Conservative Blogger
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Chris Matthews: Get 'excited' about Clinton campaign, or 'don't vote'
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has a striking message for disaffected Democrats: Get “excited” about Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the possibility of the party controlling Washington, or “don’t vote.”
The “Hardball” host offered the advice on air Tuesday night, while griping about some Democrats’ pessimistic attitude toward the election.
“Here’s my question. Why don’t they get excited on the left, and the center-left, about maybe … getting to run the government for four, or eight years, winning the House and the Senate, winning the White House? … Think about winning big,” Matthews said.
He continued: “Hillary Clinton’s got a very good chance right now of winning very big and running the table and actually getting to set U.S. policy on a progressive side of things. Get excited about that. If that’s not [enough] to get you to vote, don’t vote.”
That’s a turnaround from remarks Matthews made in 2012 that anyone not planning to vote was an “idiot.”
“If you don’t vote, you’re an idiot,” Matthews said at the time, to chuckles from his co-hosts.
On Tuesday, Matthews went on to talk up the notion of a Donald Trump “freefall” in the 2016 contest, arguing that Clinton should motivate Democrats to go for the “gold” – and aim for total control of the House, Senate and White House.
Trump recruiting 'election observers' to scout for fraud
Donald Trump is getting pro-active about concerns the White House race could be “rigged” against him, by recruiting “election observers” to help monitor the vote, though details of the program are unclear -- and are raising concerns about potential Election Day confrontations.
The campaign put out the call for volunteers in a newly added page on its website. The page asks visitors to register to become an election observer and help Trump “stop Crooked Hillary from rigging this election.”
“I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged,” Trump said Friday at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, before suggesting he could lose the battleground state if “cheating goes on” in some parts. Noting the state no longer has a voter ID law, he urged voters to “go around and watch other polling areas and make sure it’s fine.”
Trump appears to be tapping into concerns among members of both parties -- Republicans who warn about voter ID fraud and Bernie Sanders supporters who complained about a “rigged” system during the senator’s primary race against Hillary Clinton. Those claims were bolstered by leaked party emails showing Democratic leaders discussing how to undermine him.
But considering the tensions that already have flared outside Trump rallies to date, the possibility of vigilant Trump volunteers looking for voting irregularities has some analysts and officials warning about the implications for Election Day.
“It sounds more like voter intimidation than observation,” Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in election law, told FoxNews.com.
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A group of GOP lawyers also reportedly is planning an anti-voter fraud effort that includes hundreds of observers on the ground and on call on Election Day.
The Trump campaign did not return a request Tuesday for specifics about its election observer program. But spokesman Jason Miller told The Los Angeles Times the campaign intends to put credentialed observers inside polling places in Pennsylvania and several other states in which they are permitted.
“They will help ensure lawful voters can vote,” he said. “What we’re advocating are open, fair and honest elections.”
As for what Trump’s election observers can or cannot do, election lawyers frequently point to the 1982 case DNC v. RNC.
A federal court essentially said observers can go to polling stations to watch voting and tell state officials about “irregularities unrelated to voter fraud” that could interfere with casting ballots -- including understaffing, long lines and malfunctioning voting machines.
However, they cannot question voters about their credentials, take pictures or videos of them, or hand out fliers about voter fraud and its consequences.
Some Trump critics suggest his comments about the potential for voter fraud in “some parts” of Pennsylvania were really code for saying it will occur in Democratic strongholds like Philadelphia which are heavily populated and where residents could vote multiple times because they don’t need ID.
Thirty-three states have laws requiring voters to show ID at the polls. Supporters of such laws, mostly Republicans, say they prevent election fraud, while Democrats and other opponents argue they were enacted to keep minorities, who mostly vote for Democrats, away from the polls.
On Monday, lawyers for North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory asked the Supreme Court to re-instate a photo-ID requirement for voters through November, after an appeals court ruled the 2003 law illegally restricts voting by African-Americans.
Critics of such laws argue there’s scant evidence of in-person voter fraud.
“That it could swing an election just isn’t true,” Levinson said. “It’s sad that it has to be conservatives vs. liberal idea. It’s a factual matter.”
Roger Stone, a longtime political consultant formerly on the Trump campaign, agrees with the nominee’s warning about the potential for a rigged election and implied the real problems might come if Clinton wins as a result of voter fraud.
“I think we have widespread voter fraud,” Stone said in a Breitbart News interview in late July. “I think he has to put [voters] on notice that their inauguration will be a rhetorical. And when I mean civil disobedience, not violence, but it will be a bloodbath. The government will be shut down if they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in.”
Trump gets first intelligence briefing as presidential nominee
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump got his first look Wednesday at classified intelligence on threats to the United States and other security issues.
The more than two-hour briefing was held at an FBI field office in New York City and was led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
Trump left the briefing in lower Manhattan without talking to reporters.
On Wednesday morning, Trump seemed to downplay the potential value of the briefing and questioned whether he could put trust in the information.
“Not so much from the people that have been doing it for our country,” he told Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “Look what’s happened over the last 10 years. … I won't use them, because they’ve made such bad decisions.”
Trump has argued that apparent intelligence failures led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the removal of dictator Saddam Hussein but also created a vacuum for radical Islamic terrorists to thrive.
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Trump has repeatedly argued that failed administration policies, particularly in the Middle East, have left the United States weakened and vulnerable to attacks by the Islamic State and other international terrorist networks. However, the first-time candidate, despite having foreign policy advisers, has limited intimate knowledge of the inter-workings of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Presidential nominees do not need to have a special security clearance to receive the briefings. The campaigns typically work with the ODNI to set up the sessions and discuss topics of interest.
The briefing also followed Trump’s major foreign policy address Monday in which he placed the blame for the rise of Islamic terrorism across the globe at the feet of the administration, and in particular Clinton.
Trump was accompanied to the roughly one-hour briefing by retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie.
“With one episode of bad judgment after another, Hillary Clinton's policies launched ISIS onto the world stage,” Trump said. “All we got from Iraq and our ventures in the Middle East was death, destruction and tremendous financial loss.”
Trump, who has suggested support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, also argued for an end to nation-building abroad, a new “extreme vetting” of immigrants seeking to enter the U.S., and a “bipartisan and international consensus” to defeat Islamic extremism.
He has been attacked throughout his campaign for a perceived lack of foreign policy credentials, with Clinton accusing him Monday of being “all over the place on ISIS.”
It was not immediately clear if a briefing had been set up for Clinton or when it would take place.
Republicans have called for Clinton not to be given classified information in light of FBI Director James Comey’s conclusion that she had been "extremely careless" in her use of a private email server as secretary of state.
Trump slams Obama, Clinton for 'politically correct' war against ISIS, warns of more attacks
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has accused the Obama administration of waging a 'politically correct' war against ISIS and warned that more terror attacks will take place.
"We're not taking it to them," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity at a Wisconsin town hall. "And we have to take it to them."
Trump reiterated his call for "extreme" vetting of would-be immigrants to the United States, saying, "We are just allowing people into our country that some are going to be a problem. And we have enough problems in our country right now."
"We can be nice about it, say it's never going to happen again, there will be more [attacks]," Trump later added. "What we're doing by allowing tens of thousands of people in ... we don't know anything about, it's going to happen again because there's something wrong, and until we figure it out, we have to stop it."
Trump appeared with Hannity at a town hall at Milwaukee's Pabst Theater. The program was recorded Tuesday and aired Wednesday night.
Trump criticized the Obama administration for completing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, which he called "ridiculous" and "absolutely insane." He also hit his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for backing U.S. intervention in Libya during her tenure as secretary of state.
The latest headlines on the 2016 elections from the biggest name in politics. See Latest Coverage →
At one point, Trump was joined on stage by survivors of three terror attacks that took place during the Obama administration: The 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas; the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya; and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
Benghazi attack survivor Kris Paronto said Trump's call for increased vetting was "necessary," adding "terrorists utilize our strengths, compassion and empathy against us. That's what they are doing right now."
On Wednesday, Trump received his first classified intelligence briefing, meeting with national security officials for more than two hours at an FBI field office in New York City. Earlier in the day, Trump suggested he would be skeptical of its contents when he was asked if he trusted the nation's intelligence materials.
"Not so much from the people that have been doing it for our country," Trump told "Fox & Friends". "I mean, look what's happened over the last 10 years...it's been catastrophic."
Also Wednesday, Trump gathered several advisers for a security round table at Trump Tower.
The advisers, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, encouraged the GOP nominee to press for more surveillance and more information-sharing with local police departments to fight terror threats if he's elected president. The FBI does share with local police agencies through Joint Terrorism Task Forces.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
FBI sends heavily redacted Clinton interview documents to Congress
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| Sneaky Snake |
Separately, the Republican chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, confirmed that even he does not have a high enough security clearance to read the documents in full.
“As the chairman of the chief investigative body in the House, it is significant I can’t even read these documents in their entirety,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah told Fox News. “This shows how dangerous it was to have this intelligence, highly classified to this day, on the former secretary’s unsecured personal server where it was vulnerable.”
The fact that portions of the FBI investigative file are heavily redacted and must be held and read by lawmakers in a secure facility on Capitol Hill shows how classified the material remains, despite claims made by the Clinton campaign.
The campaign’s call to release the FBI agents’ notes appears suspect because the material is too highly classified to make public.The FBI told the committee that the documents cannot be released in part or in full without prior agency approval.
"This information being highly classified according to the FBI is in direct conflict with what the State Department and Ms. Clinton have said is on the server. You could not have it both ways," former military intelligence officer Tony Shaffer said. "You cannot say one day this is unclassified ‘nothing to see here’ and the next day, only certain people can see this and you must not be able to take it outside of a secure facility."
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Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, confirmed it had received "FBI witness interview reports," including that of Clinton's interview.
"With the exception of the classified emails that had been found on the private server, I can see little legitimate purpose to which Congress will put these materials," Schiff said in a statement.
The bureau, in closing its case, confirmed publicly that 113 classified emails were sent and received by Clinton, as well as 2,000 that were classified after the fact.
FBI chief James Comey said investigators found at least three emails that contained classified markings. However, he did not recommend criminal charges, and the Justice Department closed the case.
While Clinton has insisted nothing was marked classified at the time, the investigation found otherwise, with the emails containing a portion marking (C for confidential, the lowest level of classification). Fox News first reported that some of the emails were marked classified in June.
The House Oversight Committee questioned Comey for over five hours in July after he said no reasonable prosecutor would pursue criminal charges.
The Oversight Committee also has formally asked if Clinton committed perjury during her Benghazi testimony in October 2015, because her statements to Congress appear to conflict with the FBI's findings.
While Democrats complained the documents would be leaked, it was the Democrats who released the FBI's letter to the committee.
State Department sought land deal with Nigerian firm tied to Clinton Foundation
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| Clinton Foundation dogged by more allegations of impropriety |
On March 20, 2013, William P. Franklin, an “international realty specialist” at the State Department, emailed Mary E. Davis, an American diplomat stationed in Africa, instructing her to “put on Post letterhead” an “expression of interest” by the department in purchasing property at Eko Atlantic, a massive real estate development off the coast of Lagos. Franklin further instructed that the signed letter was to be “delivered to Ronald Chagoury.”
The draft letter, also obtained by Fox News, was undated and addressed to Chagoury care of his firm South Energyx Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of the larger Chagoury Group that is spearheading the Eko Atlantic real estate venture. The State Department letter sought, among other things, to confirm that the department could proceed with “acquisition of the real property…[at] the asking price of $1,250 per square meter.”
Overtures to real estate developers from State Department officials scouting locations for embassies, consulates and other diplomatic facilities would ordinarily not arouse interest. But in this case, the budding transaction – never completed, the department now says – raised eyebrows because Ronald Chagoury is the brother and business partner, in the Chagoury Group, of Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-born businessman whom federal records show has donated between $1 and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Indeed, Gilbert Chagoury’s friendship with the Clintons can be traced back to the Clinton presidency. In the mid-1990s, Chagoury donated nearly $500,000 to a voter-registration drive designed to help Democratic candidates, attended a White House dinner for premium donors, and met with high-ranking officials in the Clinton White House – including Susan Rice, now President Obama’s national security adviser – who were shaping U.S. policy toward Nigeria.
More recently, the Chagourys’ close ties to the Clintons generated headlines when a separate series of emails from 2009 – between Doug Band, an aide to former President Clinton and Huma Abedin, an aide to Secretary Clinton – revealed the eagerness of the State Department to oblige a request for Chagoury to be granted access to senior officials working on Lebanon.
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Mr. Clinton toured the Eko Atlantic site for the second time on February 21, 2013 – twenty days after his wife left the State Department – to celebrate the Chagourys’ reclamation of 5 million square meters of land, a critical juncture in the project.
Smiling and animated, Mr. Clinton was photographed conferring with Gilbert Chagoury and Jeffrey J. Hawkins, the consul general for the State Department in Nigeria. Twenty-seven days later, when William P. Franklin would order aides to begin exploring the acquisition of land from South Energyx, the Chagoury-owned company, Hawkins would be one of four State Department officials copied on Franklin’s email.
“A month after Bill Clinton visits a Gilbert and Ronald Chagoury-run land project in Nigeria, the U.S. State Department wants to buy the same land,” said David N. Bossie, president of Citizens United, the conservative advocacy group whose litigation against the State Department pried loose the Franklin email and accompanying letter. “Who could be so lucky? A major donor to the Clinton Foundation, that’s who.”
Queried by Fox News about the matter, the State Department said its officials had “prioritized” the search for a new consulate location in Lagos back in 2011 – when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state – and that an “independent international real estate firm” had identified Eko Atlantic as a potential site the following year.
“Our site search process … is managed by career real estate professionals in the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, with input from independent real estate firms and other department stakeholders,” said Elizabeth Trudeau, a State Department spokeswoman, at a briefing for reporters on Monday. “The department has had conversations with multiple property owners and their representatives about the possibility of acquiring property for a new consulate in Lagos.”
Trudeau could not explain why a “prioritized” mission had dragged on for five years without success, noting only that “acquiring property that’s appropriate” for a diplomatic facility can be “a long process.” Asked if Secretary Clinton had been aware of her department’s identification of the Chagoury-owned land as a potential site for a consulate, Trudeau replied: “I’m not aware she was.”
The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Mark Corallo, a Washington-based spokesman for Gilbert Chagoury, said in a statement that given the project’s “state-of-the-art urban design,” including advanced telecommunications and security features, “it should come as no surprise that the United States government and other governments from around the world are considering Eko Atlantic as a new opportunity for locating their offices that operate in Lagos.”
John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Fox News contributor, said the entire series of events involving the Clintons and the Chagourys appeared, at a minimum, poorly handled to insulate Secretary Clinton from conflict of interest charges.
“The impression left is that there’s favoritism involved,” Bolton said. “And it’s just very unusual in State Department real estate and housing transactions overseas to have this kind of focus on someone with such clear financial connections to even the departed secretary of state. Normally, there’s much more competitive activity involved, [of] which we haven’t seen any evidence from the State Department.”
Experts agreed the March 2013 email from William P. Franklin to Mary E. Davis, triggering the State Department’s letter to Ronald Chagoury for a possible real estate transaction, would likely have formed only one set of documents in a longer trail that would have dated back to 2012 – the year the State Department said Eko Atlantic had been identified as a potential site for a new consulate.
Such a trail would presumably include internal correspondence addressing the suitability of the Eko Atlantic site and, perhaps, flagging the potential conflict of interest that could be cited, given the longstanding ties between the Clintons and the Chagourys.
But Citizens United said no other documents on the consulate-scouting effort were turned over by the State Department. The group filed its initial Freedom of Information Act request with the State Department for records relating to Gilbert Chagoury back in 2014, and, receiving no reply, filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in April 2015.
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