently threatened the Ukrainian president to fire a prosecutor who happens to have been investigating corruption of Burisma.

Dec. 4, 2013: Vice President Joe Biden, left, waves as he walks out of Air Force Two with his granddaughter Finnegan Biden and son Hunter Biden at the airport in Beijing. (Associated Press)

But Hunter’s investments go farther to the east, drawing scrutiny over his involvement in China amid a controversy over his father’s dismissive comments on the campaign trail about the potential threats China poses to the U.S.
According to the Intercept, Hunter’s investment company in China, known as Bohai Harvest RST, invested in Face++, a mobile phone app built by the Chinese government to introduce a mass surveillance state and spy on its citizens.
The application has been used to spy on Muslims in China’s western province of Xinjiang, where an estimated 1 million Muslims are held in “re-education” camps, providing authorities access to data that shows personal information such as their religious activity, blood type and usage of utilities.
The U.S. government on Friday criticized China’s mass detention of Muslims.
“The (Chinese) Communist Party is using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps,” Randall Schriver, who leads Asia policy at the U.S. Defense Department, said during a briefing, according to Reuters. He added that the number of detained Muslims could be “closer to 3 million citizens.”

“The (Chinese) Communist Party is using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps.”
— State Department's Randall Schriver

The company also consists of a network of other funds that make other investments, making Hunter Biden an influential businessman in China, according to the outlet, which somewhat explains Bohai Harvest’s dependence on an international subsidiary of the state-owned Bank of China to finance its investments.
The revelation comes as Biden caught flak on the campaign trail after expressing lack of concern over China as a global competitor to the U.S. and mocked those taking the Chinese threat seriously at a rally on Wednesday.
“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man!” Biden exclaimed. “The fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the East -- I mean in the West. They can't figure out how they're going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. They're not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they're not competition for us.”
Reacting to those remarks, President Trump said Biden was among many politicians who were  “naïve” regarding China.
“For somebody to be so naive, and say China's not a problem – if Biden actually said that, that's a very dumb statement,” Trump said.

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Pompeo: Omar's Venezuela comments 'disgusting'

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn't hold back Thursday when reacting to Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar's comments insinuating the U.S. was partly to blame for the political crisis in Venezuela, calling her comments "ignorant" and "disgusting."
"So, the nicest thing I can say is it is unbelievable ignorance. It's just factually wrong," Pompeo said on the "Ingraham Angle."
The freshman Democratic congresswoman has been critical of the U.S.'s role in Venezuela.
“A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela and we have sort of set the stage for where we are arriving today,” Omar told "Democracy Now!" “This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States."
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó's called for public employees to stage strikes to put pressure on embattled President Nicolas Maduro but streets remained calm after two days of clashing.
Pompeo blamed Venezuela's current problems on socialism.
"The problems in Venezuela have been years in the making.  It's been a socialist regime, first with Chavez now with Maduro. The destruction of a wealthy nation. A nation with more oil reserves than any other country in the world," Pompeo said.
The Secretary of State emphasized his displeasure with Omar's comments and brought up that she sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"For a member of congress, who frankly, one who sits on an important national committee, making a statement blaming America first in this way, it's not only ignorant, it's disgusting," Pompeo said.
Fox News' Greg Norman contributed to this report.