Mornings on the Mall
Tuesday July 12, 2016
Hosts: Brian Wilson and Jessie Jane Duff
5am – A Ryan formally asks DNI to block Clinton’s access to classified info.
Washington House Speaker Paul Ryan sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Wednesday requesting he deny any classified information to Hillary Clinton for the rest of the 2016 campaign.
After FBI Director James Comey called Clinton’s handling of classified material “extremely careless,” Ryan argued in an interview on Fox on Tuesday that the Democratic nominee shouldn’t be permitted to get top secret briefings, but the letter formalizes that recommendation.
Ryan cites his own experience receiving classified intelligence briefings as his party’s vice presidential nominee in 2012 in his letter, saying he understands Clinton is set to begin getting similar briefings after her party formally nominates her at the Democratic convention later this month.
“There is no legal requirement for you to provide Secretary Clinton with classified information, and it would send the wrong signal to all those charged with safeguarding our nation’s secrets if you choose to provide her access to this information despite the FBI’s findings,” Ryan writes.
Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee are exploring legislative options to block Clinton’s ability to have classified briefings, but some GOP aides concede the decision is mostly up to the intelligence community.
The top House Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, called the move “as predictable as it is absurd.”
“Providing an intelligence briefing for the party nominees is a sound practice, and is designed both to prepare the candidates for office and to help them avoid representations during the campaign that may adversely affect the national interest before or after election,” he said in a statement. “The call by the House GOP leadership to cancel briefings for Secretary Clinton and brief only Donald Trump is as predictable as it is absurd.”
He added: “With Trump, the question isn’t whether the briefings should occur, but whether they would do any good.”
Separately on Wednesday, Ryan sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey asking him to release all the unclassified materials of his probe of Clinton’s email use.
The speaker’s push comes as Comey testified Thursday morning before the House Oversight Committee.
5am – B/C Gowdy confirmed that the committee has not yet submitted a referral to the FBI.
The move comes on the heels of the Justice Department’s decision not to press charges against Clinton for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of State. Republicans, outraged that Clinton appears to be getting off scot-free despite mishandling classified information, have quickly pivoted to accusing her of perjury.
At issue is Clinton’s marathon 11-hour testimony before the Benghazi panel last year, during which she insisted under oath that “there was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received.”
But Comey revealed on Thursday that Clinton did, in fact, exchange emails through her private server that included information marked classified, though he provided some cover for Clinton during his testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
“I think it’s possible — possible — that she didn’t understand what a C meant when she saw it in the body of an email like that,” Comey said, referring to the official system of marking certain paragraphs as “confidential,” the lowest level of classification.
Standard government practice is to mark emails containing sensitive information at the top of the message or in the subject line.
And in order to commit perjury — which is a felony — a person must be proven to have lied willfully.
“Did Hillary Clinton lie under oath?” Chaffetz asked Comey during his Thursday testimony before the Oversight Committee.
“Not to the FBI. Not in a case we’re working,” Comey replied.
Asked if the FBI had investigated “her statements under oath on this topic,” Comey said no, noting that he would need a referral from Congress to conduct such an investigation.
“We out of respect for the legislative branch being a separate branch, we do not commence investigations that focus on activities before Congress without Congress asking us to get involved,” Comey said later.
Democrats have already pushed back on arguments that an investigation into Clinton’s testimony is needed.
Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) called a criminal investigation “unwarranted” in a letter sent to Chaffetz late Thursday.
He argued that the emails marked with a C accounted for only three out of tens of thousands of emails and that statements made Thursday by State Department spokesman John Kirby indicated that those markings were a clerical error.
Kirby did not make any definitive statements about the three emails revealed in Comey’s investigation but spoke generally about how inaccurate classification markings might appear in a document through “human error.”
“Given this context, it appears that markings in the documents raised in the media reports were no longer necessary or appropriate at the time they were sent as an actual email. Those markings were human error. They didn’t need to be there,” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) said on Thursday. She pressed Comey on whether he knew this; Comey said no.
Cummings appeared to obliquely chide Chaffetz for the proposed referral.
“Criminal referrals to the Department of Justice are very serious matters, although they are not always treated as such by some Members of Congress,” Cummings wrote.
5am – D In bashing Donald Trump, some say Ruth Bader Ginsburg just crossed a very important line
It’s a political cliche at this point to joke about moving to another country if a certain presidential candidate doesn’t win. Gobs of Americans were headed to Canada if George W. Bush was reelected in 2004. A similar contingent threatened to flood across our northern border when Barack Obama was elected and reelected.
Generally, though, you don’t hear a Supreme Court justice talking like this. In fact, you generally don’t hear a Supreme Court justice talking at all — much less about the big political issues of the day.
Most justices aren’t Ruth Bader Ginsburg, though. And in a new New York Times interview, Ginsburg doesn’t hold a thing back when it comes to the 2016 election.
“I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” Ginsburg told the Times’ Adam Liptak. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”
Ginsburg also recalled something her late husband said about such matters: “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”
This appears to be a joke, but Ginsburg’s sentiment here is crystal clear: She thinks Donald Trump would be a dangerous president. And in saying it, she goes to a place justices almost never do — and perhaps never have — for some very good reasons.
Ginsburg is known for pushing the bounds of a justice’s public comments and has earned something of a cult following on the left. But some say she just went too far.
“I find it baffling actually that she says these things,” said Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “She must know that she shouldn’t be. However tempted she might be, she shouldn’t be doing it.”
Similarly, Howard Wolfson, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, said Ginsburg shouldn’t have said it.
Others wondered what impact this might have on Ginsburg’s decision to hear cases involving Trump.
5am – E
Two fatal emergencies during 911 outage in Montgomery County
Two people died in Montgomery County after the 911 system failed there Sunday night, and authorities said they want to know if the deaths could be linked to the two-hour shutdown.
“I am calling for an immediate investigation into the outage and what impact it may have had on the County’s response times to emergencies — as well as any consequences,” County Executive Ike Leggett said in a statement.
He said he wanted the 911 support systems thoroughly checked to be sure they had adequate stability and resilience, asserting that residents “must be able to count on” prompt emergency response.
Local Crime & Safety Alerts
Breaking news about public safety in and around D.C.
The county said 911 service was out from about 11:10 p.m. Sunday to 1:09 a.m. Monday. Callers received only a busy signal. The public was advised to call individual police stations or firehouses. The county said it made notification through social media and the Alert Montgomery emergency information system.
During the outage, a county statement said, fire and rescue units “responded to two medical emergency calls” involving deaths. One was that of a 91-year-old Olney woman, and the other a 40 -year-old man from Twinbrook. It was unclear if the outage was involved.
“We don’t know that yet,” said Patrick Lacefield, chief spokesman for the county. “We are gathering information” he added. “We want to know whether it could have made any difference.”
Pete Piringer, spokesman for the county fire and rescue service,said he did not immediately know if either person was transported to a hospital.
The 911 outage was traced to a malfunctioning HVAC system, Lacefield said. He said the malfunction caused not only the main power system but the backup system to shut down. “For some reason,” he said in an interview, that in turn shut off the main 911 communications server.
Authorities were still trying to determine why the server depended on the backup system, he said.
He said full 911 service was restored Monday.
Normally, the emergency center receives about 650 calls a day, Lacefield said, but the hourly numbers are smallest during the period at which the outage occurred.
Content from Alzheimer’s AssociationAmerica’s public health crisis
10 things to know about Alzheimer’s disease
The malfunction occurred at the county’s alternate emergency communications center in Rockville. It had been placed in service about two dozen days ago so equipment changes could be made at the main emergency communications center in Gaithersburg.
It was not clear what if any role in the outage was played by the shift.
6am – A/B/C Jeb Bush says Trump will never build his Mexico wall and his believers will ‘feel betrayed’ – but he seems to think The Donald will win the White House (MSNBC)
Jeb Bush sat down with former White House communications director Nicolle Wallace for a conversation on MSNBC tonight
Bush gave ‘kudos’ to Donald Trump – who he won’t endorse – for ‘manipulating the environment’ to become the GOP’s presumptive nominee
The son and brother of a president said he wouldn’t be voting for Trump nor Hilary Clinton in November this year
The former Florida governor worried that Trump’s election would lead to disappointment as the billionaire won’t get his campaign promises done
Former GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush shared some rather dismal predictions for a Donald Trump presidency, but didn’t discount that it could happen.
Bush sat down for his first conversation since Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee chatting with his brother’s former White House communications director Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC.
The former Florida governor, who dropped his bid for the White House in February, on the night of the South Carolina primary, said voters will ‘feel betrayed’ by Trump because some of his campaign promises – from building a Mexican border wall to banning non-American Muslims from the country – would never materialize.
He also told Wallace, who started her career as his press secretary, that he would feel ‘sad’ if Hillary Clinton won the White House, but ‘worried’ if Trump was triumphant.
‘That’s why I can’t vote for either candidate,’ Bush revealed.
‘I can’t vote for Donald Trump and I can’t vote for Hillary Clinton. It breaks my heart,’ he said. ‘This is my first time in my adult life I’m confronted with this dilemma.’
6am – D/E National Park Rangers Will Help You Hunt Pokémon On The National Mall
As the Pokémon Go craze hit the nation’s capital this weekend, park rangers began to realize that it could be an opportunity.
As the Pokémon Go craze hit the nation’s capital this weekend, park rangers began to realize that it could be an opportunity.
“We’re finding that there are thousands of people coming to the National Mall, to play this game, to collect Pokémon, and we know they’re going all over the place — which is great, they’re coming to the park and they’re experiencing that,” Paul Ollig, the chief of interpretation and education for the National Mall and Memorial Parks, told BuzzFeed News on Monday.
The National Park Service, he said, wants “to help people to understand a little more about the place that they’re coming to play this game.”
For example, the German-American Friendship Garden is a Pokéstop, he said, “but it doesn’t really tell you what that is, it doesn’t tell you why it’s here, why it was built, what you can do here. So, that’s our opportunity to broaden people’s understanding of these sites.”
The Washington Monument itself is a trainer gym in Pokémon Go, leading many folks to come to the spot just to play the game.
The Washington Monument itself is a trainer gym in Pokémon Go, leading many folks to come to the spot just to play the game.
Seriously, there are Pokémon everywhere around the Washington Monument.
Which is where Ollig got the idea of rangers going around playing Pokémon Go with visitors.
“By talking about it, and actually participating in this with people, it enables us to help guide the experience — so it’s not just somebody out here at the Washington Monument catching a Zubat, it is a ranger walking around with somebody, talking about the Washington Monument,” he said.
In the course of the short walk from the Washington Monument to the garden, Ollig and another park ranger, Zach Whitlow, ran into several people playing Pokémon Go.
In the course of the short walk from the Washington Monument to the garden, Ollig and another park ranger, Zach Whitlow, ran into several people playing Pokémon Go.
Tyler and Kim told Ollig they came down from West Howard County in Maryland to the National Mall to look for Pokémon “until it’s too hot, pretty much.”
The game has, however, created one possibility that has raised concern for the rangers — people playing Pokémon Go in places that they don’t see as appropriate for gaming.
The game has, however, created one possibility that has raised concern for the rangers — people playing Pokémon Go in places that they don’t see as appropriate for gaming.
“There are some places in national parks, all over the country, but even here in D.C. on the National Mall, where it may not be appropriate to play Pokémon Go,” Ollig said. “For instance, at the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial — a place that is designed to be a site of solemn reflection — probably not the best place to go chasing after a Pokémon.”
He also pointed to the chamber at the Jefferson Memorial and people going into the water of the World War II Memorial as places not appropriate for Pokémon Go and noted that tours led by rangers would allow them to “guide the entire group in a direction that has a narrative that we are interested in having people learn more about.”
Going forward, Ollig said, “if you see a ranger who looks like they are engaged in it, or if you see a group going on a tour with a ranger, join in.” He also said to be sure to check out the National Mall and Memorial Parks’ Facebook page for more information about guided tours in the future.
Going forward, Ollig said, “if you see a ranger who looks like they are engaged in it, or if you see a group going on a tour with a ranger, join in.” He also said to be sure to check out the National Mall and Memorial Parks’ Facebook page for more information about guided tours in the future.
“You can catch some Pokémon, you can learn about the sites and the memorials on the National Mall, and come back with a really meaningful experience,” he said. “As long as you’re safe and respectful of other visitors, come on out here and catch as many as you can.”
7am – A INTERVIEW — SARAH WESTWOOD — is a Watchdog Reporter for the Washington Examiner.
Hillary Clinton isn’t done with email probes yet
Although the FBI has cleared Hillary Clinton of criminal wrongdoing for her “extremely careless” treatment of classified information, the inquiries into her private email use are far from over.
Members of the House Judiciary Committee will grill Attorney General Loretta Lynch Tuesday about her decision to close the Clinton email investigation without filing charges against anyone involved. The chairman of that committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, led 200 House Republicans in a push Monday for the Justice Department to reveal more details about how it reached the conclusion that Clinton should not be charged for her conduct.
Congressional Republicans remain committed to stripping the former secretary of state of her access to sensitive materials ahead of the classified briefings that will begin for both presidential nominees after their respective conventions.
Beyond the political hurdles that lie ahead for Clinton and her aides, the presumptive Democratic nominee faces three additional probes related to her personal email practices that could further expose her conduct as secretary of state to scrutiny.
7am – B CRITTER NEWS: Record-breaking Maryland fish weighs more than the girl who caught it
Never mind that the angler weighed only 65 pounds and was 9 years old. She reeled in a nearly 95-pound cobia fish and set a Maryland record for the largest fish of that type caught in the state.
Emma Zajdel of Ocean City might also have broken a record for young anglers who catch big fish, according to wildlife experts.
The tale of how Emma entered the record books began June 30.
She and her fishing buddy, Ashton Clarke, had gone out with her father, Ed, and Ashton’s dad, Robert. It was the end of the day, and they were headed back to shore in her father’s boat.
They had some bait left, so they decided to try for more bluefin tuna.
Their boat was approaching Little Gull Shoals, about a mile and a half east of Assateague Island on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, when the two lines trolling in the water went tight. Clarke took the rod off the rail and passed it to Emma.
She placed the rod in her “fighting belt,” a device used for hauling in large fish. As soon as the rod was in place, the fish took off, and she set the hook.
“At first, we thought it was a shark, and the line was going out. I could hear the reel and the drag, and I thought I could go over the side,” she later told officials with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.
She struggled with the fish for about 20 minutes as her father kept the boat in gear to keep the line tight. They got the fish into the boat, despite it going “ballistic” when they got it on board, and iced it down in a fish box.
The marina was closed when they got to the dock, so they kept the fish in Ed’s Chevrolet Silverado for the night. Word spread about the catch, and other anglers encouraged them to call state wildlife officials for a certified measurement.
“This is a big one,” said Joe Evans, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Service. “They were very experienced and knew what they were doing.”
Emma, who is the youngest of three girls in her family, has been fishing since she was a toddler. Her first fishing rod had Mickey Mouse on it, her dad recalled.
Emma’s dad said he tries to raise his kids to be humble, but this fishing trip was different.
“You don’t want to think years down the road, ‘Gosh we should have weighed it,’ ” he said.
Officials with the state’s wildlife service weighed it the next day at Sunset Marina in Ocean City, and a state biologist inspected the fish, confirming its size.
It measured 66.5 inches and weighed 94.6 pounds. Compare that with Emma, who stands at 52 inches and weighs about 30 pounds less than the fish.
Emma’s reaction, according to Evans: “She was unfazed by the whole thing.”
Emma broke a record set two years ago when a Potomac, Md., man caught a 79-pound cobia in waters near Ocean City. Maryland wildlife officials said Emma also probably set a new bar for the International Game Fish Association’s Small Fry World Record for “a fish caught by an angler under the age of 10.”
The international game fishing group can take up to a year to determine whether a record has been set.
Emma’s dad said she goes fishing weekly. Even when catching more typical smaller fish, “it is the same fun experience,” he said.
Emma’s newfound stardom seemed to sink after state wildlife officials issued a news release Monday announcing her big catch and several media outlets contacted her to seek an interview.
What did she think? “It’s cool,” she said Monday evening from aboard the boat with her dad.
She said she was a “bit nervous, excited and mostly surprised” when she hauled in the big fish.
Wildlife officials in Maryland said there are no restrictions on catching and keeping cobia in the state’s waters. Cobia typically are found along the Atlantic coastline in the summer and average about 23 pounds.
The world record is 135 pounds, caught in 1985 in Australia. And in Virginia, a record cobia caught in 2006 weighed 109 pounds.
Emma kept her fish and ate it. Her dad helped to feed 40 friends and relatives for an annual Fourth of July party.
Emma told wildlife experts, “It tasted very good.”
7am – C
Democratic National Committee staffer killed in Washington, D.C. shooting
DNC employee Seth Conrad Rich, 27, died early Sunday morning from multiple gunshot wounds sustained in an attack in D.C.
A voter database employee with the Democratic National Committee was shot and killed a block from his Washington, D.C. home, police said.
Seth Conrad Rich, 27, died early Sunday from multiple gunshot wounds sustained in an attack in Washington’s Bloomingdale neighborhood. D.C. police have found little information to explain his death. At this time, there are no suspects, no motive and no witnesses in Rich’s murder.
There is no immediate indication that robbery was a motive in the attack, police said, but it has not been ruled out as a possibility.
Joel Rich, the victim’s father, told the Washington Post that police suggested the attack may have resulted from a robbery gone awry. Although nothing was stolen from the victim, Rich believes his son engaged his assailants before he was killed.
Police officers patrolling the area responded to the gun shots around 4:20 a.m. using the ShotSpotter system to find the location of the shooting. Rich was taken to a local hospital where he died a short time later.
The shooting has rattled residents of the Bloomingdale neighborhood where Rich lived in a townhouse with several roommates.
“No one wants to be able to feel they can’t go home at night,” Teri Janine Quinn, head of the Bloomingdale Civic Association, told the Washington Post. “Nobody wants to hear that someone was murdered blocks from their home.”
7am – D
INTERVIEW — TONY SHAFFER — is a retired U.S. Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel who gained fame for his claims about mishandled intelligence before the September 11 attacks and for the censoring of his book, Operation Dark Heart.
Ash Carter: U.S. sending more troops to Iraq (
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, who arrived in Baghdad Monday, announced the U.S. is sending 560 additional troops to Iraq as part of the stepped-up fight against the “cancer” of ISIS.
Most of the troops will be stationed at the recently recaptured Qarayyah airfield, which is about 25 miles south of Mosul and will be a key staging area for the upcoming U.S. and Iraqi effort to retake that city from the terror group.
President Barack Obama approved the deployment. The new troop cap in Iraq is 4,647, according to the Pentagon, although there are currently just over 3,600 troops in the country.
A senior U.S. military official said the number of additional troops is what had been requested by Gen. Sean MacFarland, commander of the coalition against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and the official added that there could be requests for more troops in the future.
Carter said the additional troops will deploy in days or weeks and had already received their orders.
“We need to be clear that there are Americans at risk here in Iraq, there have been, I’ve emphasized that right along,” Carter told reporters in Baghdad. “They are doing all kinds of essential functions. Their basic strategic function is enabling but there is risk associated with that. Make no mistake about that.”
MacFarland said U.S. forces “will not be any closer to the enemy than we’ve been anywhere else.”
“But,” he added, “we need to move to this place so we (will) be as close to the fighting as we have been in the Euphrates River Valley fights.”
To make the retaken airfield fully functional, MacFarland said the U.S has to “bring in a wide array of capabilities.”
“That’s what these forces do,” he added. “As always, when we bring forces to an area, we bring in a security envelope, there’s a security element that goes with it.”
The 560 new U.S. troops are specifically for the fight to recapture Mosul. They will assist the Iraqi troops on the Qarayyah base with logistics, because a large number of Iraqis will be sent there. But the Americans may also accompany Iraqi forces.
“At every step in this campaign, we have generated and seized additional opportunities to hasten ISIL’s lasting defeat,” Carter said in a statement, using another name for ISIS. “These additional U.S. forces will bring unique capabilities to the campaign and provide critical enabler support to Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight.”
Speaking to reporters in Baghdad, the defense secretary said, “It’s necessary but not sufficient to destroy ISIL in Iraq and Syria because this is where it began and is what I have called the parent tumor of the cancer … but, like cancer, ISIL has spread to … other places and it also threatens our homelands.”
MacFarland said, “We are starting to put pressure on the enemy’s terror networks, threat networks that are around the capital, and we’ll continue to ramp that up over time.”
Rep. Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Service Committee, said in a statement after the additional troops were announced that he was “concerned that operational needs in Iraq and Syria are taking a back seat to troop levels the White House finds politically palatable.”
“The war against ISIS and Islamic extremists cannot be won by inches,” the Texas Republican said. “Added to the President’s Afghanistan announcement last week, the United States will now be deploying thousands more troops than we have budgeted for in the President’s budget request. Those deployments can only be fully supported through a supplemental budget request. I look forward to reviewing the President’s request when he sends it to Congress, as I believe he now must.”
Carter arrived in Baghdad Monday for a day-long visit to discuss the Iraqi army’s plans to retake Mosul, which has been in ISIS’ hands since June 2014.
On the flight to the Iraqi capital, Carter discussed the seizure of the Qarayyah airfield, which was accomplished by Iraqi forces, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, and announced Saturday by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
Iraqi forces assemble to take back Mosul
Iraqi forces assemble to take back Mosul 01:42
The recapture of Qarayyah, one of the biggest air bases in the country, is seen as a breakthrough in the mission to liberate Mosul, and comes just weeks after Iraq declared it had regained full control of Falluja, ISIS’ main stronghold, as the militant group continues to lose ground.
Iraqi officials said they will move the headquarters for the liberation of Mosul to Qarayyah and its airstrip will bring Iraqi and coalition aircraft that much closer to the city.
Is ISIS going broke?
U.S. involvement?
U.S. airstrike kills 2 ISIS commanders
U.S. airstrike kills 2 ISIS commanders 01:00
Carter also reiterated on the flight to Baghdad that U.S. forces would accompany an assault — in an advisory capacity — on Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the largest in Iraq under ISIS control.
“U.S. units are prepared to advise and accompany to the battalion level,” Carter said. “All of that is part of the campaign plan that we’ve agreed to with Iraqis.”
On his fifth trip to the Iraqi capital, Carter was greeted at his plane in Baghdad by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones and MacFarland.
During a meeting later at the Prime Minister’s office, Carter expressed condolences to the Iraqi people on behalf of the U.S. for the recent terror attacks in Iraq and said they strengthened his determination to fight ISIS.
Will ISIS be pushed easily from Mosul after ‘mother of all battles’?
7am – E Ryan formally asks DNI to block Clinton’s access to classified info.
Washington House Speaker Paul Ryan sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Wednesday requesting he deny any classified information to Hillary Clinton for the rest of the 2016 campaign.
After FBI Director James Comey called Clinton’s handling of classified material “extremely careless,” Ryan argued in an interview on Fox on Tuesday that the Democratic nominee shouldn’t be permitted to get top secret briefings, but the letter formalizes that recommendation.
Ryan cites his own experience receiving classified intelligence briefings as his party’s vice presidential nominee in 2012 in his letter, saying he understands Clinton is set to begin getting similar briefings after her party formally nominates her at the Democratic convention later this month.
“There is no legal requirement for you to provide Secretary Clinton with classified information, and it would send the wrong signal to all those charged with safeguarding our nation’s secrets if you choose to provide her access to this information despite the FBI’s findings,” Ryan writes.
Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee are exploring legislative options to block Clinton’s ability to have classified briefings, but some GOP aides concede the decision is mostly up to the intelligence community.
The top House Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, called the move “as predictable as it is absurd.”
“Providing an intelligence briefing for the party nominees is a sound practice, and is designed both to prepare the candidates for office and to help them avoid representations during the campaign that may adversely affect the national interest before or after election,” he said in a statement. “The call by the House GOP leadership to cancel briefings for Secretary Clinton and brief only Donald Trump is as predictable as it is absurd.”
He added: “With Trump, the question isn’t whether the briefings should occur, but whether they would do any good.”
Separately on Wednesday, Ryan sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey asking him to release all the unclassified materials of his probe of Clinton’s email use.
The speaker’s push comes as Comey testified Thursday morning before the House Oversight Committee.
8am – A INTERVIEW — ANDREW GROSSMAN — Andrew Grossman is a veteran of the Washington policymaking community with recognized experience in constitutional law and legal policy that he brings to his litigation practice
8am – B/C Never Trump-ers Get Symbolic Victory In Virginia Bound Delegate Case
A Virginia delegate to the Republican National Convention who sued state officials over a law binding him to vote for Donald Trump on the first ballot next week in Cleveland scored a symbolic victory Monday when a federal court ruling blocked enforcement of the state law.
However, a convention rules expert told TPM that the decision’s effect on the “Never Trump” efforts to overthrow the presumptive GOP nominee was limited, if not more-or-less moot, and still depends on what happens at a closely-watched meeting of the convention rules committee later this week.
The delegate, Carroll Boston Correll, had alleged that a state law that bound Virginia’s delegates to the winner of the GOP primary there violated his First Amendment rights. He argued the law was in conflict with Republican Party rules, namely that delegates would be free to vote their conscience and that the state’s delegates would be allotted proportionally.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert E. Payne declined Monday in his opinion to adjudicate the former claim, as the “conscience” rules could be changed during this week’s convention rules committee meeting. Payne did say, however, that the state law was a “an unconstitutional burden on his First Amendment rights of free political speech and political association” because it forces Correll to violate the party rules that allocate the delegates proportionally.
According to Joshua Putnam, a a lecturer at the University of Georgia who runs the delegate rule blog FrontloadingHQ, Monday’s opinion doesn’t matter much because the state party already said its delegates were bound proportionally.
Putnam said Payne’s opinion was “a very narrow ruling striking down the prosecutorial ability” of the state attorney general, or anyone else who tried to bring charges against a delegate who goes rogue on the first ballot.
If RNC Rule 16—the rule that says that says Virginia’s delegates, based on the date of its primary, are allocated proportionally—isn’t changed in a major way by the convention rules committee this week, “then the delegates are going to be bound next week and that’s it,” Putnam said.
Still, Andrew Grossman, an attorney at BakerHostetler representing Correll, claimed victory in a phone interview with TPM.
“Delegates can’t be prosecuted or otherwise punished by voting as they see fit,” Grossman said. He alleged that the Trump campaign intervened in the case, via Trump-supporting delegates, to argue against Correll’s position and still lost.
A Trump spokeswoman did not respond Monday afternoon to TPM’s request for comment on the involvement of the Trump delegates and on the decision itself.
Grossman called Monday’s opinion a “rebuke of Donald Trump’s position that it would be illegal for delegates to choose to vote against him.”
8am – D INTERVIEW — LARRY KUDLOW — is a senior CNBC Contributer and host of CNBC’s The Kudlow Report.
8am – E FBI weapons stolen from car in NE DC
D.C. Police are investigating the theft of two guns belonging to the FBI.
The weapons stolen were a Glock handgun and a Colt AR-15 rifle. Police say the weapons were stolen from a vehicle in the 800 block of 7th street Northeast.
It happened sometime between 6:45 and 7:50 Sunday morning.
Police say the person who stole them smashed a window of the locked vehicle and took a lock box containing the weapons.
Investigators are now examining surveillance video of the area.
