Judge Napolitano: What happened to the FBI? It's been corrupted by Obama and his team

When FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 that the Department of Justice would not seek the indictment of Hillary Clinton for failure to safeguard state secrets related to her email use while she was secretary of state, he both jumped the gun and set in motion a series of events that surely he did not intend. Was his hand forced by the behavior of FBI agents who wouldn’t take no for an answer? Did he let the FBI become a political tool?
Here is the back story.
The FBI began investigating the Clinton email scandal in the spring of 2015, when The New York Times revealed Clinton’s use of a private email address for her official governmental work and the fact that she did not preserve the emails on State Department servers, contrary to federal law. After an initial collection of evidence and a round of interviews, agents and senior managers gathered in the summer of 2015 to discuss how to proceed. It was obvious to all that a prima-facie case could be made for espionage, theft of government property and obstruction of justice charges. The consensus was to proceed with a formal criminal investigation.
Six months later, the senior FBI agent in charge of that investigation resigned from the case and retired from the FBI because he felt the case was going “sideways”; that’s law enforcement jargon for “nowhere by design.” John Giacalone had been the chief of the New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., field offices of the FBI and, at the time of his "sideways" comment, was the chief of the FBI National Security Branch.
The reason for the "sideways" comment must have been Giacalone’s realization that DOJ and FBI senior management had decided that the investigation would not work in tandem with a federal grand jury. That is nearly fatal to any government criminal case. In criminal cases, the FBI and the DOJ cannot issue subpoenas for testimony or for tangible things; only grand juries can.
Giacalone knew that without a grand jury, the FBI would be toothless, as it would have no subpoena power. He also knew that without a grand jury, the FBI would have a hard time persuading any federal judge to issue search warrants. A judge would perceive the need for search warrants to be not acute in such a case because to a judge, the absence of a grand jury can only mean a case is “sideways” and not a serious investigation.
As the investigation dragged on in secret and Donald Trump simultaneously began to rise in the Republican presidential primaries, it became more apparent to Giacalone’s successors that the goal of the FBI was to exonerate Clinton, not determine whether there was enough evidence to indict her. In late spring of this year, agents began interviewing the Clinton inner circle.
When Clinton herself was interviewed on July 2 -- for only four hours, during which the interviewers seemed to some in the bureau to lack aggression, passion and determination -- some FBI agents privately came to the same conclusion as their former boss: The case was going sideways.
A few determined agents were frustrated by Clinton’s professed lack of memory during her interview and her oblique reference to a recent head injury she had suffered as the probable cause of that. They sought to obtain her medical records to verify the gravity of her injury and to determine whether she had been truthful with them. They prepared the paperwork to obtain the records, only to have their request denied by Director Comey himself on July 4.
Then some agents did the unthinkable; they reached out to colleagues in the intelligence community and asked them to obtain Clinton’s medical records so they could show them to Comey. We know that the National Security Agency can access anything that is stored digitally, including medical records. These communications took place late on July 4.
When Comey learned of these efforts, he headed them off the next morning with his now infamous news conference, in which he announced that Clinton would not be indicted because the FBI had determined that her behavior, though extremely careless, was not reckless, which is the legal standard in espionage cases. He then proceeded to recount the evidence against her. He did this, no doubt, to head off the agents who had sought the Clinton medical records, whom he suspected would leak evidence against her.
Three months later -- and just weeks before Clinton will probably be elected president -- we have learned that President Barack Obama regularly communicated with Clinton via her personal email servers about matters that the White House considered classified. That means that he lied when he told CBS News that he learned of the Clinton servers when the rest of us did.
We also learned this week that Andrew McCabe, Giacalone’s successor as head of the FBI Washington field office and presently the No. 3 person in the FBI, is married to a woman to whom the Clinton money machine in Virginia funneled about $675,000 in lawful campaign funds for a failed 2015 run for the Virginia Senate. Comey apparently saw no conflict or appearance of impropriety in having the person in charge of the Clinton investigation in such an ethically challenged space.
Why did this case go sideways?
Did President Obama fear being a defense witness at Hillary Clinton’s criminal trial? Did he so fear being succeeded in office by Donald Trump that he ordered the FBI to exonerate Clinton, the rule of law be damned? Did the FBI lose its reputation for fidelity to law, bravery under stress and integrity at all times?
This is not your grandfather’s FBI -- or your father’s. It is the Obama FBI.

Podesta relative earned six-figure fees lobbying Clinton's State Dept. during his tenure there

EXCLUSIVE: Amid the tumult of the 2016 presidential campaign, John Podesta is best known as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and the individual from whose private account WikiLeaks is presently publishing some 50,000 hacked emails.
Released in daily batches, these documents have laid bare the inner workings and tensions of the Clinton campaign in an unprecedented way, while also offering insights into the operations of the Clinton Foundation and the State Department in the years when Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee, served as secretary of state.
At that time, when Clinton was traveling to a record number of foreign countries, Podesta, a former White House chief of staff under President Clinton, held dual titles at the State Department: as a senior advisor – entitled to an annual salary of $130,000 never paid him, the department maintains – and as a member of a prestigious foreign policy advisory board Secretary Clinton created. Records obtained from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management show Podesta’s tenure at State extended from Sept. 25, 2011 to Jan. 4, 2014.
For several months in 2012, Clinton’s final year as secretary of state, Raytheon, the leading defense contractor, hired Podesta’s sister-in-law, Heather Podesta, as a lobbyist, federal records show.
Raytheon was looking to enlarge its share of foreign military sales – transfers of advanced weapons systems to other countries that are reviewed and approved by the Department of State, then implemented by the Department of Defense – and was beefing up its lobbying operation to accomplish that goal before Secretary Clinton left office.
On the LD-2 lobbying disclosure form completed by her company, Heather Podesta + Partners, LLC, in July 2012, the veteran lawyer and Democratic fundraiser listed in the space provided for a description of her lobbying activities, “Engaged the Executive Branch on the economic benefits of foreign military sales.” In the space requesting the specific locales of her lobbying, Ms. Podesta listed the White House and the State Department.

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At the same time, Raytheon retained two other lobbyists, John Merrigan and Matt Bernstein, both associated with the powerhouse D.C. law firm DLA Piper. All three of these lobbyists, including Ms. Podesta, were major donors or bundlers to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns. Federal records show they have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Clinton’s campaigns and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying her State Department.
In the final three quarters of 2012, DLA Piper earned some $360,000 in lobbying fees from Raytheon, courting the State Department and other agencies, while Ms. Podesta, within that same time frame, received $100,000 from Raytheon for the same purpose.
The gambit appears to have worked: Records maintained by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arm of the Defense Department that coordinates the transfers of weapons systems once they have received State’s approval, show Raytheon as a prime contractor in at least seventeen foreign military sales in 2012, worth an estimated total of $26 billion. Of those contracts, three with the Gulf nation of Qatar – for missile defense, Apache attack helicopters and other materiel – accounted for $19 billion.
An email from a Clinton Foundation official released earlier this month, in the sixth of Wikileaks’ postings of John Podesta’s emails, revealed that in 2011, the Qatari government had pledged $1 million to the foundation to help former President Clinton celebrate his birthday. In return, the email said, the Qataris sought a “five-minute” audience with Mr. Clinton.
The individual at the State Department who was statutorily entrusted to approve foreign military sales was Andrew Shapiro, the assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs. Prior to his nomination to that job, Shapiro had served as Clinton’s national security adviser in her Senate office. Today, Shapiro is a partner in a Washington consulting firm whose other co-founders include Philippe Reines, Clinton’s longtime press aide.
After Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in February 2013, Raytheon discontinued the services of Heather Podesta + Partners, and ceased its use of DLA Piper at State.
While experts do not believe any laws were broken, the affair illustrates how Washington worked in the first Obama term, and particularly at the Clinton State Department. The Raytheon operation bears some similarity to a pop-up store that materializes to serve a seasonal need, such as Halloween candy or July Fourth fireworks, then vanishes once that need has been met.
“I think this is as close an example of pay-to-play as we’ve seen,” said Raj Shah, deputy communications director at the Republican National Committee. “And that's why [Raytheon] made these hires [of Heather Podesta, Merrigan and Bernstein]. … Their experience was getting access to Hillary Clinton and raising money for her.”
“The ultimate responsibility, of course, rests on the Cabinet official. In this case, it'd be the secretary of state,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby at a briefing with reporters Wednesday. “But we do it in close coordination with DOD. … The only considerations that are factored into the foreign military sales program is the furtherance of foreign policy objectives of the United States of America and not the efforts by external groups to lobby, as you say, or to influence that decision.”
Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, told Fox News that the nominee “never took action as secretary of state because of any donations and any suggestion to the contrary is false.”
In a statement, Raytheon said its lobbying practices and policies are fully disclosed and comply with all federal, state and local laws. DLA Piper did not respond to a request for comment. And Heather Podesta sent Fox News a one-sentence email saying: “I never lobbied the Secretary or John Podesta on this matter.”

Emails show Clinton campaign sought to 'bern' Sanders with poolside pic

John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, could barely contain himself when a Clinton aide emailed him a picture of a shirtless Bernie Sanders lounging at an exclusive resort on Marta’s Vineyard.
“Can we tweet?” Podesta wrote in a 2015 email, according to a recent Wikileaks dump. Clinton staffers shared the email, and snarky remarks.
“Omg,” Brian Fallon, Cinton’s press secretary, wrote. “I think we shd (sic) give to NY Post.”
Just days after the campaign caught wind of the picture of Sanders in the shade during a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee retreat at Martha’s Vineyard, gossip maven Perez Hilton posted the picture on Facebook.
Not known for his political accumen, Hilton stumbled on the perfect caption: “I wonder what @MikeBloomberg would think about this??? @BernieSanders lounges at elite Martha’s Vineyard pool, summer 2015, after helping raise money from Wall Street lobbyists.”
It was not clear if Team Clinton sought to publicize the photo to show Sanders, a champion of the working class, at an exclusive locale or if the goal was to circulate an unflattering picture of a septuagenarian in a swimsuit.

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In an MSNBC report titled, “Bernie Sanders a regular at high-dollar donor retreats,” it was pointed out that Sanders was once even “spotted chatting sociably for close to an hour with a financial services lobbyist who was in a hot tub while the senator sat nearby.”
Through much of the primary, Clinton sought to distance herself from Wall Street. In some of their most heated debates, Sanders appeared to land some punches that tied her to banks.
“I stood up against the behaviors of the banks when I was a senator,” Clinton said during an April debate. “I called them out on their mortgage behavior.”
“Oh my goodness, they must have been really crushed by this,” Sanders said.
A spokesman for Sanders did not immediately respond to an email from FoxNews.com about the picture. But since losing the nomination fight, Sanders has embraced the Clinton campaign and said “I am determined to implement the agenda of the Democratic Party platform which was agreed upon by her campaign.”
Sanders supporters were not always so forgiving. One commenter replied to the picture on Hilton’s Instagram account, “Hillary put you up to that one…lol nice try! Ps I’m glad Hillary can love the gay community for 3 years and that’s enough for you (sic) turn your back on someone who has been fighting for equality for decades.”
Kenneth Corcoran, 61, a machinist in New Hampshire, said this kind of campaigning is what turns him off from national politics. The former Sanders supporter said he is on top of the issues and has followed the WikiLeaks dump and has been unsatisfied with her explanations.
“If I’m in a particularly foul mood on [election] day, I may vote Trump,” he said. “Just to stick a pen in the Clintons.” 

Voter Fraud Cartoons

Texas voters claim machines switching their votes

A rash of reports are emerging on social media from Texas residents who claim machines have switched their votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton – though local officials are pushing back and saying many of these incidents are due to human error.
Early voting began Monday in the Lone Star State, and almost immediately reports began trickling in of votes being changed. The controversy began when Lisa Houlette, a Texas resident in Randall County, posted her story on Facebook.
Arlington resident Shandy Clarke said a similar thing had happened to a family member who went to vote Republican Monday.
But Randall County’s Election Administrator Shannon Lackey told FoxNews.com that these sort of claims occur every election cycle and that there is nothing wrong with the machines. She believes such incidents can be chalked up to human error.
“Our machines are state and federally certified. We do three logic and accuracy tests, which were done before military voting started in September,” she said.
Lackey said her office is dedicated to impartiality and fairness, and she even chose not to vote in the state’s primaries so there could be no accusations of bias. She also noted that at repeated points in the voting process, users see where their vote will be cast, and they can change it at any point.

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“I also have instructed all early voting workers, if a voter is uncomfortable that they are to cancel the ballot immediately, and let the voter cast again, and choose the machine of their choice. They can even get the clerk to act as a witness,” she said.
Neighboring Potter County Judge Nancy Tanner released a statement Tuesday claiming there is nothing wrong with the machines.
TEXAS SEES SURGE IN EARLY VOTING AS POLLS SHOW TIGHTENING RACE
“They do not flip your vote. They do not flip parties. Humans do that,” she said.
Still, she referenced “one incident in Randall County where a voter voted straight ticket and when they hit the vote button, it flipped parties.” Tanner maintained that the machine was checked and there was nothing wrong with it.
In Collin County, elections official Bruce Sherbet told The Dallas Morning News that there were complaints, but they were called in after the voters had left the polling place, and so it was not possible to determine what had happened.
Officials did acknowledge one minor software issue in Chamber County, when officials temporarily moved to paper ballots Monday after a glitch was found in machines.
12NewsNow reported that an error caused votes for one appeals court race not to be entered when a voter tried to vote for a straight-party ticket. That glitch has since been fixed, and there was no indication the error favored one party over another.
Meanwhile in North Carolina, WFMY reported that there had been "a smattering" of complaints about machines wrongly indentifying voter choices, but those ballots were corrected before being cast.
Yet some conservatives have seized on the claims as proof the voting system is rigged.
“You see the garbage that goes on and it has to stop,” Eric Trump, son of Republican candidate Donald Trump, told Fox & Friends Wednesday when asked about the situation in Texas. “We have to get it right, we’re better than that as a country.”
A new American Values Survey, reported by The Washington Examiner, found that just 4 in 10 voters are very confident their vote will be counted accurately. Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted that he fears the vote will be “rigged” and has held back from promising to accept the election results, telling Fox News’ Chris Wallace at the third presidential debate: “I will keep you in suspense.”

Trump touts 'new deal for black America' at campaign rally in Charlotte

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump unveiled what he called a “New Deal for black America” and revealed a handful of new proposals aimed at revitalizing impoverished urban areas on Wednesday in hope to sway minority voters.
Part of Trump’s so called “new deal” included new tax incentives for inner cities, new micro-loans for African-Americans to start companies and hire workers and plan to reinvest money form suspended refugee programs in inner cities.
“I will be your greatest champion,” Trump told a predominantly white Charlotte crowd. “I will never ever take the African American community for granted. Never, ever.”
Trump also pledged to take on gang members and remove them from inner cities. He also claimed that the national murder rate was as high as it’s been in 45 years.
“Some of our inner cities are more dangerous than the war zones we’re reading about and seeing about every night.”
Earlier in the day, Trump was in Washington touting his business empire in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for his new hotel. He made the case that all Americans should look to his corporate record for evidence of how well he’d run the country if elected president.

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"Under budget and ahead of schedule. So important. We don't hear those words so often, but you will," said Trump, linking the hotel redevelopment — just blocks from the White House — to his promised performance as president. "Today is a metaphor for what we can accomplish for this country."
As Trump opened his hotel, his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was blasting his business practices on the campaign trail in the key battleground state of Florida.
She used campaign events in Florida to attack the GOP nominee for having "stiffed American workers," saying he built his empire with Chinese-manufactured steel, overseas products and labor from immigrants in the country illegally.
"Donald Trump is the poster boy for everything wrong with our economy," she told several thousand supporters in Tampa, Florida. "He refuses to pay workers and contractors."

More on this...

• Chaffetz says he'll vote for Trump after withdrawing endorsement over lewd remarks

• Fox News Poll: Clinton leads Trump by three points

• Texas voters claim machines switching their votes

Clinton also told reporters: "I was struck today that Donald Trump was paying more attention to his business than to the campaign. That's his choice but we're going to keep working really hard to reach as many voters as possible."
As the Nov. 8 election looms, the newest Fox News Poll shows Clinton leading Trump by just three points. In an effort to play some political defense, Trump’s running mate Mike Pence was touting the campaign in Utah in hopes to keep votes from choosing Independent Evan McMullin over the two mainstream candidates.
Besides Utah, Pence also was stopping in the swing states of Nevada and Colorado before heading Thursday to solidly Republican Nebraska.
Trump, who also held a rally in the city of Kinston, continued to insist he knows more than the nation's military leaders, especially when it comes to the fight against Islamic State militants in the city of Mosul.
"You can tell your military expert that I'll sit down and I'll teach him a couple of things," he said in an interview with ABC.

Emails show Clinton campaign expressed concerns about Sanders' rise

WASHINGTON –  Allies of Hillary Clinton felt threatened by the power of Sen. Bernie Sanders' candidacy and wondered about getting some signal of support from President Barack Obama in the heat of the Democratic primaries, according to the latest emails in a hacked trove from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Ahead of the Illinois primary in March, liberal operative Neera Tanden asked Podesta, who formerly worked on Obama's transition in 2008, if the president could give any kind of indication that he was supporting Clinton over Sanders.
Tanden asked Podesta whether Obama could "even hint of support of Hillary before Tuesday?"
Obama stayed officially neutral in the primaries until Clinton clinched the nomination in June.
Tanden wrote: "Maybe they don't want to do this, but the stakes are pretty damn high in this election for him."
The email exchange was contained in more than 1,500 emails released Wednesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. The notes were stolen from the email account of Podesta as part of a series of high-profile computer hacks of Democratic targets that U.S. intelligence officials say were orchestrated by Russia, with the intent to influence the Nov. 8 election. Russia has denied the allegations.

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In a separate June 2015 email, the Clinton campaign worried that some state affiliates of the nation's largest labor union, the National Education Association, were set to endorse Sanders even though the national union had not yet made an endorsement.

More on this...

• Sources: Clinton emails would have been 'whitelisted' for Obama BlackBerry

• Huma Abedin Granted Access To Hillary Based On Clinton Global Initiative Donor Status

• Clinton Campaign Manager Lost Track of Shifting Position on Trade

On June 22, 2015, Clinton's labor outreach director Nikki Budzinski emailed other campaign officials to let them know "NEA is concerned their VT affiliate could do a Tuesday (next week) recommendation of endorsement (with potential press release). This is not confirmed. The bigger concern is that RI and MA might go with VT as well."
Carrie Pugh, the NEA's political director, had similar concerns and shared them with Clinton campaign officials.
Budzinski said the move in Vermont "doesn't pose serious concern for the NEA overall endorsement" but called it an "optics problem" coming before a major meeting of NEA representatives.
"I am working with Carrie Pugh on options to head this off," Budzinski wrote.
The NEA ultimately endorsed Clinton in October 2015 despite some complaints that leaders hadn't taken Sanders seriously enough and should have waited.
In an email to Podesta in January, Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg weighed in by urging that Clinton better position herself relative to Sanders on the issue of reforming big money politics and special interest giveaways.
The memo hints that Clinton, a prolific fundraiser and longtime Democratic Party insider, had her doubts.
"Her concern about authenticity and credibility on this issue is understandable but not right," Greenberg said.
"There is nothing more important politically than Clinton getting ahead of money and politics," the pollster said. "It is a pre-requisite for getting heard on change and government activism, for competing and beating Sanders and establishing a key contrast with the Republicans."
And both Podesta and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio warmed to the idea of setting up a "People's PAC" intended as a vehicle for Clinton to direct support toward liberal Democrats in the House and Senate — and potentially draw Sanders' supporters to Clinton.
The idea was floated in a March 2016 email from Huffington Post contributor Brett Budowsky to Podesta, which Podesta forwarded to de Blasio, who responded that the liberal PAC "has a lot of merit."
The People's PAC never came to pass.
"I think it's a good idea but think that our team will see it as a resource diversion," Podesta wrote to de Blasio.
In an email on Jan. 22, 2016, Erika Gudmundson, with Chelsea Clinton's office, discusses ways that the campaign could help Chelsea Clinton draw distinctions between her mother and Bernie Sanders as the campaign grew more competitive.
"The tone has changed — would be great to highlight for her where contrasts should be made," Gudmundson wrote.

Sources: Clinton emails would have been 'whitelisted' for Obama BlackBerry

President Obama’s high-security BlackBerry used a special process known as “whitelisting” that only allowed it to take calls and messages from pre-approved contacts, two former senior intelligence officials with knowledge of the set-up told Fox News – pointing to the detail as further proof the White House knew Hillary Clinton’s private account was used for government business.
As the administration now acknowledges, Obama and Clinton emailed each other while she was helming the State Department. If received on his BlackBerry, the “whitelisting” safeguard means Clinton and other contacts would have had to be approved as secure for data transmission – covering everything from emails to texts to phone calls. The Obama BlackBerry would have also been configured to accept the communications.
“Think of whitelisting like a bouncer in the VIP line at the party. If you are on the list you get in, if you are not, you get bounced to the pavement,” said Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer (CTO) for the DIA, and now a partner with strategic consulting and engineering firm Cognitio.
“Whitelisting happens by design. The IT professionals who whitelist devices at places like the White House only add the email addresses authorized by management. To do otherwise would be to violate policy in ways that could introduce threats to the system,” he added.
A second former intelligence official, who asked to speak on background, described the same process for the president’s BlackBerry, adding the timing is important.  If clintonemail.com were “whitelisted” before March 2015, it would further undercut administration statements.
President Obama initially claimed in March 2015, when the details of Clinton’s secret server were first made public by the New York Times, that he only learned about the system from news reports, along with everyone else. Press Secretary Josh Earnest later walked that back, but maintained at the time that while Obama knew about Clinton’s email address, he was not aware of how the address and server had been set up.

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While there is a difference between a private server and email address, if the president's BlackBerry were configured to accept the Clinton address, it would have been clear to those handling the request that clintonemail.com was not a government account.
Both Gourley, and the second former intelligence official said typically these request comes from the White House Chief of Staff or a deputy, and are directed to the Secret Service and the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), which is a military unit assigned to the task.
Earnest dismissed questions Wednesday about their March 2015 statements.
"The president's explanation in March of 2015 and my explanation of what the president knew in March of 2015 hasn't changed, and the truth is this is just critics of Secretary Clinton and President Obama recycling a conspiracy theory that has already been debunked," Earnest said.
Emails hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta’s account and posted by anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks have provided additional details about the problems Obama’s initial statements caused in March 2015.
One of Clinton's top aides urged colleagues to "clean this up" after Obama claimed he only learned of Clinton's private email system from news reports. According to one March 7, 2015 email, Cheryl Mills challenged the president’s statement to CBS News.
"We need to clean this up - he has emails from her - they do not say state.gov," Mills wrote to Podesta just before midnight.
In emails released by the State Department earlier this year, Mills also asked Lewis Lukens, who was the executive director of the State Department’s executive secretariat, about getting one of the highly secure BlackBerrys for then-Secretary Clinton.
“so I have now read up more on POTUS bb which appears not really to be a bb but a different device)  is there any solution to her being able to use encrypted bb like the nsa approved one he has in the vault, and if so, how can we get her one,” she wrote. The request was never granted.
Less than a month after Clinton became secretary of state, and the personal email domain that she would use exclusively for government business was registered, Hillary Clinton's team aggressively pursued changes to existing State Department security protocols so she could use her BlackBerry in secure facilities for classified information, according to new documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.
"Anyone who has any appreciation at all of security, you don't ask a question like that," cybersecurity analyst Morgan Wright told Fox News. "It is contempt for the system, contempt for the rules that are designed to protect the exact kind of information that was exposed through this email set up."
Current and former intelligence officials grimaced when asked by Fox News about the use of wireless communications devices, such as a BlackBerry, in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) -- emphasizing its use would defeat the purpose of the secure facility, and it is standard practice to leave all electronics outside.  
A former State Department employee familiar with the Clinton request emphasized security personnel at the time thought the BlackBerry was only for unclassified material, adding their concerns would have been magnified if they had known Clinton's email account also held classified material.
"When you allow devices like this into a SCIF, you can allow the bad guys to listen in," Wright added.
FBI records show that President Obama used at least one pseudonym to exchange emails with then Secretary of State Clinton. The State Department withheld eight email chains that totaled 18 messages between the president and Clinton which remain confidential under the Presidential communications privilege.
Asked if the President’s BlackBerry was configured to accept the clintonemail.com address, a spokesperson for the Secret Service referred questions to the White House Communications Agency and the White House Military Office.  Fox News is attempting to follow up with both.  

Hillary is a joke Cartoons

Gregg Jarrett: The perpetual cloud of dirt and scandal that hovers over Hillary Clinton

“Pig-Pen” and his perpetual cloud of dirt.
It follows him wherever he goes and engulfs whatever he does.  The beleaguered character in the comic strip “Peanuts” cannot seem to rid himself of the dirt, despite his best efforts. At times, he seems oblivious to the cloud. Or in denial.
Remind you of Hillary Clinton?  Metaphorically, that is.
The dirt cloud of scandal has followed Clinton incessantly for years. Not just a single, isolated scandal… but several. Travelgate, Whitewater, cattle futures, Benghazi, private email server, Clinton Foundation, Wall Street speeches, you name it. 
It’s one ignominious incident after another.  And all of them are of her own making.
Clinton tends to stretch the bounds of propriety, dangling her foot over the legal lines.  And her actions beckon political calamity. Thus, the interminable cloud.    

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But why? Doesn’t she ever tire of the swirling dust and dirt? Her critics claim she feels entitled or driven by greed.
You’ve heard the other claim: that laws are a mere nuisance which don’t apply to her.
Most people shaken by scandal, dial it back. But the hits keep on coming for Clinton. 
She’s been likened to a runaway train that can’t (or won’t) activate its brakes.  Whatever her reasons, the non-stop drama of controversies have taken a toll:  67 percent say Clinton is lying about how she handled her emails, and two-thirds believe she is downright dishonest.
Her latest scandal kicks up dirt on the FBI for its bewildering (see also, “stupefying”) decision to recommend that Clinton not be criminally prosecuted under the federal Espionage Act for mishandling classified documents and jeopardizing national security as Secretary of State.  It seems that Clinton’s close friend shoveled truck-loads of money to the wife of the FBI deputy director overseeing the agency’s investigation of Clinton.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe was the money man.  Through political groups he controls, he saw to it that Dr. Jill McCabe received more than $ 675,000 for her state senate race, according to The Wall Street Journal.  It just so happens that her husband, Andrew McCabe, is second in command at the FBI and, as such, likely played a key role in allowing Clinton to escape criminal prosecution.  No one has yet proven that Clinton’s fingerprints are on the bags of money.  But her longtime friend and ally, Gov. McAuliffe, doesn’t deny he engineered the cash.
A little history lesson is in order.  McAuliffe was Bill Clinton’s chief fundraiser back in the day.
He’s a guy who had the magic touch with money. 
He could conjure up hundreds of millions of dollars without breaking a sweat. 
He personally secured the loan so Hillary and Bill could buy their 11 room Dutch colonial in stately Chappaqua, New York.
Since money is the mother’s milk of politics, he’s a nice friend to have when you get in a jam.
The biggest jam of Hillary Clinton’s life was (and is) the email scandal.  More than 2,000 classified documents were found on her personal server in the very home McAuliffe helped her buy – clearly an unauthorized place under the law. 
She was facing an indictment for serious crimes which would end her bid for the presidency.  Even worse, if convicted she might well be residing in a prison instead of the White House.
Did McAuliffe come to Clinton’s rescue yet again? Is that what the cash to Dr. McCabe was really for? To influence her husband’s investigation of Clinton? Dirtier things have happened in politics.
The FBI issued a statement denying corruption by insisting that McCabe did not begin his oversight of the agency’s investigation of Clinton until after his wife’s campaign ended. 
Really? 
We are supposed to accept that when he was head of the Washington field office (and later when he was promoted to the agency’s number 3 position) he had nothing whatsoever to do with the criminal probe? Hard to believe.    
And even if that is true, what difference does it make that his wife’s campaign had ended? She still got the money. She was still beholden or grateful to Clinton’s close friend and the Democratic party for their financial support of her, wasn’t she?
As her husband, Deputy Director McCabe can hardly be described as  an indifferent bystander.  Spouses tend to support one another. That is exactly why ethics advisers at the bureau told him to recuse himself from public corruption cases during his wife’s senate race. 
The conflict of interest is glaring. But that conflict does not suddenly and magically end at the conclusion of his wife’s campaign.
At the very least, the appearance of impropriety should have been enough for McCabe to disassociate himself from the criminal investigation of Clinton. Moreover, FBI Director James Comey should have demanded it. That they declined to do so adds even more suspicion to those who believe “the fix was in” not to prosecute her.  
At least 5 people received immunity in connection with the case.  Others took the Fifth. 
Clinton herself couldn’t manage to recall much of anything during her relatively brief interview with the FBI. Her name and date of birth seemed about all she could add to the discussion.  It’s a wonder she even remembered being  Secretary of State.
Days later, Director Comey held a news briefing in which he laid out a case of how Clinton was grossly negligent under the Espionage Act (although he called it something else –“extremely careless”), but announced he would recommend to the Department of Justice no prosecution.  FBI agents and lawyers were furious, according to reporting by Fox News.
Comey’s decision makes no legal sense… which only fuels the belief that something or someone else triggered the outcome. 
All along Clinton seemed confident she would not be criminally charged. Did she know something we didn’t know?
The strange case of the McCabes may hold the answer. Or maybe it is only one of several political machinations that were brought to bear.
The whole sordid episode is just another chapter in the cloud of dirt and scandal that hovers over Hillary Clinton. 
It never goes away.
Like “Pig-Pen”.  Without the comedy. 

Emails show Clinton camp scrambling over 2015 threat of Biden run

Newly revealed emails detail how Hillary Clinton's allies scrambled last year to head off a brewing presidential bid from Vice President Biden -- showing just how close he came to running and the role an ex-Biden aide played in the "demise" of that idea.
Biden was well-known to have considered challenging Clinton, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, to be the party’s standard-bearer before taking himself out of the running a year ago.
However, the hacked emails of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta that have been released by WikiLeaks pull back the curtain on how seriously Biden was planning for a campaign – and how seriously Clinton’s staffers took that threat.
BIDEN WISHES HE COULD TAKE TRUMP 'BEHIND THE GYM'
The first mention of a Biden run in the Podesta emails came on June 11, when former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary Eleni Kounalakis told Podesta that a wealthy Bay Area broker “swears Biden is running. He said he took him on Air Force Two, and he’s getting emails.”
Podesta then referenced the recent death of Biden's 46-year-old son Beau, who had cancer.

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“Some speculation that Biden will run because of Beau’s loss,” Podesta wrote back. “I think that would be a little crazy and sad but you never know. I like him and grieve for him and hope he doesn’t do it for his sake.”
The Biden speculation jumped into high gear for Team Clinton after Maureen Dowd wrote an Aug. 1 column for The New York Times in which she said Beau, before he died, had pushed his dad to run for president. The column angered many in the Podesta-Clinton orbit, though it didn’t immediately seem to change the calculus.
“I think he’ll hang back unless she explodes and that won’t happen just because your friends at the [New York Times] wish it so,” Podesta wrote to CNBC’s John Harwood the same day the Dowd column came out.
But by mid-month, President of the Center for American Progress Neera Tanden emailed Podesta with news that a hedge fund manager reported “that Biden (or his people – unclear to me who) are calling asking for support. Not doing a hard sell.” Podesta indicated he had heard the development, as well.
Just days later, on Aug. 23, Podesta advised New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio about how to answer potential Biden questions, adding a pro-Clinton spin: “Great guy, serious, grieve with him on the loss of his son, he has to make up his own mind whether to run, no big clamor out there for additional candidates.” Podesta on Aug. 24 told an inquiring Harwood that he now was “not sure” if Biden was leaning toward running.
Biden’s campaign appeared to be gearing up by the end of the month, when, on Aug. 28, a former White House staffer informed Podesta that Democratic consultants out West were being calling by Biden’s Chief of Staff, Steve Ricchetti, asking them to be regional coordinators or consultants for a campaign.
On Sept. 2, Podesta emailed Tanden: “Heard he is now telling union Presidents he is running.”
At that point, Clinton aides seemed to go from information-gathering to a more pro-active approach.
Podesta told Clinton in a Sept. 21 email that he had lunch with President Obama and discussed Biden. He didn’t reveal via email “the color of the conversation,” preferring to speak on the phone. But he did tell Clinton the news was “Nothing that can’t wait.”
Podesta next moved to shoring up those already likely to support Clinton. He spoke to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and told top Clinton aide Huma Abedin on Sept. 23 that Garcetti “won’t commit until Biden is definitive. Probable outcome is he stays neutral followed closely by he endorses Biden.”
Podesta went directly to Clinton regarding ex-UBS CEO Robert Wolf.
“Most importantly, Biden is courting him hard,” Podesta wrote. “He has told Biden he is with you, but Biden has pushed him to reconsider if he gets in or at least stay open to that possibility. Because Robert is known as an Obama confidante, he would probably be seen as a bellwether of Obama’s preference and there is no question that Biden would market it that way if he were to defect. He’s not just one more Obama fundraiser. I think he believes you would be the better President so I think he’s solid, but not rock solid.”
Wolf emailed Podesta 10 days later providing him with an agenda for a meeting the two were scheduled to have. Item 3 is “VP Biden update.”
On Oct. 12 Podesta forwarded an email from a Chicago “super-volunteer” with updates on the area to a group that included Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. Podesta noted Chicago is “probably a place Biden will try to play so we should pay some attention.”
It’s unclear what happened next, but, just three days later, the Biden threat appeared vanquished. Ron Klain, a former Biden chief of staff who is now an operative for the Clinton campaign, emailed Podesta with a cryptic note of thanks.
“It’s been a little hard for me to play such a role in the Biden demise – and I am definitely dead to them -- but I’m glad to be on Team HRC, and glad that she had a great debate last night,” Klain wrote.
Six days later, on Oct. 21, Biden, with Obama by his side, gave a news conference from the White House declaring he wouldn’t run.
Clinton, in a statement, said: “I am confident that history isn’t finished with Joe Biden.”

Numbers game: Trump battles media and polling establishment in insisting he can still win

Kurtz: Trump vs the 'phony polls'

Donald Trump, who loved to tout the polls when he was winning, is now accusing the media of pushing “phony polls.”
But even some of his own people aren’t backing him up.
Trump says he’s winning this election, even though most public polls show him losing nationally and in many of the key battleground states. The coverage is all about how big Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory will be and how she’s now turning her attention to helping Democratic congressional candidates. “Victory in Sight,” said a New York Times headline.
Here’s why it matters. Trump is right that if the country believes the race is essentially decided, some deflated Republican voters may stay home. (Of course, some Democrats may also stay home if an ultra-confident Clinton camp acts like this thing is in the bag.)
But for Trump’s allegations to be true, the surveys by New York Times/CBS, Wall Street Journal/NBC, Washington Post/ABC, Politico/Morning Consult, Fox News, CNN, Quinnipiac and others would have to be distorted.
There are three polls—L.A. Times, Rasmussen and IBD—that have given Trump a national lead of 1 to 3 points in recent days, or a virtual tie. So they would have to be right and the other surveys wrong.

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All this plays into Trump’s broader argument about a crooked system. “When the people who control the political power in our society can rig investigations like [Clinton’s] investigation was rigged, can rig polls -- you see these phony polls -- and rig the media, they can wield absolute power over your life, your economy and your country and benefit big time by it,” he said the other day in Florida.
But his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, has acknowledged her candidate is “behind” in the polls. Ed Rollins, head of a Trump Super PAC and a Fox News contributor, said yesterday that “if the election were today, he’d lose and lose big time…They know it.”
The Electoral College projections are more damaging for Trump. Fox’s map gives Clinton 307 electoral votes, more than the 270 she needs to win.
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball gives Clinton 352 votes.
Nate Silver’s 538 gives Clinton 338.9 votes (I love the specificity).
And each new survey generates a new round of stories. Just yesterday, the New York Times said its poll had Trump trailing by 7 in North Carolina, without which it’s extremely difficult for him to win the White House. Another headline said, “Could Clinton Win Texas? Democrats Say Maybe.” (It’s still highly unlikely.)
“Florida Spirals Away from Trump,” says a Politico story, with Clinton leading there in 10 of the last 11 public polls.
Now some caveats are in order. Individual polls can be off. Democrats can be oversampled. Fewer people have land lines or want to spend time talking to pollsters. Trailing candidates can surge.
And outside events can intervene. The news that ObamaCare premiums will rise an average of 25 percent, and that consumers are being left with fewer insurance options, gives a strong argument to Trump and other critics of the federal program.
Are such issues enough to change the dynamic of what is now a two-week campaign, with the conventions and debates behind us? It’s an uphill climb for Trump.
And by the way, many trailing candidates in both parties, in an effort to fire up their base, question the polls or declare that the only poll that counts is on Election Day (a little less true in this age of early voting).
The difference is that Trump is saying the majority of polls aren’t just wrong but deliberately off base.
And he has a receptive audience. In a Reuters survey, almost 70 percent of Republicans said a Hillary win would be the result of rigged voting or voter fraud.  In an ABC poll, 84 percent of Trump supporters say the same. (That is, if these polls can be believed.)
Whether Trump is trying to shake up the race or give himself a post-defeat rationale, he’s made the media’s polling—usually taken for granted as a rough barometer of public sentiment—a major issue in the home stretch.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

Trump cuts off fundraising events for Republican Party

Trump frustrated by lack of support from GOP establishment?

Donald Trump's campaign has ended fundraising events meant to support the Republican Party's get-out-the-vote efforts in next month's elections.
Aides to the Republican nominee told Fox News that Trump Victory, the joint fundraising committee for the GOP and the campaign, held its most recent fundraiser on Oct. 19 and no more such events were scheduled.
The move, which was first reported by The Washington Post, cuts off a key money source for Republicans hoping to keep hold of both houses of Congress.
"We’ve kind of wound down," Trump national finance chairman Steven Mnuchin told the Post. "But the online fundraising continues to be strong."
By contrast, the Post reported that Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign has scheduled 41 fundraising events between now and Nov. 4. The former secretary of state was scheduled to make her last personal fundraising appearance Tuesday in Miami.
Mnuchin told the paper that the real estate mogul was focusing on making his final pitch to the voters at a campaign events rather than raising money in the final two weeks of the race.

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"We have minimized his fundraising schedule over the last month to emphasize his focus on political [events]," Mnuchin said of the candidate. "Unlike Hillary, who has been fundraising and not out and about, he has constantly been out and about."
According to the Post, the Republican National Committee had collected $40 million through Trump Victory as of Sept. 30.
RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the organization "[continues] to fundraise for the entire GOP ticket."
Meanwhile, Politico reported Tuesday that the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC with ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was putting $25 million into seven Senate races deemed crucial in determining the balance of power on Capitol hill.

Hillary like Nixon Cartoons

Republicans pounce on Obamacare after White House announcement

The unravelling of Obamacare

Republicans blasted the White House on Monday after President Barack Obama’s administration announced that premiums for his signature health care law will rise sharply next year and many consumers would be down to just one insurer.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, while campaigning in Tampa, Fla., emphatically declared Obamacare “over.”
Trump added that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, "wants to double down and make it more expensive and it's not gonna work. ... Our country can't afford it, you can't afford it." He promised his own plan would deliver "great health care at a fraction of the cost."
Trump’s running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence echoed his partner’s words, saying on Twitter “Higher premiums, less competition & fewer choices lie ahead for Obamacare. Hillary Clinton wants more of the same.”
Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.
Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles.
"Consumers will be faced this year with not only big premium increases but also with a declining number of insurers participating, and that will lead to a tumultuous open enrollment period," said Larry Levitt, who tracks the health care law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., accused Democrats of only wanting to double-down on Obamacare instead of fix it and vowed that Republicans would “replace it with real, patient-centered solutions that fit your needs and your budget.”
“The president recently compared Obamacare to a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, and he's right: this disastrous law is blowing up. But at least you can return the phone,” Ryan added.
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., urged the White House to admit that the health care law wasn’t working.
"We’ve reached this point because Obamacare is built on the lie that Washington’s bureaucrats are smart enough to plan health care for millions of Americans. At every turn—whether it’s CO-OPs collapsing, premiums skyrocketing, or big insurers bailing—the American people have paid the price. More spin won’t solve this—it’s time for the White House to admit that this law isn’t working."
HHS essentially confirmed state-by-state reports that have been coming in for months. Window shopping for plans and premiums is already available through HealthCare.gov.
Administration officials are stressing that subsidies provided under the law, which are designed to rise alongside premiums, will insulate most customers from sticker shock. They add that consumers who are willing to switch to cheaper plans will still be able to find bargains.

More on this...

• Average Obamacare premiums to rise 22 percent

• Obama administration confirms double-digit premium hikes

• Pence dings Obama on comparing Obamacare to Samsung

"Headline rates are generally rising faster than in previous years," acknowledged HHS spokesman Kevin Griffis. But he added that for most consumers, "headline rates are not what they pay."
The vast majority of the more than 10 million customers who purchase through HealthCare.gov and its state-run counterparts do receive generous financial assistance. "Enrollment is concentrated among very low-income individuals who receive significant government subsidies to reduce premiums and cost-sharing," said Caroline Pearson of the consulting firm Avalere Health
But an estimated 5 million to 7 million people are either not eligible for the income-based assistance, or they buy individual policies outside of the health law's markets, where the subsidies are not available. The administration is urging the latter group to check out HealthCare.gov. The spike in premiums generally does not affect the employer-provided plans that cover most workers and their families.
Overall, it's shaping up to be the most difficult sign-up season since HealthCare.gov launched in 2013 and the computer system froze up.
Enrollment has been lower than initially projected, and insurers say patients turned out to be sicker than expected. Moreover, a complex internal system to help stabilize premiums has not worked as hoped for.