Trouble for Hillary Clinton?

Hillary Clinton continues to face a slew of scandals- how badly will this hurt her? 

The Clintons’ Private Email Server

During the course of the Benghazi investigation, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt learned Clinton had used a personal email account while secretary of state. It turned out she had also been using a private server, located at a house in New York. The result was that Clinton and her staff decided which emails to turn over to the State Department as public records and which to withhold; they say they then destroyed the ones they had designated as personal.

This occurred from 2009-2013, during Clinton’s term as secretary.

Donna Brazile said the 2016 primary was rigged

On Tuesday morning, "CBS This Morning" anchor Norah O'Donnell asked former Democratic National Committee interim chair Donna Brazile whether the 2016 primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was a fair fight.

"I believe it was," responded Brazile.

The problem for her, however, is that the book is out. And the words that she wrote in it can't be taken back. Already, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- in the wake of the allegations made by Brazile -- has said she believes the 2016 primary was "rigged." The forces aligned with Sanders during the primary have seized on Brazile's assertions as proof positive that their suspicions about the primary system being rigged in Clinton's favor were right all along.

It seems likely that the idea of a rigged primary -- and what it means about the party's past, present and future -- will be at the center of how Democrats choose their nominee in 2020.

In other words, the genie is out of the bottle. And there's no putting him back in -- not even by Brazile, who let him out in the first place.

Fusion GPS

The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya occurred during a critical period. At that time, Fox News had learned that bank records showing Fusion GPS was paid by a law firm for work on behalf of a Kremlin-linked oligarch while paying a former British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Trump through his Russian contacts.

The DNC and Clinton campaign hired Fusion in April 2016 through lawyer Marc Elias, who was general counsel for the Clinton campaign. Fusion, in turn, paid Steele $168,000 for the dossier, memos from which were shared with the FBI in the summer of 2016. 

Fusion officials said last week Steele's money came from $1.02 million it received in fees and expenses from Elias' law firm Perkins Coie. Prior to contracting with the DNC, Fusion had been conducting research into Trump and other Republican candidates on behalf of the conservative website The Washington Free Beacon. 

2016 Democratic National Committee email leak

What? The 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak is a collection of Democratic National Committee emails leaked to and subsequently published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016. This collection included 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the DNC. The leak includes emails from seven key DNC staff members, and date from January 2015 to May 2016. The leak’s contents, which suggested the party's leadership had worked to sabotage Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, prompted the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz before the Democratic National Convention. After the convention, DNC CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda also resigned in the wake of the controversy.

• May 2017: Comey says Classified Clinton emails were forwarded to Anthony Weiner
• November 2017: Donna Brazile says she has “proof” Clinton rigged the primary against Sanders
• October 2017: It is revealed that the Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier

Early Comey memo accused Clinton of gross negligence on emails

May 2, 2016: Comey drafts memo accusing Clinton of ‘gross negligence”

On or around June 10, 2016: Comey changes memo to read “extremely careless” instead of gross negligence

July 5, 2016: Comey announces there will be no charges against Hillary Clinton.

Memos show that at least three top FBI officials were involved in helping Comey fashion and edit the statement, including Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, General Counsel James Baker and chief of staff Jim Rybicki.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday evening sent a letter to current FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding the FBI identify who made the changes and why.

Guest: Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch

Bill asks guest, Tom Fitton, if his organization has uncovered any proof that Hillary Clinton is thoroughly corrupt. Fitton believes that Clinton was in it for the power and money and she didn’t believe that the rules applied to her, they were for the ‘little people’. She had this thirst for power and was willing to do anything to make sure that she had the resources to get it. 

When Bill asked Fitton about whether he thought that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians he said that he doesn’t see any evidence of collusion. Now, Trump may be in danger legally, but whether that danger is fair or not is another matter.

‘Thoughts and Prayers Are Not Enough’ Controversy

The gunman who opened fire in a church outside San Antonio, killing at least 26 people, escaped from a mental health facility in 2012 after he was caught sneaking guns onto an Air Force base and “attempting to carry out death threats” made against military superiors, according to a police report.

The report said officers with the El Paso police were dispatched to a bus terminal after the shooter escaped from a behavioral facility about seven miles away in New Mexico. Officers wrote they were told the shooter, who intended to take a bus out of the state, “was a danger to himself and others” at the time and noted that he “was also facing military criminal charges.”

While some find grievance in prayer, Democratic leaders and gun control advocates shut down the immediate and familiar outpouring of “thoughts and prayers” for the victims of the South Texas church shooting on Sunday, calling for stronger gun laws.

“How many kids must die of gun violence on playgrounds & streets every day with no attention at all before we wake up to what’s happening?” Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter. “Thoughts & prayers are not enough, GOP. We must end this violence. We must stop these tragedies. People are dying while you wait.”

Several people reacted to Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan’s call for prayers. “Reports out of Texas are devastating. The people of Sutherland Springs need our prayers right now,” Ryan said on Sunday.

“Let’s also pray that you find the courage to do your job,” Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton responded.

Other reactions:

@SenBlumenthal Horror, heartbreak, shame. Prayers are important but insufficient. After another unspeakable tragedy, Congress must act - or be complicit.

@repjohnlewis We must do more than mourn and pray for those murdered in Texas. We must act.

@RepJayapal They were praying when it happened. They don't need our prayers. They need us to address gun violence crisis & pass sensible regulation.

This has become the deadliest year for mass shootings in modern U.S. history.

Chicago close to recording 600th homicide for only second time since 2003

Chicago is close to recording its 600th homicide for the year, only the second time the city will have reached the grim milestone since 2003, according to data kept by the Tribune. 

After a weekend when 30 were people shot, five of them fatally, the number of homicides stands at 593 this year, according to the Tribune's database.

That's below the 681 homicides this time last year but substantially above other recent years. Last year saw gun violence at levels not recorded since the late 1990s.  This year has not been as bad, but the last time the city hit 600 homicides was 2003, and that was for the entire year, according to statistics kept by the Chicago Police Department.

The Chicago Police Department's count of homicides this year is 581 because, unlike the Tribune, it does not count homicides on expressways as well as fatal shootings by police officers and homicides considered justified.

Shootings have shown the same trend:  This year trails last year but not other recent years. 

Nearly 3,200 people have been shot so far in 2017, down from the roughly 3,800 shot this time last year.  That's compared to 2,609 at this time in 2015, 2,208 in 2014, 1,923 in 2013 and 2,162 in 2012, according to Tribune data.

The homicide total was about 30 percent less than that of October 2016. A year-to-date comparison indicates that incidents of gun violence - including fatal and non-fatal shootings - is down 18 percent this year versus 2016.

5 million immigrants enter under 'diversity visa,' 345% more than promised

The number of immigrants let into the U.S. under the “diversity visa” program pushed by Sen. Chuck Schumer and blamed in last week’s New York City terror attack is expected to reach nearly 5 million, more than 300 percent higher than promised, according to a new report.

While some 1.1 million since 1994 have or are slated to receive the visa in a lottery at a rate of about 50,000 a year, a loophole in the system allows them to bring in family members and that “chain migration” average is 3.45 additional immigrants per lottery winner, said the Center for Immigration Studies.

As a result, another 3,803,187 have or are expected to arrive, bringing the total let in under the special visa to 4.9 million.

“When accounting for chain migration, the visa lottery may have brought in more than 3.8 million people in total since 1994. Despite its supporters' assurances that the visa lottery is responsible for only 50,000 immigrants in any given year, chain migration means that the program actually accounts for perhaps 165,000 new immigrants per year because of earlier lottery winners sponsoring their relatives,” said the report.

The recent terror attack in New York City reignited the debate surrounding the Visa Lottery. The perpetrator from Uzbekistan arrived in 2010 to the United States as a result of the lottery.

This is because of chain migration, a topic that was addressed in September. Chain migration — where legal residents or naturalized citizens bring relatives from abroad — is the main driver of immigration, and has been since at least 1981. A Princeton University study found that between 1996 and 2000, initiating immigrants (that is, the first in a family to come to the United States) sponsored an average of an additional 3.45 relatives through chain migration.

MAIL TIME!

• "Bill, I take offense at you saying Texas has lax gun laws. We require the same background checks that all states have."
• I didn't say lax, Dale. I said liberal gun laws, not lax. It's a whole different thing. The state of Texas has decided, and the people who live there support it overwhelmingly, that you can arm yourself and protect yourself and you can carry if you're a law-abiding person. Here in New York, you can't do that. So you have liberal, and I know some of you don't like the word, gun laws in Texas. That doesn't mean it's bad. You're getting the government that the folks down in Texas want.
• "Please comment on how the advent of ravenous 24/7 press coverage fuels gun massacres like what happened at the Texas church. My sincerest prayers for those poor souls. Guns and deranged have been around forever, but press coverage is what's new. Love the podcast. We gather around it like a fireside chat."
• Good, Gary, I'm glad. There's no question that the media covering this stuff 24/7, hyping it to some degree, brings it to the attention of deranged individuals. But it's always been the case. Mass murder is mass murder. Nothing you can do about it, free society. It adds a level of intensity to crime. I will no longer mention the names of any of these murderers. But nothing you can do about it.
• "Bill, your viewers will never believe the ABC News polls, so why report on it? Trump is not tweeting about his accomplishments because the never Trumper's on Twitter would attack him for bragging."
• Lenora, I have to respectfully disagree. I don't think Donald Trump has ever been worried about anyone attacking him for bragging. He's a very flamboyant man who likes to trumpet, pardon the pun, his accomplishments. It's just beyond me that he hasn't pointed out how effective the U.S. government has been against ISIS since he's been in office and how the economy, at least in the eyes of We The People, is getting better. That's what I'd be tweeting about all day long.

Word of the Day: Jabberwocky