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Ballotpedia's Daily Presidential News Briefing - July 6, 2016
From Ballotpedia
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Wednesday's Leading Stories
- On Tuesday, FBI Director James Comey said that the FBI would not recommend bringing criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of private email servers while serving as secretary of state. In his 15-minute statement, Comey said, "Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” Comey also warned that his recommendation should not “suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions.” (USA Today)
- The Hill compiled the following list of new information provided by Comey about Clinton’s handling of information while serving as secretary of state: (The Hill)
- Although the Clinton campaign and State Department claimed that “none of the approximately 2,000 emails now considered classified was deemed sensitive at the time,” Comey revealed that “113 emails in more than 50 chains contained sensitive information at the time they were sent or received by her private setup. … Of those, eight chains contained information considered top secret, the highest level of classification;”
- “Clinton has previously framed the decision to delete half of her machine’s cache of approximately 60,000 messages as an effort to avoid letting her private life become public. … But FBI investigators uncovered ‘several thousand work-related emails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton’ to the State Department;”
- Work-related messages were not “intentionally deleted from Clinton’s machine as part of an effort to evade federal laws,” but additional deleted emails were found during the investigation;
- The FBI was unable to recover all of Clinton’s deleted emails;
- “Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain;” and
- “It is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.”
- Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement, “We are pleased that the career officials handling this case have determined that no further action by the Department is appropriate. As the secretary has long said, it was a mistake to use her personal email and she would not do it again. We are glad that this matter is now resolved.” (The Hill)
- In the following tweets, Donald Trump criticized Comey’s decision: “The system is rigged. General Petraeus got in trouble for far less. Very very unfair! As usual, bad judgment. … FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem.” On Tuesday, during an interview on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor," Trump continued to criticize Comey and Clinton, saying, "I really believe what happened is shocking and it is certainly shocking to legal scholars and I watch them and talk to them all the time. They can't believe what happened. Whether it's General [David] Petraeus or others who suffered grave consequences for what they did Bill [Clinton], I think it's a great miscarriage of justice. … Everyone was stunned at the end because if you listen to it it sounds like she had horrible judgment, she didn't know what she was doing. She was sloppy, she was just about as bad as you can be and then in the end the recommendation was what the recommendation was. I was surprised by that after listening to the first half of the speech especially the middle." (Twitter, CBS News)
- Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) also weighed in on Comey’s decision. He said in a statement, “While I respect the law enforcement professionals at the FBI, this announcement defies explanation. No one should be above the law. … Declining to prosecute Secretary Clinton for recklessly mishandling and transmitting national security information will set a terrible precedent."
- According to The Los Angeles Times, Ryan also “suggested House Republicans may pursue additional investigations into the matter.” During an interview, Ryan said that it was "’absolutely inappropriate’ that former President Clinton and Atty Gen. Loretta Lynch met privately last week in an unscheduled encounter at the Phoenix airport as the FBI's work continued. ‘We’re taking a look at this a little more deeply. … It does taint the outcome. To have the top law enforcement officer taint this in such a way to me was just inexcusable.’" (The Los Angeles Times)
Polls
- According to a Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton lead Donald Trump 41 percent to 40 percent, which is Trump’s “best showing in our head-to-head matchup with the former secretary of State since the general-election phase of the campaign began.” (Morning Consult)
- In a three-way matchup, Clinton (38 percent) maintains her one-point lead over Trump (37 percent), and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson has 11 percent support.
Democrats
- According to the New York Post, the Philadelphia mayor’s office is “expecting up to 200,000 protesters at this month’s Democratic National Convention,” but protest organizer Billy Taylor said he and organizers are “planning for 1 million protesters.” Taylor told the Post that “the protest’s goals are to get rid of the chair of the Democratic Party, abolish superdelegates, implement same-day voter registration and abolish voter-ID laws.” Taylor added, “If we want a political revolution, it’s important we all stand united in the streets. We’re not going to vote for the demon called Hillary because you’re threatening us with the devil called Trump. We’re going to vote for the saint no matter what — and if that’s not Bernie, it’s [Green Party candidate] Jill Stein. Their platform is nearly identical.” (New York Post)
Hillary Clinton
- On Tuesday, during their first appearance on the campaign trail together, President Barack Obama praised Hillary Clinton, saying, “I can tell you this, Hillary Clinton has been tested. There has never been any man or woman more qualified for this office.” During the event, Clinton praised Obama’s presidency and criticized Donald Trump. She said, “Can you imagine him, sitting in the Oval Office, the next time the world faces a crisis? Donald Trump is simply unqualified and temperamentally unfit.” (The New York Times)
- On Tuesday, Clinton addressed members of the National Education Association’s, the nation’s largest teachers union. In a speech, she said, “If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, educators will have a partner in the White House, and you’ll always have a seat at the table.” She was cheered for “calling for less standardized testing, more support for vulnerable children and more respect and pay for public school educators,” but members of the audience booed when she discussed her support for charter schools. Clinton said, “When schools get it right, whether they’re traditional public schools or public charter schools, let’s figure out what’s working and share it with schools across America. Rather than starting from ideology, let’s start from what’s best for our kids.” (The Washington Post)
- Clinton and Obama used Air Force One to fly to a campaign event in North Carolina on Tuesday. In a tweet, Donald Trump criticized Clinton and Obama for using taxpayer dollars to use the aircraft. Trump tweeted: “Taxpayers are paying a fortune for the use of Air Force One on the campaign trail by President Obama and Crooked Hillary. A total disgrace!” CNN reported that it is unclear how much Clinton’s campaign will pay and how much taxpayers will pay for the flight. According to CNN, “The cost of flying Air Force One for political travel is divided between the federal government (using taxpayer dollars) and the candidate's political organization. Because Obama is traveling to Charlotte solely for the purpose of stumping for Clinton, her campaign (or the Democratic National Committee) would have to foot a portion of the bill whether the candidate was aboard or not. The exact breakdown of how much the campaign will owe, however, isn't precisely known. … Whatever Clinton's campaign does pay, however, is far less than the actual costs of flying Air Force One, which is retrofitted with secure communication and navigation equipment, and costs north of $200,000 to operate per hour.” (CNN)
Bernie Sanders
- On Tuesday, after FBI Director James Comey announced that he would not recommend filing criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of private email servers as secretary of state, a spokesman for Sanders told The Washington Post that the senator “will not respond to the FBI's decision and is not altering his plan to remain a presidential candidate until the Democratic National Convention nominates Clinton.” (The Washington Post)
Republicans
Donald Trump
- During a campaign rally in North Carolina on Tuesday night, Donald Trump warned that Americans “should be worried about a continuation of Obama-era policies, particularly U.S. foreign policy in the wake of the Iraq war, which he said he opposed,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Trump then said, “Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right? He was a bad guy, a really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights, they didn’t talk. They were a terrorist? It was over. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism. You want to be a terrorist, you go to Iraq.” (The Wall Street Journal)
- On Tuesday, one of Trump’s advisors told CNN that Trump's “vice presidential pick is expected to be announced next week.” Trump’s vice presidential shortlist reportedly includes, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). (CNN)
- During an interview with The Daily Caller, Dr. Walid Phares, one of Donald Trump’s top foreign policy advisers, said that Trump’s two main priorities “are how to deal with issues of nuclear proliferation and how to completely destroy Islamic jihadist organizations, including and especially ISIS.” Phares also discussed Trump’s stances on the following issues: (The Daily Caller)
- On nuclear proliferation: “Mr. Trump has made a clear statement about not having any further nuclear proliferation, especially in the hands of people who are problematic. He thinks about it as the greatest threat that we and the rest of the world will face.”
- On destroying ISIS: “He believes as I said that there needs to be a concerted, strategic effort to remove ISIS while also worrying about who and what could come next once they have been destroyed. It’s not just ISIS, there is still al-Qaeda as well as more covert actors like the Muslim Brotherhood that President Obama legitimized in Egypt before the Egyptians took their country back. The homeland is facing a real, domestic, jihadi threat. We need to wage the battle of counter-terrorism, but we also need to prevent it through vetting potential jihadists coming into the U.S. and investing in border security.”
- On Japan and South Korea pursuing the development of nuclear weapons: “To be clear though, Mr. Trump is not committed to any particular action. He is simply willing to have frank discussions with Asian partners about many options and has said so publicly. He will not ask Japan or South Korea to invest in building nuclear weapons but he will speak with their leaders about how to create a safer and more stable environment in the East Asia theater.”
- On whether Trump will get rid of the Iran nuclear deal: “No, he’s not going to get rid of an agreement that has the institutional signature of the United States. He is a man of institutions. But he’s going to look back on it the institutional way. He’s said, so far that he doesn’t like this deal and that it was poorly negotiated. Once elected, he’s going to renegotiate it after talking through it with his advisers. One of the clear possibilities is he will send it back to Congress. The reaction of the Iranian leadership will be the next phase. So he is not going to implement it as is, he is going to revise it after negotiating one on one with Iran or with a series of allies.”
- On his comments about banning Muslims from entering the United States: “What he meant was, after the repetitive attacks on Europe and the U.S., it is clear that the Obama administration, the Hillary campaign and unfortunately, many of our European partners, do not have the answer or correct methodology for vetting people coming in from abroad. Mr. Trump has looked at what specialists and very renowned researchers have been raising in congressional testimony at hearings. The issue is, if you don’t have a measure for detecting who is who, and who is a jihadist and who is not, then we will keep having more bloodshed. Mr. Trump’s reaction with this policy was genuine and symbolic for provoking that debate on a need for a foreign policy and counter-terrorism strategy shift. He is telling the American public that he is going to change that policy. So, he suggested that our current political leaders implement a shutdown. However, the important part of the proposal is, ‘until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.’ It is clear they have yet to figure it out, and that’s what resonated with voters who want change.”
- Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is the owner of the New York Observer, was the target of the article, “An Open Letter to Jared Kushner, From One of Your Jewish Employees,” which was written by Observer entertainment writer Dana Schwartz. Schwartz criticized Kushner for allowing Trump to post anti-semitic tweets and encouraging his followers to engage in anti-semitic acts. The letter was a response to a tweet Trump’s social media manager posted on Saturday that had “an image of Hillary Clinton superimposed on a pile of $100 bills along with the words ‘Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!’ emblazoned on a Star of David. … Although the presumptive Republican presidential nominee quickly deleted the tweet and replaced it with one that used a circle in place of the star.” (Fortune)
- On Tuesday night, Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, replied, “My father-in-law is an incredibly loving and tolerant person who has embraced my family and our Judaism since I began dating my wife. I know that Donald does not at all subscribe to any racist or anti-semitic thinking. I have personally seen him embrace people of all racial and religious backgrounds. The suggestion that he may be intolerant is not reflective of the Donald Trump I know.”
- According to Fortune, “Trump and his social media manager, Dan Scavino, have both denied that there was anything anti-Semitic about the original tweet—or that it was even a Star of David.”
Third Party Candidates
Jill Stein (Green Party)
- On Tuesday, Jill Stein released the web video, “Abolish Student Debt.” In the ad, Stein says, “We will bail out millennials and others in student debt. We did it for the crooks on Wall Street – it’s about time to do it for the millennials and the generation held hostage in debt.” (IAgreeToSee.com)
Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party)
- In an article examining Gary Johnson’s issue positions, Washington Post writer Max Ehrenfreund wrote that Johnson “is much more willing to compromise on questions about the size of government than the more doctrinaire Libertarian candidates of the past. … [H]e supports environmental regulation, and he would be willing to use executive authority to achieve Libertarian objectives rather than relying on Congress.” (The Washington Post)
See also
- Presidential election, 2016
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Important dates in the 2016 presidential race
- Polls and Straw polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
