Obama takes swipe at Trump overseas

Nothing stops politics this election season -- not even the water's edge. 
While traveling overseas on official business Thursday, President Obama couldn’t resist wading into political matters back home, sparking controversy by saying foreign leaders are “rattled” by the rise of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. 
Obama, saying leaders have "good reason" to feel that way, made the remarks on the sidelines of a Group of Seven economic summit in Japan.
"They are rattled by it — and for good reason," Obama said. "Because a lot of the proposals he has made display either ignorance of world affairs, or a cavalier attitude, or an interest in getting tweets and headlines."
He contrasted that with proposals he said thoughtfully address what's required to keep the U.S. safe and "to keep the world on an even keel."
Trump, though, brushed off Obama's put-down later in the day. Speaking ahead of an address in North Dakota, Trump said: "That's a good thing, I love that word."
"In business, when you rattle someone, that's good," Trump said. "If they're rattled, in a friendly way, that's a good thing ... not a bad thing." 
Trump also touched on remarks Obama made at a campaign stop in Billings, Montana, saying, "he said other countries are nervous. I say it’s good if they’re nervous." 
Obama, meanwhile, was criticized for his remarks by other Republicans, with one calling them “incredibly irresponsible” given the context. 
“When the president of the United States goes overseas he’s representing the country,” Josh Holmes, former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said on Fox News. “It is remarkably irresponsible and remarkably unpresidential for him to weigh in on a domestic political battle and effectively undermine one of the candidates who could replace him next January.”
“In front of the world community and effectively in front of all the world leaders, saying someone is essentially unfit for office is an incredibly irresponsible move for the president of the United States,” Holmes said.
Questions about Trump have followed Obama on his travels abroad, with world leaders expressing concern about certain aspect of Trump’s campaign, most notably his plan to temporarily ban Muslim immigration and his positions on trade.
Trump has also threatened to renegotiate Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and the global climate treaty reached in Paris. As Obama was warning world leaders Thursday about Trump, a newly released Associated Press tally showed he has now attained the number of delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination. 
Obama made the remarks a day before he visits Hiroshima, and said other countries pay more attention to the U.S. elections as they depend on America to provide stability and direction.
"I think it's fair to say they are surprised by the Republican nominee," Obama said, referring to Trump.

State Department official thought Clinton used personal email for 'family and friends'

A longtime State Department official said he assumed that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was using her personal email to "stay in touch with family and friends", not conduct official business.
In a two-hour deposition with the conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch last week, Lewis Lukens also said he offered to set up a "stand-alone" computer for Clinton to check her personal email account, only to be told that she "does not know how to use a computer to do email."
Lukens' testimony was released Thursday, the day after the State Department inspector general released a report criticizing Clinton's email setup, saying that it violated federal records rules and cybersecurity guidelines.
The FBI is investigating possible mishandling of classified information that passed through the server, which was set up in the basement of Clinton's Chappaqua, N.Y. home. Clinton has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, and did so again Thursday. 
"This report makes clear that personal email use was the practice for other secretaries of state," Clinton told ABC News. "It was allowed. And the rules have been clarified since I left."
According to Lukens, he first spoke to Clinton's Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills in 2009 about ways that Clinton could access her personal email without using the State Department's OpenNet system.

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In an email released by Judicial Watch earlier this year, Lukens initially suggested a computer that could be "connected to the internet (but not through our system) to enable her to check emails from her desk."
"The reason that I proposed a PC was that it would make it easier for her to log on,” Lukens said in the deposition. “And at that point, as far as I knew, there was no requirement for her to be connected to our system.”
The computer system was never installed. Lukens was told that Clinton could only send and receive email on her Blackberry smartphone. 
Because Clinton's State Department office was considered a secure zone, she was unable to bring her Blackberry there. As a result, Lukens recalled "on occasion" seeing Clinton looking at her Blackberry in the hallway outside the secure area. 
Lukens, who has been with the State Department since 1989, said he could not recall explicitly discussing Clinton's use of a personal email account with other officials, adding that he assumed she was using "a commercially available email account."
Lukens is the first of at least six named witnesses to be deposed about Clinton's use of a private email server to handle her correspondence during her time as America's top diplomat.
Mills is scheduled to testify on Friday. U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled Thursday that recordings of her deposition are to be kept under seal over concerns the video might be used "as part of partisan attack" against Clinton.

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Republicans seize on State Department audit to challenge Clinton's repeated claims on emails

Republicans jumped on the report by the State Department watchdog accusing Hillary Clinton of flouting federal records rules and cybersecurity guidelines with her use of personal email while secretary of state, saying it showed she was in clear violation of the Federal Records Act and endangered national security.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement Wednesday that the “detailed inquiry by an Obama appointee makes clear Hillary Clinton hasn't been telling the truth since day one and her and her aides' refusal to cooperate with this probe only underscores that fact.”
The forthcoming inspector general audit, a copy of which was obtained Wednesday by FoxNews.com, faults Clinton and her predecessors for poorly managing email and other computer information.
The report says the department was "slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications." It cites "longstanding, systemic weaknesses" related to communications that started before Clinton's tenure.

Trump, national political director Rick Wiley go separate ways

Donald Trump's presidential campaign announced Wednesday night that it had parted ways with its national political director Rick Wiley just a few months after he was hired.
Trump's campaign said in a statement that Wiley's position was not a permanent one, and thanked him for his service.
"Rick Wiley was hired on a short-term basis as a consultant until the campaign was running full steam. It is now doing better than ever, we are leading in the polls, and we have many exciting events ready to go, far ahead of schedule, while Hillary continues her long, boring quest against Bernie," the statement said. "We would like to thank Rick for helping us during this transition period."
The campaign did not indicate the terms of Wiley's departure, but sources told Politico that Wiley was not responsive to campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and clashed with other Trump campaign officials.
Wiley, who joined the Trump team after previously working for the Republican National Committee, previously told the Associated Press he was "working with the RNC, putting together a state-of-the-art program" with multiple data firms to maintain contact information collected when voters register for tickets to Trump's rallies.
Wiley predicted Trump's campaign would be able to match what "Obama was able to do in 2008."

Audio shows Katie Couric documentary deceptively edited interview with pro-gun activists

The makers of a new Katie Couric documentary on gun violence deceptively edited an interview between Couric and a group of gun rights activists in an apparent attempt to embarrass the activists, an audio recording of the full interview shows.
At the 21:48 mark of Under the Gun a scene of Katie Couric interviewing members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights organization, is shown.
Couric can be heard in the interview asking activists from the group, “If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?”
The documentary then shows the activists sitting silently for nine awkward seconds, unable to provide an answer. It then cuts to the next scene. The moment can be watched here:
However, raw audio of the interview between Katie Couric and the activists provided to the Washington Free Beacon shows the scene was deceptively edited. Instead of silence, Couric’s question is met immediately with answers from the activists. A back and forth between a number of the league’s members and Couric over the issue of background checks proceeds for more than four minutes after the original question is asked.
Under the Gun bills itself as a documentary that “examines the events and people who have kept the gun debate fierce and the progress slow, even as gun deaths and mass shootings continue to increase.”

Trump admits using aliases, denies posing as own spokesman

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump admitted Wednesday to using aliases during his business career, but denied posing as his own spokesman in a recently-released recording. 
"You know, over the years I've used aliases," Trump said on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live", an appearance that capped a day of campaigning in Southern California. When asked by Kimmel what aliases he'd used, Trump volunteered Barron, which is also the name of the real estate mogul's youngest son.
"I used an alias in terms of setting up a meeting with Mr. Donald Trump," he said. "And many people in the real estate business do that, you use [an] alias. And you have to, frankly, otherwise they find out it's you and they charge you more money - and nobody wants to pay more money."
Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Trump had repeatedly posed as his own PR man during the early 1990s, variously using the aliases "John Miller" and "John Barron". The primary basis for the report was a recorded 1991 phone conversation between a People magazine reporter and "Miller", who described Trump's romantic life in detail. Trump has repeatedly denied being the voice in the recording.
On Wednesday, Trump said he'd used the tactic "especially when I was out in Brooklyn with my father and I'd want to buy something."
"And honestly nobody knew who Trump was at that time, nobody knew me, so it wasn't so much so important," he said. "But I would never want to use my name because you had to pay money for the land. If you're trying to buy land, you use different names."

China reportedly will send nuclear-armed submarines to patrol Pacific

The Chinese military plan to send submarines armed with nuclear weapons to patrol the Pacific Ocean for the first time, according to a published report. 
The Guardian, citing Chinese military officials, reports that while the timing for a maiden patrol has not yet been determined, Beijing insists that such an action is inevitable.
The report comes days after U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he had lifted a decades-long arms embargo against Vietnam. Chinese officials publicly praised the move, but an opinion piece in a state-run newspaper warned that any attempt to enlist Vietnam in an effort to contain China "bodes ill for regional peace and stability, as it would further complicate the situation in the South China Sea, and risk turning the region into a tinderbox of conflicts."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry responded Monday by saying that it was China's actions in the South and East China Seas that could create a tinderbox.
"I would caution China to not unilaterally move to engage in reclamation activities and militarization of islands," he said.
The Pentagon says China has reclaimed more than 3,200 acres of land in the southeastern South China Sea and is developing and building military installations on the manmade islands.
As a consequence, the U.S. and Vietnam have steadily strengthened their relationship in recent years, in line with growing Vietnamese concern over Chinese moves to assert its maritime claims.
Despite China and Vietnam being Communist countries, clashes in 1988 over their conflicting claims in the South China Sea killed dozens of people. The tensions reared again in 2014, when China parked an oil rig off Vietnam's central coast, sparking confrontations at sea and deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam.
Last week, the Pentagon said two Chinese fighter jets flew within about 50 feet of a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane in what was termed an "unsafe intercept."
China responded by demanding that the U.S. end surveillance patrols around the South China Sea, with a foreign ministry spokesman claiming that such missions "seriously endanger Chinese maritime security."
Earlier this month, a U.S. Navy destroyer sailed within 12 miles of China’s Fiery Cross reef, an artificial island made after months of dredging operations. It was the third time the Navy sailed a warship close to a contested Chinese island in what the Pentagon calls “freedom of navigation” operations. Beijing responded by scrambling fighter jets to show its displeasure.