FBI gives Congress documents related to Hillary Clinton’s emails

Evan McMullin, the former CIA counter-terrorism officer who last week launched a late independent campaign for the presidency, is hitting some roadblocks as he tries to get his name on ballots across the U.S. ahead of the general election.

McMullin campaign officials said Monday they did not meet California’s deadline last Friday to submit nomination papers signed by 178,039 registered voters.

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(Scott Olson / Getty Images)

Next week, Scribner will publish “Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power” by two Washington Post reporters, Michael Kranish and Mark Fisher. On Friday, the paper gave readers a preview of the book, a portrait of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.

The Trump campaign initially refused to participate in the book, but had an unexpected change of heart. Trump ended up talking to Post reporters for more than 20 hours, leaving them somewhat bemused.

“He rarely refused to answer our questions,” wrote Kranish and Fisher, “but when the subject was uncomfortable or raised doubts about some of his past decisions, he often gave us disjointed answers that steered into completely unrelated matters.”

The shelves are crowded with new books that have drawn inspiration from the real estate magnate and reality television star-turned-presidential candidate. Here’s a sample:

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A New Hampshire state representative and advisor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign doubled down Tuesday on his incendiary calls last month that Hillary Clinton should be executed for treason.

But Al Baldasaro, who co-chairs Trump’s national veterans coalition, blamed the “liberal media,” a frequent target of the Trump campaign, for misrepresenting his language.

“The liberal media took what I said and went against the law and the Constitution and ran with it, and they said that I wanted her assassinated, which I never did,” Baldasaro said in an interview with the Republican/MassLive.com.

“I said I spoke as a veteran, and she should be shot in a firing squad for treason,” he added.

Reports published at the time quoted Baldasaro as saying Clinton should be shot by firing squad for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of State, not that she should be assassinated.

Numerous media outlets questioned whether Trump’s subsequent call for gun owners to take action if Clinton is elected and appoints liberal judges was a veiled call for violence, but Trump later denied that.

Baldasaro said that he stood by his call for a firing squad despite blowback from the Clinton campaign and a Trump campaign statement saying the Republican nominee did not agree with him.

The FBI has provided Congress with classified documents related to its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, as Republican lawmakers probe why prosecutors chose not to pursue a case against her.

Congressional staff were poring over the papers Tuesday but it was unclear whether the documents would be made public. The cache included notes on Clinton’s interview with investigators and witness interviews.

“The FBI has turned over a number of documents related to their investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email server,” said a spokesperson for the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee led by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

“Committee staff is currently reviewing the information that is classified secret. There are no further details.”

Democrats on the committee blasted the review as a partisan attempt by Republicans to revive the email scandal after the Department of Justice declined to pursue charges.

“Republicans are now investigating the investigator in a desperate attempt to resuscitate this issue, keep it in the headlines, and distract from Donald Trump’s sagging poll numbers,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the panel.

In a letter to the committee Tuesday, the FBI said because of the intense interest in Clinton’s emails, it wanted to again explain Director James Comey’s rationale for declining to recommend prosecution.

“The FBI did find evidence that Secretary Clinton and her colleagues were extremely careless in their handling of certain, very sensitive, highly classified information,” wrote Jason V. Herring, acting assistant director. “The director did not equate ‘extreme carelessness’ with the legal standard of ‘gross negligence’ that is required by the statute.”

Herring noted that the FBI believes only one person has been charged for gross negligence in the handling of national defense information during the nearly 100 years that the statute has been law. In that case, he noted, there were “indications of espionage and disloyalty” to the U.S.

The email probe has continued to ripple across the presidential race.

Trump has put Clinton’s handling of the emails at the center of his bid, mockingly referring to her as “crooked Hillary.”

An aide indicated Clinton’s campaign would likely welcome a declassified version of the FBI documents being made public — if it were released in full, to avoid selective leaks that would be designed to hurt her.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called any release of the documents a “mistake.”

“With the exception of the classified emails that had been found on the private server, I can see little legitimate purpose to which Congress will put these materials,” Schiff said.

Instead, he said, he expects the reports “will simply be leaked for political purposes,” much as happened, he said, with a House special committee’s investigation into the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Times staff writer Michael A. Memoli in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

Hillary Clinton will aggressively go after Donald Trump until election day. But as polls show her with an increasingly durable advantage nationally, Democrats are guarding against another threat to victory: Democrats.

“Don’t be complacent, my friends,” Clinton warned at a campaign rally Tuesday in Philadelphia. “Even though we’re doing fine right now, I’m not taking anybody, anywhere, for granted. We’re going to work hard these next 85 days, and I can’t do it without your help.”

Clinton’s remarks echoed the candid sentiments President Obama expressed at a party fundraiser the night before.

In a break from vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama needled Democrats and called them “interesting creatures,” joking that their views of the election alternate between “full-fledged freakout” and “who do you think she’s going to appoint for Commerce secretary?”

“What I’d like us to do is veer somewhere in between those two extremes,” he said. “We are still going to have to fight what has been [an] unrelenting negative campaign against her.”

The Real Clear Politics average of national polling shows Clinton maintaining a more than six-point advantage over Trump.

A new Washington Post poll of likely voters in Virginia released Tuesday showed Clinton with a seven-point lead over Trump in a four-way race; a Monmouth University poll of voters in the major prize of Florida, which Obama narrowly won in 2012, showed Clinton up nine percentage points.

The respected nonpartisan Cook Political Report updated its state-by-state ratings to showed Clinton already with more than the 270 electoral votes she would need to become president, even without giving her five states still considered toss-ups.

One of Trump’s latest attacks against Clinton has been his warnings that the election will be “rigged,” and he has predicted the possibility of voter fraud in “parts of” Pennsylvania, widely viewed as a veiled reference to Philadelphia, a city where about 40% of the residents are black.

Clinton’s rally in West Philadelphia on Tuesday served as something of an answer to Trump’s dark warning. Rep. Bob Brady, who represents parts of the city, called it “trash talk.”

“Republicans are trash talking, but what do we do? We act,” he said. “We need to get our registration done. We need to get our neighbors to register. We need to get our friends to register.”

Clinton encouraged supporters to join get-out-the-vote efforts and hit a goal of registering 3 million new voters.

“We know what we need to do, the question is whether we will do it,” she said. “And that all comes down to who shows up and votes.”

Republicans are trying again to reach out to Latinos, announcing a new social media campaign Tuesday geared toward those voters.

“We are expanding our efforts in social media to generate greater conversation and understanding of what the Republican Party stands for,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement.

Republicans have struggled to connect with Latino voters, and Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric about Mexicans and his promise to build a wall separating the U.S. and Mexico have not helped the party bridge the gap. The GOP’s director of Hispanic media resigned in June.

Hillary Clinton holds a 46-point lead over Trump among Latino voters in a poll from Fox News Latino conducted last week. Polls in swing-state Florida have Trump losing to Clinton as the state’s number of minority voters has increased.

According to the RNC, the new social campaign will feature its director of Hispanic communications discussing national security. The social campaign will cover a variety of issues including education, taxes and immigration.

(John Locher / Associated Press)

Hillary Clinton’s transition team, which would set up her administration if she wins the White House, will be run by former top aides to President Obama, her campaign announced Wednesday.

The group, based in Washington, will help draw up a list of potential Cabinet members and other administration positions.

The team includes former Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, who served as secretary of the Interior under Obama; Tom Donilon, a former national security advisor; and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Two close Clinton associates, Neera Tanden and Maggie Williams, are also part of the group.

Donald Trump’s campaign started building its transition team in May. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is its chairman.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker offered Donald Trump some advice for his struggling campaign — ignore “sideshow” problems, focus on Hillary Clinton and win the 2016 election.

Walker, who endorsed Trump at the Republican National Convention in July, will join the GOP nominee on the campaign trail in Wisconsin on Tuesday.

“If Donald Trump’s going to win here and win across the country, he needs to make it clear that the race is between him and Hillary Clinton,” Walker said on Fox News.

Walker added that Trump gets into trouble when he responds to issues irrelevant to presidential concerns.

As for Clinton, Walker slammed her for suggesting that communities and police in Milwaukee need to build more trust following the police shooting of a 23-year-old black man on Saturday. Protests and fiery riots erupted throughout the city.

“Everyone should have respect for the law and be respected by the law,” Clinton said at a campaign event in Scranton, Pa., on Monday.

Walker responded: “Statements like that and the lack of leadership we have had from the president on this issue only inflame the situation.”

Donald Trump plans to rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday night in West Bend, about 30 miles from a Milwaukee neighborhood engulfed in riots and protests over the weekend following the shooting of a 23-year-old black man by a police officer.

Trump’s campaign has thrived amid conflict, protest and the nation’s simmering racial tensions. During a rally in Janesville ahead of Wisconsin’s April primary, a 15-year-old anti-Trump protester was pepper-sprayed after punching a man during intense protests that included people waving “Black Lives Matter” signs.

Trump often singles out police during his rallies, complaining that they do not get enough credit. Trump has said that law enforcement mistakes should not be tolerated but that police are “absolutely mistreated and misunderstood.”

Wisconsin voters dealt Trump a rare setback during the primary season. Republicans chose Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, briefly stalling Trump’s march to the nomination and giving hope to Republican establishment figures who wanted to stop him.

But Trump is returning to the state for the second time this month, hoping his economic and cultural appeal to Midwestern blue-collar voters will carry over to the Badger State.

Wisconsin is a national center for Republican power. Its governor, Scott Walker, briefly ran for president. It is also home to Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the GOP’s top elected official.

But voters there have not picked a Republican for president since 1984. And the only recent poll there gave Democrat Hillary Clinton a decisive advantage.

Donald Trump will be presented to California voters on Nov. 8 as the nominee of two different political parties, after leaders of the ultra-conservative American Independent Party voted to select the New York real estate developer as its standard bearer.

It will be the first time a presidential candidate is listed on the California ballot as the choice of two parties in at least 80 years, state election officials said.

“We are the demographic that Trump is appealing to,” said Markham Robinson, the secretary of the American Independent Party of California. “We are heeding the voice of our voters.”

Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, were chosen over the weekend by AIP members at the party’s convention in Sacramento. Robinson said 19 state party members voted in the nomination process, the vast majority of them for the two Republicans.

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Though he has cultivated a reputation as unscripted, Vice President Joe Biden can be practiced when needed, with an instinctive feel for his audience.

And as he joined Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail Monday for the first time this year, he shirked a conventional political argument on her behalf in favor of an emotional pitch aimed at working-class voters: “She gets it.”

“What Hillary is all about is making sure that every one of you, every one of you can look your child and your grandchild in the eye and say, ‘Honey, I mean this sincerely, everything is going to be OK,’” Biden told an audience of 3,000 that included his relatives and former neighbors.

For Biden, campaigning in 2016 looks a lot like 2008 and 2012, as his more than half-hour performance here showed, but with one big difference: He’s not on the ticket.

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Donald Trump calls for “extreme vetting” of immigrants in a speech Monday in Youngstown, Ohio.

(Jeff Swensen / Getty Images)

Donald Trump, who has made tighter controls on immigration a mainstay of his campaign, has a new plan: an ideological test for anyone entering the U.S.

Trump has famously proposed building a wall on the Mexican border and a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., an idea that has spawned continuing attacks on him – most notably, a denunciation from the parents of a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq. He’s also talked about suspending immigration from countries with a history of spawning terrorists, a proposal he repeated Monday.

Although the anti-immigration statements have won him support from many Republican voters, the newest message seems aimed at winning over others who might be worried about terrorism but who have been turned off by the harsh divisiveness of his earlier remarks. But experts say it’s unclear how the proposals would differ from current U.S. immigration policy — or how they could help prevent terrorist attacks.

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