Clinton Foundation Cartoons

Mexico says it's prepared for U.S. election surprise

The Mexican government has taken steps to cushion the economy from any turbulence arising from a Donald Trump victory in next week's U.S. presidential election, Finance Secretary Jose Antonio Meade said Friday. Those steps include drafting a 2017 budget "that brings us back to a primary surplus," putting aside funds to meet all sovereign debt obligations that come due during the first five months of next year, and presenting a new business plan for state oil company Pemex, Meade told Radio Formula.
"All this allows that this volatility we are already seeing does not affect any real (economic) variable," he said.
Polls show Democrat Hillary Clinton with a narrow lead over Republican candidate Trump with days to go before the Nov. 8 election.
The real estate mogul launched his campaign for the Republican nomination with a speech that featured a denunciation of Mexican immigrants to the U.S. as criminals and "rapists."
Since then, Trump has vowed to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"We are calm," Meade said Friday, adding that should Trump win, the Mexican government will closely monitor the reactions in financial markets.
"We are alert and we have instruments to react according to what we are seeing," he said, downplaying the likelihood of any dramatic announcements in Mexico on the day after the U.S. election, regardless of the outcome.
"It is not worth the trouble of hasty reactions before we have clarity about the scenario we are going to face," the finance secretary said.

Clinton Foundation admits it didn't notify State Department of $1 million Qatar gift

Bill's Birthday Gift

The Clinton Foundation has said it accepted a $1 million gift from the Qatari government without notifying the State Department that it had done so, an apparent violation of an ethics agreement Hillary Clinton signed when she became Secretary of State in 2009.
Under the terms of the agreement, Clinton promised the foundation would notify the State Department's ethics official if a new foreign government wished to donate or if a current foreign donor wished to "increase materially" its contributions.
PODESTA RELATIVE EARNED SIX-FIGURE FEES LOBBYING CLINTON'S STATE DEPARTMENT DURING HIS TENURE THERE
Qatari officials pledged the money in 2011 to mark former President Bill Clinton's 65th birthday. The following April, Amitabh Desai, the Clinton Foundation's foreign policy director, emailed several of his colleagues to say that the Qataris wanted to meet Bill Clinton "'for five minutes' in NYC to present [the] check." Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state until Feb. 1, 2013.
When contacted by Reuters, which first reported on the deal's ethical ramifications, Clinton Foundation spokesman Brian Cookstra said the $1 million gift did not constitute a "material increase" in the Middle Eastern nation's contributions.
ABEDIN IMPLICATED CLINTON IN FOUNDATION TRADE-OFF WITH MOROCCO AMID $12 MILLION COMMITMENT

Reuters, citing the foundation's own website, reported that Qatar's own government has directly given a total of between $1 million and $5 million over the years.
The State Department told the news agency it had no record of the Qatar donation and said it was up to the foundation to submit it for review.
The number of foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation has opened the Democratic nominee up to conflict-of-interest accusations and raises the possibility that donors gave money with the expectation of receiving political favors in return.
Republican nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Clinton to return donations from countries like Qatar, which has a questionable human rights record.
Last year, the Foundation admitted that no complete list of donors to its health program, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, had been published since 2010, despite promises from Clinton two years earlier that such a list would be produced annually.
The email from Desai was part of a trove of hacked messages from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's account that were published by Wikileaks last month.

Trump focuses on blue states while Clinton will crisscross battleground states on race's final Sunday

Republican nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he can be competitive in states long considered Democratic territory. On Sunday, the real estate mogul will test his appeal to voters outside the GOP heartland by holding rallies in five states that all went for President Barack Obama four years ago.
Democrat Hillary Clinton, by contrast, planned events in Ohio and New Hampshire, traditional battleground states where recent polling has shown her either in a virtual tie or trailing Trump.
The states Trump plans to visit Sunday include Iowa, which has gone Republican just once in the past seven presidential elections (George W. Bush in 2004);  Minnesota, which hasn't supported a Republican nominee since Richard Nixon in 1972; Michigan and Pennsylvania, which haven't since George H.W. Bush in 1988; and Virginia, whose 40-year run of reliably voting Republican was ended by Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Trump's breakneck swing comes on the heels of a wild Saturday night out West. A brief scare disrupted his rally in Reno, Nev., when Secret Service agents suddenly hustled Trump off the stage. The agency later said that someone near the stage had shouted "Gun!" but that a subsequent apprehension of a man and search revealed no weapon. Trump returned a few minutes later to resume his remarks and declared "We will never be stopped."
Trump did not mention the incident at his final event of the evening, a raucous rally in Denver. He did brag that scheduled trips to Michigan by Clinton and Obama meant that his message had put Democrats on the defensive in that state.
"They're getting a little worried," Trump said. "I know Hillary, all of a sudden she's making all of these trips, she's going all over the place. She was supposed to be home sleeping.

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"You see, Michigan was never really in play for a Republican," he added. "But you know what? It's in play for us because all of their cars are being made now in Mexico."
Trump again criticized Clinton for holding a get out the vote event with hip-hop artist Jay Z Friday in Ohio, calling it "demeaning to the political process."
"My language is nothing compared to what Jay Z was doing [Friday] night," Trump said of the "Big Pimpin'" singer.
The former secretary of state had more star-studded events planned this weekend, sharing the stage with pop star Katy Perry in Philadelphia Saturday night.
"Tonight, I want to hear you roar," Clinton said before introducing Perry, who hugged her while wearing a purple cape bearing the words, "I'm with Madam President."
On Sunday, the Democratic nominee planned to campaign in Cleveland with basketball star LeBron James.
The final-days scramble highlighted sharp differences between the candidates in a turbulent 2016 campaign season.

Backed by Obama and her party's political elite, Clinton spent much of the last year fighting to unify the president's coalition of minorities and younger voters, aided at times by Trump's deep unpopularity among women in both parties.

Trump has courted working-class white voters on the strength of his own celebrity, having scared off many would-be Republican allies during a campaign marred by extraordinary gaffes and self-created crises. Just four weeks ago, a video emerged in which a married Trump admitted to kissing women and grabbing their genitalia without their permission.

Clinton also faced extraordinary challenges of her own in recent days after the FBI confirmed plans to renew its focus on the former secretary of state's email practices. The development is seen as particularly threatening for Clinton in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire that don't offer early voting.

At least 41 million Americans across 48 states have already cast ballots, according to an Associated Press analysis. That's significantly more votes four days before Election Day than in 2012.

Trump hustled offstage in Nevada after security scare, returns shortly thereafter

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was rushed offstage by the Secret Service during a rally in Nevada Saturday night, but returned within minutes.
The agency said in a statement that Trump was removed from the stage at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center after someone shouted "Gun!", causing a commotion. The Secret Service said that one person was apprehended and no weapon was found after a search of the surrounding area.
KRXI reported that one man holding a "Republicans Against Trump" sign was briefly detained and was later released from custody.
The man identified himself as Austyn Crites, 33, of Reno. In an interview with the Guardian, Crites described himself as a Republican and a conservative who was opposed to a possible Trump presidency.
A source told Fox News that someone in the crowd saw another attendee reach around his back and toward his waistband. The first person shouted "Gun!" several times, sparking panic right in front of the stage where Trump was speaking.
Two Secret Service agents quickly surrounded Trump before hustling him off the stage. Trump returned moments later and told the crowd," "Nobody said it was going to be easy for us. But we will never be stopped. Never, ever be stopped."

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Witness David Newton told the Reno Gazette-Journal that the man holding the sign was trying to get closer to the stage just before the disturbance.
"He had something on his belly. I don’t know what it was,” Newton told the paper. “Somebody yelled 'gun' and everyone jumped on him. My friend put his knee on his head, but he kept getting up.”
Crites confirmed witness accounts that he was moving toward the crowd toward the stage, but denied that he was aggressive or rude. He told the Guardian the sign was initially greeted with boos, but then "people next to me [started] to get violent; they’re grabbing at my arm, trying to rip the sign out of my hand."
Crites went on to claim that members of the crowd kicked and punched him, while at least one person grabbed his testicles. He said he was relieved when authorities put him in handcuffs and escorted him from the arena.
"The people who attacked me – I’m not blaming them," Crites said. I’m blaming Donald Trump’s hate rhetoric." The man went on to call Trump a "facist" and a "dictator."

After the incident, Trump's son, Donald Jr. and top campaign aide Dan Scavino falsely claimed that there had been an "assassination attempt" against the candidate, even though no weapon was found.
Both men re-tweeted a message that read, "Hillary ran away from rain today [at a rally in Florida]. Trump is back on stage minutes after assassination attempt."
At Trump's next rally in Denver, a pastor, introduced as Father Andre Y-Sebastian Mahanna, also falsely called the Reno incident "an attempt of murder against Mr. Trump." Mahanna blamed the incident on the media for inciting hate against the Republican nominee.

The Secret Service statement noted that magnetometers are used at presidential campaign sites.
"All general public attending these events must go through a magnetometer screening prior to entering a protected area," the agency said.

Hillary as President Cartoons

What happens to email scandal if Clinton wins?

Soon to be Mrs Bill Clinton President Elect?

No matter which political party people favor, one thing is clear: everyone is so ready for this election to end. Judging from the headlines out there, it seems like plenty of folks are abandoning any hope of electing President Trump, and instead, moving on to plan for another impeachment of another President Clinton.
Let’s just get something straight about impeachment, right from the start: it has a specific purpose. That purpose is to remedy official wrongdoing, not to turn over an election to Congress.  I spoke with University of North Carolina Law Professor Michael Gerhardt, the leading expert on impeachment, whose expertise was relied upon by the House of Representatives during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. He was was clear: “impeachment is not supposed to be an opportunity to re-litigate an election.”

• First some background on how impeachment generally works

Under Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, impeachment is permitted, although not quite defined:

“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High crimes and Misdemeanors.”

The Constitution sets out impeachment as an enumerated power of the legislature, in which the House may bring formal charges against a federal official much the same that a prosecutor may bring an indictment against an ordinary citizen.  Although the word “impeach” is often misused colloquially, it really just means that a person was charged with wrongdoing.  The impeachment next moves to the Senate, which acts as the trier of fact, and ultimately decides whether to convict the federal official on the charges asserted. Although the outcome of an impeachment proceeding is described in the same terms that a criminal trial would be, the two are not the same.  If convicted on an impeachment, a federal official is automatically removed from office (and may be barred from holding future office as well); there is no part of the impeachment process that is analogous to sentencing in a criminal trial. Following an impeachment case, the federal official may be subject to criminal prosecution; if that prosecution proceeds, the President may pardon the person convicted.  However, no pardon is available for an official convicted after impeachment, because pardons only relate to criminal convictions.

• Would it even be legally possible to impeach Clinton after she were elected? Can Clinton be impeached for her actions prior to taking office?

But — here is the big question. Would it even be legally possible to impeach Clinton after she were elected? It’s not totally clear either way, but there is a real chance that impeachment wouldn’t even be available as a tool to boot a President Hillary Clinton from office.
Impeachment is a remedy meant to address misconduct of an official while that official is in office. While there are a great many things to say about Emailgate, the fact that we’re saying them now unequivocally demonstrates that whatever misconduct occurred did so prior to Clinton’s presidency. There’s no statute that definitively lays out the founding fathers’ rules regarding impeachment timelines, and it’s not an issue that has come up enough times for a clear rule to have developed; the closest thing we have is a statement from the House Judiciary Committee from 1873.

At the time, the House was considering impeachment of Vice President Schuyler Colfax for having taken part in some shady railroad dealings. The Committee said that under the Constitution, impeachment “should only be applied to high crimes and misdemeanors committed while in office and which alone affect the officer in discharge of his duties as such, whatever may have been their effect upon him as a man, for impeachment touches the office only and qualifications for the office, and not the man himself.” So, at least at that time, impeachment was understood as a sort of employment remedy, done by public officials to public officials when they’ve committed professional wrongdoing.

However, there is a tiny little precedent for the concept of impeaching someone for wrongdoing that preceded the person’s federal service – and it’s much more recent than 1873. Meaning Republicans might be in luck. That case involved the 2010 impeachment and conviction of District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana Judge Thomas Porteous. Judge Porteous was removed from the bench after Congress concluded that he had been involved in corruption, committed perjury, accepted bribes from lawyers practicing in his court, and attempted to conceal his sordid past during the confirmation process. During those impeachment proceedings, the timing of Porteous’ wrongdoing never surfaced as any true obstacle.
There’s certainly an argument to be made that if the timing of Judge Porteous’ crimes didn’t thwart his impeachment, then the timing of President Clinton’s shouldn’t prevent hers.   However, from a procedural standpoint, a Clinton/Porteous comparison doesn’t quite work. Clearly, Judge Porteous’ misconduct related directly to his service on the bench, and presented an ongoing problem. His confirmation process itself was also tainted by his having committed fraud. By contrast, Secretary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information is far more separable from what would become her presidency. It took place during a time period completely removed from her administration, does not directly involve her presidency, and has been a highly public news story for her entire presidential campaign. However serious one may feel about Clinton’s email practices, there is no rational basis for a position that the scandal is, with respect to timing, similar to Porteous’ fraud.

• Could the election affect Congress’ right to impeach?

Timing isn’t the only speed bump on the road to a second Clinton impeachment. There’s also the possibility that impeachment proceedings could not (or should not) proceed, because an election itself gives rise to legal consequences. In our democracy, elections are meant to be sacred events in which American citizens speak as a group. Given the amount of media coverage devoted to the email scandal, there’s a logical inference to be made that a Clinton victory is the electorate’s way of waiving any right to punish Hillary for known wrongdoing. Voters on every portion of the political spectrum are aware of Hillary Clinton and her emails. The topic was brought up at every possible opportunity. There’s not a voter out there saying, “emails? What emails?”  Accordingly, the election itself could be deemed a collective ratification of Secretary Clinton’s behavior with regard to confidential data.

So wait, someone commits a crime, and then because that person manages to get elected, she is absolved from accountability? I admit that at first blush, that doesn’t sound quite right. But it’s important to remember that the impeachment process is not a criminal prosecution. Impeachment is a hybrid political/legal tool that is quasi-criminal in basis, and highly political in practice.   For starters, a constitutional basis for impeachment is the commission of “high crimes and misdemeanors” – but no clear definition exists for what that even means.  Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist No. 65 described impeachable offenses as those that “proceed from the misconduct of public men … from the abuse or violation of some public trust” – but that’s not really much help.

Impeachment is not a court proceeding from which an accused may appeal, and is not conducted by the judiciary branch. It does not result from the secret convening of a grand jury, or culminate in closed-door deliberations. Instead, Congress becomes the prosecutor, judge, and jury, as it holds open hearings for both the impeachment and the conviction process. Such a system inextricably ties Senators’ votes at the conviction phase to that Senator’s political livelihood. If constituents believe their representatives voted inappropriately during a presidential impeachment proceeding, they can vote those representatives out at the next opportunity.   In such a context, the presidential election would have to to matter.
Professor Gerhardt explained,

“for one thing, there is a tendency to treat elections, at least sometimes, as ratifying some arguable misconduct or at least signaling that the “misconduct” in question was not disqualifying, since, after all, the official was elected to office and the public was aware of the arguable “misconduct” at the time of the election.”

Whether the election as proof of ratification would halt an entire impeachment proceeding outright, or would affect it in some lesser way remains to be seen. As much as impeachment is a political process, it’s also one that transcends politics. Impeachment requires the Senate to sit in place of a court and effect justice. I’d like to think that our Senate could at least be called on to exercise the same kind of impartiality and fair-mindedness that we ask everyday jurors to exercise in courtroom. That obligation means that a Senator could not (or at least should not) vote to convict a president simply because the two are political opponents.
Procedural questions about whether impeachment is an appropriate tool to use against Hilary Clinton, or about how such an impeachment would proceed are important and complex. It doesn’t help that there’s not even a clear answer to the question, “who answers these questions?” Professor Gerhard’s take on the lack of clear arbiter was:

“The issue would be resolved outside the courts. The conventional wisdom is that the issue would be resolved in the federal political process. Keep in mind she would still be subject to reelection and thus would have a chance for the American people to decide the issue.”

While Hillary-hating members of the House may be drafting their Articles of Impeachment now, their efforts are probably a bit premature. Even if Congress ultimately deems impeachment the correct course of action to pursue against Hillary Clinton, it must proceed with caution. Without clear statutory guidance, future Congresses will certainly look to an impeachment of the next President Clinton as precedent.  We must, in turn, demand that our Congress approaches any impeachment with responsible standards for our government, instead of with the knee-jerk immaturity of political expediency.

• What would happen if Congress gets around all the road blocks and impeached Hillary Clinton after she became president?

In the land of so much uncertainty, this one is pretty clear.
Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution provides that:

“In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President … until the disability be removed, or a President elected.”

Should Hillary Clinton be removed from office via impeachment and conviction, her Vice President would take over for the remainder of the term.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed here are just those of the author.
Follow Elura on Twitter @elurananos

Colin Powell warned Clinton aide 'not to get me' into email scandal

Love Lost ?

Love Gained?

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell issued an unmistakable warning last year to senior Hillary Clinton aides not to drag him into the burgeoning scandal involving her use of a private email server, according to an email released Friday by WikiLeaks.
“Cheryl, Good talking to you. See link. You really don't want to get me into this. I haven't been asked nor said a word about HRC and won't unless you all start it,” Powell wrote to Clinton’s personal attorney Cheryl Mills.
Mills then forwarded the March 7, 2015 email to Clinton's now-Campaign Chairman John Podesta and other associates with a suggestion to “see below as reminder of early conversation.”
The email, hacked from Podesta's personal account, included a link to a Breitbart report on attempts to protect Clinton by stoking an email scandal for Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The article noted it is a “trick attempted with carping about former Secretary of State Colin Powell” and his use of a personal email account when he was secretary of state.
The warning from Powell came at a time when the Clinton campaign and State Department were struggling to respond to the revelation that Clinton had used a private server in her residence for official business.
Clinton would make her first formal comments on the scandal in a March 10, 2015 press conference at the United Nations.

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A day later, Powell declined to comment on the Clinton controversy, telling ABC News’ George Stephanopolous that it “would be inappropriate.”
Campaign Manager Robby Mook noted that same morning that Powell’s no comment “strengthens our case.”
While the Powell warning note had not been published before, it is no secret he did not want the Clinton campaign to drag him into the email controversy by equating his use of personal email with her use of a special private server.
The Intercept previously reported that in an Aug. 28, 2016 email, Powell wrote to a friend that Clinton “could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me to it.”
“I told her staff three times not to try that gambit. I had to throw a mini tantrum at a Hampton’s [sic] party to get their attention. She keeps tripping into these ‘character’ minefields,” Powell added.
Powell had previously accused Clinton of trying to “pin” the scandal on him after Clinton told authorities in July that Powell had detailed to her his email practices as secretary of state under George W. Bush, according to a New York Times report in August.
The paper cited a passage from a book about Bill Clinton’s post-presidency that read, "Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer."
But Powell did not have a private server -- and officials would later find hundreds of emails with classified material from Clinton's server.
Despite the tensions between them, Powell nevertheless endorsed Clinton in October. (Idiot)