Despite Trump’s Claims, Evidence From FBI’s Clinton Foundation Probe ‘Not Impressive’

On the campaign trail today, Donald Trump touted allegations about the Clinton Foundation that reliable sources say are false and ill-informed.

“It was reported last night that the FBI is conducting a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s pay-for-play corruption,” the Republican presidential nominee said today in Jacksonville, Florida, during his first rally of the day. “The investigation is described as a high priority. It’s far-reaching and has been going on for more than one year. It was reported that an avalanche of information is coming in. The FBI agents say their investigation is likely to yield an indictment.”

ABC News sources, however, indicated those statements — and the Fox News reports they’re based on — are inaccurate and without merit.

The sources acknowledged that the FBI began looking into the Clinton Foundation after the controversial book “Clinton Cash” was published last year. In particular, agents were trying to determine whether donations to the foundation may have been traded for access to Clinton while she was secretary of state.

In February, FBI agents presented their findings to senior FBI officials and prosecutors in the Justice Department’s public integrity section, sources said. But the prosecutors and senior FBI officials agreed that there was no clear evidence of wrongdoing and that a criminal case tied to the Clinton Foundation could not be made, according to the sources.

“It was not impressive,” one source said of the February presentation. “It was not something that [prosecutors] felt they could authorize additional steps for. They were not impressed with the presentation or the evidence — if you could even call it evidence to that point.”

Investigators and higher-ups have continued to discuss the matter, but there has been no change in posture, sources said. Authorities still believe there is no evidence of wrongdoing, and they do not believe there is a sufficient reason to pursue charges, according to the sources.

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times first reported many of the details about how the Clinton Foundation–related probe developed.

According to the Clinton Foundation, it provides healthful meals to children in nearly 35,000 schools across the United States; trains more than 150,000 farmers in Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania; and helps more than 11.5 million people around the world gain access to more affordable HIV/AIDS medications.

(h/t ABC News)

Trump Taunts NBC Reporter From Podium at Florida Rally

Donald Trump went on a lengthy tirade against the media during a Wednesday rally, capping it off with him calling out an NBC reporter by name at the Miami event.

The Republican nominee helped spark loud “CNN sucks” chants at the rally before targeting NBC’s Katy Tur. She has been a favorite punching bag of his when criticizing the mainstream media, as he has called her called her out in press conferences and events.

“We have massive crowds,” Trump said. “There’s something happening. They’re not reporting it.”

“You’re not reporting it, Katy,” he continued, pointing at Tur. “There’s something happening, Katy. There’s something happening, Katy.”

Members of the media at the event said on Twitter that many in the audience turned and targeted Tur with an onslaught of boos:

Reality

The last time Mr. Trump assailed her by name, Katy Tur had to be escorted out of the rally and to her car by the Secret Service because the fervor he created became too dangerous for her.

In the same press conference where Trump asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, he blasted Katy Tur after she asked a series of questions, telling her to “be quiet.”

And finally, after four months of Trump bragging at rallies of his $1 million dollar donation to veteran charities, journalists uncovered the fact that Trump never donated any money and was lying the entire time. Donald Trump held a press conference to personally attack members of the media including Tur, calling her a “third-rate journalist.”

Media

Bloomberg Video

Trump Wants ‘Special Session’ to Repeal Obamacare, but Congress Is in Session

Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed to immediately repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s signature health care law if he’s elected president next week.

“When we win on Nov. 8 and elect a Republican Congress, we will be able to immediately repeal and replace Obamacare. We have to do it,” Trump said Tuesday afternoon in an address on the Affordable Care Act in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

“I will ask Congress to convene a special session so we can repeal and replace,” he continued. “And it will be such an honor for me, for you and for everybody in this country because Obamacare has to be replaced. And we will do it, and we will do it very, very quickly. It is a catastrophe.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

But should Trump win, Congress would already be in session by the time he took the oath of office; lawmakers return to work on Jan. 3, while the presidential inauguration is Jan. 20. Those dates were enshrined into the Constitution with the 20th Amendment.

Latest Unpaid Trump Vendor Is His Own Pollster, Filing Shows

Donald Trump has been stiffing contractors his entire career. But he’s not even waiting until the election is over to stiff those who are working for his campaign.

Trump’s latest campaign financial disclosures show that it is disputing close to $767,000 that its pollster, Tony Fabrizio, says his is owed for work done on the campaign. The conflict is just the latest sign of internal turmoil that has long rocked Trump’s organization, and could be the prelude to yet another Trump lawsuit.

“This is one of the largest disputed campaign debts I have seen, though perhaps the debt’s size should be of little surprise given the fact that Mr. Trump has managed to incrementally grow his inherited fortune by stiffing contractors and taxpayers all along the way,” said Republican campaign finance attorney Matthew Sanderson.

Trump has a long history of stiffing those who work for him. His self-professed philosophy has often been to withhold payment if he isn’t entirely satisfied with the work.
“Given [Trump’s] history of not paying vendors, and his statement that if they haven’t done adequate work he’s not going to pay them, it’s not surprising to see in his campaign that he would have a contested debt,” said Lawrence Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center. “From his previous statements, he seems to think that’s a very valid way to do business, if he’s not happy with a vendor: to not pay them.”

A USA Today analysis found that Trump has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past thirty years, and that a large number of these lawsuits relate to people who believe Trump and his companies have failed to pay up.

In the past decade, his companies have been cited 24 times for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Those same companies have been subject to more than 200 liens filed by contractors and employees who said they were stiffed for their work.

“Let’s say that they do a job that’s not good, or a job that they didn’t finish, or a job that was way late. I’ll deduct from their contract, absolutely,” Trump told the newspaper. “That’s what the country should be doing.”

Recent reports have suggested tension between Fabrizio and now-campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, as well as a feeling within the Trump organization that some, such as Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, do not believe Fabrizio’s focus groups are necessary.

Neither the Trump campaign nor Fabrizio responded to a request for comment.

Whatever the case, Trump has found himself in a position with leverage to stiff Fabrizio’s polling firm and other campaign contractors.

“Trump can’t close down his campaign until the debt is resolved, but there’s no deadline for that, so he can hypothetically continue to file regular FEC reports ad nauseam until Fabrizio agrees to accept less,” explained Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“Mr. Trump may be pursuing the Newt Gingrich style of campaigning, which is a strategy of stringing along the various small businesses working for your election only to leave them holding the bag at the end of the day,” quipped Sanderson, the Republican pollster.

The timing of this contested debt is unusual—most contractors to political campaigns usually wait until after the elections to settle up, and the fact that it has been listed in public records before Election Day suggests an even more troubled road ahead.

“What’s unusual about this is that it’s happening before the election. Normally these kinds of things are dealt with after the election,” Noble said. “The fact that they’re listing it as a contested debt may mean they’re getting pressure from the vendor to pay up, and the vendor’s next step may be to sue the campaign if they don’t reach a settlement.”

(h/t The Daily Beast)

Successful Fight for Mosul Shows Trump’s Failed Military Claims

Pentagon officials said Monday that the campaign to reclaim Mosul was proceeding as planned and that so far anti-ISIS forces in Iraq are succeeding in their fight against the terror group.

The military’s upbeat assessment puts Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in an awkward position. His repeated criticism of the handling of the operation means its success could cast shadows on his argument to be the next commander in chief, while his decision to take on the Pentagon once again highlights the sacred cows he has been willing to slay during his unconventional campaign.

For weeks, Trump has lambasted the coalition effort to re-capture the city of Mosul from ISIS, calling the undertaking a “total disaster” and saying the US and its allies were “bogged-down” there even as defense officials say they are encouraged by the progress being made.

“The campaign is on track and moving forward according to plan,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook told reporters Monday.

“There’s no question that counter-ISIL forces continue to have the momentum in this fight,” he added, using the government’s preferred acronym for the terror organization, also known as Daesh.

Yet Trump repeated his critique of the operation on Monday.

“Did we give Mosul enough advanced notice?” he asked rhetorically during a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Whatever happened to the element of surprise?”

Trump’s view contrasts with the assessment of military officials, who have laid out the reasons why they are discussing some — though not all — elements of the Mosul operation.

And, so far, they can point for back-up to developments on the ground to take back Iraq’s second-largest city and key holdout for ISIS.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter “continues to be encouraged by what he is seeing,” Cook said, describing the campaign as proceeding on schedule.

Cook’s view was also echoed by the US special presidential envoy for the counter-ISIS coalition,Amb. Brett McGurk, while speaking Friday in Rome.

While McGurk acknowledged that the campaign for Mosul “will be a long-term effort,” he said that “every single objective has been met and we continue to move forward.”

On the same day, the military spokesman for the anti-ISIS coalition, US Air Force Col. John Dorrian, went even further.

“They were able to get to those places faster than they anticipated that they would,” he said of local forces. “So, the Iraqis continue to be successful in the engagements against Daesh.”

Because Trump has made a concentrated effort to slam the conduct of the Mosul operation, its success could undermine his claim of superior judgment as commander in chief in the final days before the November 8 election.

Non-incumbent candidates for political office always have to walk a fine line while military operations are ongoing. Typically, this involves commending the troops on fighting on the ground while simultaneously blasting the politicians in charge.

But Trump has shown a readiness to deviate from this political playbook, as he has repeatedly done for others throughout the 2016 campaign.

In contrast, then-Sen. Barack Obama made sure to praise the military even as he was highly critical of the 2007 “surge” in Iraq during the run-up to his own campaign for the presidency.

Obama called George W. Bush’s decision to deploy thousands of more troops as part of a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at reducing violence a “course that will not succeed” during an interview that year with PBS’s Charlie Rose.

Despite slamming the Bush administration, Obama still offered praise for the US troops on the ground, saying they had “performed brilliantly” and calling Gen. David Petraeus, the surge’s architect, an able and competent leader.

Trump’s recent statements on Mosul don’t include these qualifiers of praising the US military officers in charge or the US troops on the ground, though Trump has offered general praise for US troops in other situations.

“Donald Trump is testing lots of what we thought we knew about American politics, including that no one gets elected running against the troops,” said Kori Schake, a former senior Bush official, who has endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016.
Schake, who was one of the 50 Republican national security officials that penned an open-letter slamming Trump earlier this year, argued that the Republican nominee’s comments on Mosul were undercutting morale.

“The particular way he’s done it is bad for morale of American forces as well as the allies bearing the brunt of the fight,” she told CNN.

Clinton has been quick to knock Trump for his criticism of the Mosul campaign.

Following his tweet labelling the assault “a disaster,” Clinton told a rally in New Hampshire last week, “He’s basically declaring defeat before the battle has even started. He’s proving to the world what it means to have an unqualified commander-in-chief. It’s not only wrong, it’s dangerous.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Chief among Trump’s criticisms has been the absence of secrecy from the fight, though most analysts believe that given its size and scope, total secrecy and surprise in an operation like Mosul would be impossible.

Pentagon officials have also noted that because the Iraqis were leading the operation, the timeline and discussion of the assault was determined by the government in Baghdad.
Military officials also pointed out that many aspects of the final attack were indeed kept under wraps.

The former dean of the Army War College, retired Army Col. Jeff McCausland, told The New York Times that the candidate’s assessment was off the mark.
“What this shows is Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy,” he said.

Trump fired back Wednesday when asked about McCausland’s remarks on ABC.
“You can tell your military expert that I’ll sit down and I’ll teach him a couple of things,” he said.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Donald Trump once actually boasted that he knew more than the generals, and later said he could “teach them a couple of things about Mosul.”  As the long fight for Mosul shows early signs of a major success, it turns out his boast was full of hot air, and his elementary understanding of complex military tactics are not better than the generals who dedicated their lives to serving our country.

Trump Says Clinton Would Triple the U.S. Population in One Week With New Immigrants

Donald Trump made another incendiary claim at multiple campaign stops on Sunday — he declared that if his opponent Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, that she could let in more than 600 million new immigrants, claiming that she is in favor of “open borders.”

The current population in the United States is about 325 million.

“But she wants open borders,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Greeley, Colorado. “You saw that during the debate. WikiLeaks got her again. She never talked about open borders. She wants open borders. We could have 600 million people pour into our country. Think of it. Once you have open borders like that, you don’t have a country anymore.”

At his third and final stop in Albuquerque, Trump repeated the claim, although he increased the number by 50 million.

“She wants to let people just pour in,” Trump said. “You could have 650 million people pour in and we do nothing about it. Think of it. That’s what could happen. You triple the size of our country in one week.”

There is no evidence to support Trump’s claims. Clinton has said that in her first 100 days, she would present legislation for comprehensive immigration reform to Congress that would include a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the United States, currently estimated to be more than 10 million.

Trump himself has not addressed what he would do with undocumented immigrants already in the country, saying repeatedly that he would address the issue after the border is secure and all criminal undocumented immigrants were deported. Under Trump’s plan, the vast majority would be deported, since his deportation plan prioritizes immigrants accused of crimes and those that overstay their visas.

(CBS News)

Reality

When Clinton was talking about “open borders” she appears to be talking about trade and energy (though it’s a little hard to see the full context, because the excerpt is only a paragraph long): “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.”

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQrrcmWCqr0

Donald Trump Touts Waterboarding, Stokes Immigration Fears in Border State

Donald Trump on Sunday warned his supporters in this border state that Hillary Clinton “wants to let people just pour in,” saying without evidence that hundreds of millions of people could enter the US under a Clinton presidency.

And speaking just nine days before Election Day, the Republican nominee also bemoaned criticism of waterboarding and appeared to once again call for bringing back the since-banned technique for use in the fight against ISIS.

“These savages are chopping off heads, drowning people. This is medieval times and then we can’t do waterboarding? ‘It’s far too tough,'” Trump said, mocking critics of the technique used by the CIA in interrogations of terror suspects under President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 administration.

Trump has previously called for reinstating waterboarding and “much worse” methods of torture if he becomes president.

“We have to be tough and we have to be smart. And we have to be in some cases pretty vicious I have to tell you,” he added.

The Republican nominee also issued a dire — and baseless — warning to Americans that a Clinton administration could usher a flood of hundreds of millions of people crossing into the US.

“You could have 650 million people pour in and we’d do nothing about it. Think of it. That’s what could happen. You triple the size of our country in one week. Once you lose control of your borders you just have no country folks, you have no country,” Trump said, speaking in this Democrat-leaning border state.

Trump also stoked fears about undocumented immigrant crime, warning that continued illegal immigration would result “in the loss of American lives,” even though undocumented immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than legal US residents.

Trump’s stop here came a day before Trump stumps in Michigan, also a state likely to swing in Clinton’s favor, as the Republican nominee and his campaign are hoping to make late gains to help secure the 270 electoral votes Trump needs to secure the presidency.

Trump’s stops in these blue-leaning states also helps bolster the campaign’s message that Trump’s candidacy is on the rise and that the campaign is going on the offensive the final slog to Election Day.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Trump’s proposed reliance on tactics used by Bond villains as a practical response to the terrorist acts of the Islamic State should be leaving people feeling aghast and concerned.

Unlike fictional TV shows, like 24 where Jack Bauer runs around and tortures his way to the bad guy or movies like Zero Dark Thirty who include torture scenes that never happened which lead to the capture of Osama Bin Laden, reality is quite different.

Waterboarding, and other forms of torture, is considered a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions and is not reliable for obtaining truthful, useful intelligence.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that “the CIA’s use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.” There was no proof, according to the 6,700 page report, that information obtained through waterboarding prevented any attacks or saved any lives, or that information obtained from the detainees was not or could not have been obtained through conventional interrogation methods.”

In-fact, we’ve know for centuries that torture is not effective. Here is Napoleon’s own words on the subject:

“It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know.”

Instead, rapport-building techniques are 14 times more effective in extracting information than torture and has the upside of not being unethical.

Media

It’s All But Official: Donald Trump Won’t Release His Tax Returns

The writing has been on the wall for months now, but Sunday seemed to make it official: Donald Trump will become the first presidential nominee since Gerald Ford to not release his tax returns during the campaign.

Both Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, and his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, essentially confirmed during their respective interviews that no disclosure would be forthcoming.

“I think as soon as the audit is completed [he will make them public],” Pence said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” When host Chuck Todd mentioned that the most recent returns weren’t under audit, Pence didn’t blink.

“He will release all his tax returns when the final audit is completed,” Pence said.

Conway stuck to a similar script when discussing the tax returns during an interview with ABC’s “This Week.”

“Not until our accountants and our lawyers say that we should,” she said, when asked if they would be released before the election. “We’re under audit. But he has disclosed a 104-page financial disclosure form that is publicly available. Anybody can pull it up and I say that they should.”

Trump has been under constant pressure to make his tax returns public, both because not doing so would be a sharp break from prior practice and because there are a number of questions surrounding his finances and charitable giving. The latest questions were raised in a Washington Post article Saturday, which reported that, despite routine public boasting about his generosity, there was almost no evidence that Trump has given to charity since 2009.

Trump and his campaign have cited a rolling audit of his finances as the reason why he can’t disclose his tax returns. Though lawyers advise against putting out returns during an audit, they have also stressed that there is no legal prohibition from doing so.

Explanations aside, the decision to not make his returns public makes Trump especially guarded in the modern political era. Every major-party presidential nominee since Nixon has put out this information, save Ford, who released a summary when he ran in 1976. Hillary Clinton and her husband have put out returns every year since 1977. Even Pence put out 10 years of tax returns this cycle.

Trump is different. And while his campaign has argued that Clinton is secretive in other areas (they’ve demanded that she turn over all of her emails from her time as secretary of state, for example), it’s also true that Trump has now set a precedent of nondisclosure that future candidates can (and will) follow.

(h/t Huffington Post)

Reality

Trump had a contradictory position 4 years ago when he demanded Mitt Romney to release his tax returns.

As for the “audit” excuse, the fact remains that this rationale has never made any sense: an IRS audit doesn’t preclude someone from sharing their returns.

Since Watergate, every presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, has released his or her tax returns. It’s not required by law, but there’s a tradition of disclosure that Americans have come to count on during the presidential vetting process: candidates for the nation’s highest office are expected to release information related to their personal health and their tax filings.

Indeed even Richard Nixon, during his presidency, released his tax materials in the midst of an IRS audit. Trump could, if he wanted to, release these returns whenever he feels like it. For reasons he won’t explain, the GOP candidate just doesn’t want to.

If you remember the line once spoken by President Richard Nixon, “I am not a crook!” then you may not know it came in response to revelations that he had illicitly profited from his years in public service.

It’s as if the campaign has decided to wave a big, unmistakable sign that reads, “We have something to hide.”

Trump Wrongly Tweets Social Media is Burying FBI Letter

Sunday Morning Donald Trump sent out a tweet implying that major social media sites, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, are trying to suppress information regarding a letter FBI Directory James Comey sent to congress about emails found on an device belonging to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her soon-to-be ex husband Anthony Weiner.

Reality

Donald Trump received this information in an article from the conspiracy theory website Zero Hedge which is known to produce disingenuous content.

For their only evidence they showed screen grabs of we assume their own social media feeds.

However all social media sites have their own independent algorithms, and for this claim to be true Trump and his unreliable source would need to provide evidence of a level of collusion between competing social media companies.

There are a few things to consider when looking at trending topics. First, they are all algorithm-based, meaning some computer code was written to determine what topics are most important, and second, part of that algorithm factors in the things that you like.

But a simple  review of each social media site shows, in most cases, the James Comey letter is indeed in the top trending stories.

Trump has a social media team who should be able to debunk this for him.

Google

Google Trend searches for “Clinton FBI” and “FBI investigation Clinton” both showed a 100% interest value at the time of Trump’s tweet.

And news about James Comey’s letter was the top story to a logged out user.

trump-tweet-clinton-fbi-google

Facebook

Top story on Facebook.

trump-tweet-clinton-fbi-facebook

Twitter

Top of the Twitter news for a logged out user.

trump-tweet-clinton-fbi-twitter

 

 

 

Trump Questions Veracity of Ballot Counting in Colorado

Donald J. Trump has found a new reason to question the legitimacy of the 2016 election — ballots — and he wasted little time here on Saturday before taking issue with the voting system in this largely vote-by-mail state.

“I have real problems with ballots being sent,” Mr. Trump said, pantomiming a ballot collector sifting envelops and tossing some over his shoulder while counting others.

“If you don’t have a ballot, they give you another one and they void your one at home,” he told the crowd at an afternoon rally. “And then, of course, the other side would send that one in too, but, you know, we don’t do that stuff. We don’t do that stuff.”

Mr. Trump’s repetitive accusations of a “rigged” election and a slanted electoral system are grounded in the belief that fraudulent behavior would only help his opponent.

Yet it was a Trump supporter in Des Moines who was charged on Thursday with a Class D felony in Iowa, having sent in two absentee ballots, both supporting Mr. Trump.

The voter, Terri Rote, told Iowa Public Radio that she had not planned to send in two ballots, but made a “spur of the moment” decision.

“The polls are rigged,” she added, repeating a line often said by Mr. Trump.

The Polk County attorney, John P. Sarcone, told Iowa Public Radio that it was one of the very few instances of voter fraud that he had come across in his more than three decades of service. And nationally, voter fraud is rare, despite Mr. Trump’s insistence.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump seemed undeterred in his wariness of the security of ballots, despite the same process having been in place when Cory Gardner, a Republican, defeated the incumbent Democratic senator, Mark Udall, in 2014. Mr. Trump closed his rally by encouraging his supporters to “follow their ballots” to make sure they are registered and counted.

“You can follow your ballot, make sure that ballot is registered, make sure that ballot is counted,” he said, later adding, “So follow your ballot, and if you do I, really think were gonna win Colorado and maybe win it big.”

The most recent polling out of Colorado, a Quinnipiac poll from two weeks ago, found Mrs. Clinton had a lead of eight points in the state.

(h/t New York Times)

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