Morgan Wright, Tom Fitton, KT McFarland, Shannen Coffin, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Rep. Mike Rogers and guest host Lisa Boothe joined WMAL WMAL on Wednesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Hosts: Larry O’Connor and Lisa Boothe

5am – A/B/C   FBI recommends no criminal charges in Clinton email probe. FBI Director James B. Comey said Tuesday that his agency will not recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state but called Clinton and her staff “extremely careless” in handling classified material.

5am – D         Terror Update:

• Ex-National Guardsman From Virginia Charged With Plotting to Help ISIS (NBC) A former National Guardsman from Virginia is being charged with plotting to help the Islamic State group and contemplating a Fort Hood-style attack against the U.S. military. Mohamed Jalloh, 26, of Sterling, Virginia, made an initial appearance Tuesday in federal court in Alexandria. Court records made public Tuesday said Jalloh is a former member of the Army National Guard who said he quit after hearing lectures from radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. A court affidavit spelled out a three-month sting operation in which Jalloh said he was thinking about carrying out an attack similar to the 2009 shootings at Fort Hood, which left 13 people dead. Jalloh, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Sierra Leone, spoke in April and May with someone he believed was an ISIS supporter, the affidavit said. That person was actually an FBI informant.

• Russian Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Linked to Turkey Airport Attack (VOA NEWS) A former detainee at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is among 30 people Turkish authorities say they have arrested in connection with last week’s terrorist attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport. A source inside the small North Caucasus Muslim diaspora in Turkey told VOA that Airat Vakhitov, who spent two years in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility after he was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2001, was arrested Tuesday. VOA has no confirmation of his arrest from Turkey’s government. On Tuesday, Western media quoted Turkish government officials as saying the nation’s security services had arrested 30 people suspected of involvement in the terrorist attack, which Ankara believes was the work of the Islamic State (IS) group. According to Turkish government sources, 11 of those arrested are Russian citizens.

• This guy has been ‘killed’ in several recent terror attacks (NY Post) He’s dead to them — and everyone else! A group of friends is taking bizarre revenge on a former pal who they say owes them money — by sending his picture to news outlets and claiming he died in several recent terror attacks and other tragedies. A photo of the unnamed man, who lives in Mexico, has so far been featured in news stories about victims of the Orlando shooting, the Istanbul airport bombing and the EgyptAir crash, France24 reported. A snap of his face pops up in a New York Times video about the Orlando shooting, a BBC article, and several social media threads about terror victims, the site reported. “Help, my brother Alfonso was at Aturk Airport and we don’t know anything about him, please help #turkey,” @marty_batato tweeted, along with the man’s photo, after the bombing. But it’s all just part of a sick prank by former pals — who claim the “dead” man is a deadbeat, who scammed them out of dough, according to the site.

5am – E         Snapchat teens beware, your parents are flocking to your favorite app (Digital Trends) Next time you receive a Snapchat video of a person pouting with the aid of a silly selfie filter, it may lead to a facepalm rather than fits of laughter. With a new report claiming that older users are finally jumping on the app, you could soon be bombarded with snaps from your mom and dad. According to ratings company ComScore, Snapchat is witnessing rapid growth in regard to its user base of over-35-year-olds. The new report claims that the Snapchat adoption rate among that age group has increased by 12 percent since 2013, and now stands at 14 percent of U.S. smartphone users aged 35 and over. Additionally, older millennials are also gatecrashing the Snapchat party. ComScore claims that 38 percent of U.S. smartphone users aged 25-34 are on the app, up from just 5 percent three years ago. Despite the growth among these demographics, younger users still make up the majority on Snapchat. A whopping 69 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are currently using the app, up from 24 percent in 2013.

6am –A          Hillary Clinton News

• Dershowitz: Aides Involved in Email Scandal Likely Won’t Get Security Clearance in Clinton WH (Mediaite) Alan Dershowitz said today that one potential consequence of the Hillary Clinton email scandal is that her aides involved in the scandal might be kept out of her administration as a consequences. Dershowitz today told Newsmax TV host Steve Malzberg that Comey pretty much put a pin in any hopes that there would be any charges brought forward where Clinton herself is concerned.
• Trump: Clinton Decision “Miscarriage Of Justice,” Showed “If She’s Not Dishonest, She’s Incompetent” (Real Clear Politics) Donald Trumps reacts to the FBI’s decision not to recommend prosecution for Hillary Clinton with Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday’s broadcast of the Factor on the FOX News Channel: DONALD TRUMP: It was certainly surprising especially in the middle of the talk when he talked about all the mistakes that she made. She made great mistakes and it sounded to me like there was no choice but to convict or to go to some form of very harsh punishment and they didn’t do that and I can tell you 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…    My problem is that I know people in the FBI. I have such respect for the FBI that I just don’t understand what happened here. Everybody knows, everybody realizes, I spoke to many, many lawyers as you have and you’ve had them on your show and you’ve read about it and everybody knows she’s extremely guilty. And they really said she was guilty today and then they said we’re not going to prosecute. Then you remember what happened to General Petraeus and other people and they suffered tremendous consequences for what they did…
• Megyn Kelly Tears Into Hillary Clinton’s Email Excuses: She Told Us ‘A Bunch of Nonsense!’ (Mediaite) Megyn Kelly started her show tonight with a pretty blistering juxtaposition of all the claims Hillary Clinton made about her emails with FBI Director James Comey debunking each one of them. Kelly ran the gamut from Clinton claiming she neither sent nor received classified email to her claim it “was permitted,” and somewhat skeptically brought up how she wasn’t charged. Brit Hume said that what Hume did was “blow up her own network of lies.” Kelly agreed with Comey’s point that this case is unlike others that were prosecuted in the past, but still said the “recitation of the lies” is a problem.”
• Trump: Bernie Just Lost The FBI Primary; Today Proves He Was Right About The Rigged System (Real Clear Politics) Donald Trump comments on the end of what he called the “FBI Primary,” saying that Bernie Sanders has so far refused to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination in hopes that Clinton might be indicted. He says that the FBI’s recommendation not to indict proves Sanders was right when he said the Democratic primary was “rigged.” “Today is the best evidence ever that we have seen that our system is totally, absolutely rigged,” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina. “It’s rigged,” Trump said. “And I used that term nationally when I was running in the Republican primaries, and I was the first to use it, and then all of a sudden it became a hot term and everyone was using the word rigged, rigged, rigged. But if you remember, I won Louisiana. And I didn’t get enough delegate, what happened? Places like Colorado, which was so good to me, but all of a sudden we find out that they don’t have the vote… I’ll be honest, if I didn’t win in landslides, I wouldn’t be standing here. You would be watching some politician who will lose to Hillary. “I learned about the rigged system really fast. All of a sudden, Bernie started using it and now everyone talks about the system being rigged,” he said.

6am – D         INTERVIEW – MORGAN WRIGHT – Cybersecurity Expert, Former Executive at Cisco & Alcatel-Lucent, and former senior advisor for the US Department of State Antiterrorism Assistance Program / www.morganwright.us

• FBI recommends no criminal charges in Clinton email probe FBI Director James B. Comey said Tuesday that his agency will not recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary of state but called Clinton and her staff “extremely careless” in handling classified material.The announcement was stunning both for the level of detail Comey provided about an investigation that he ultimately believes should conclude without charges, and for the fact that the FBI director publicized his guidance before federal prosecutors had reached a final determination.
• Comey talked about her using her blackberry overseas

6am – E         RNC NEWS

• Scott Walker to speak at Republican National Convention Washington (CNN) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker revealed Tuesday he will speak at the Republican National Convention later this month, offering public support to Donald Trump at a time the presumptive Republican nominee has struggled to attract nationally-known Republicans for the role. The former Republican presidential candidate confirmed the speaking engagement to CNN affiliate WKOW-TV in Platteville, Wisconsin. Walker has been critical of Trump in the wake of his racially-tinged attacks on a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University, and had at one point threatened to withhold his support from his party’s presumptive nominee. But on Tuesday, he said a vote against Trump would be a vote for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. “I think there is a clear contrast,” Walker said. “For those who raise concerns like I just did about the judgment of Hillary Clinton in terms of not just those emails, but some of the other issues out there, really there’s only one alternative.”

• Newt Gingrich to Appear With Trump at Ohio Rally (Newsmax) Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will appear with Donald Trump at a campaign rally Wednesday, spurring speculation as Trump vets potential vice presidential candidates. National Review quoted a person involved with planning the event who also is close to the vetting process as saying the appearance will be a “trial balloon” to assess media coverage of the two as possible running mates. CNN producer Noah Gray tweeted that Gingrich, a close adviser to Trump and considered to be on his shortlist of running mate candidates, will appear with Trump in Ohio.

 

7am – A   INTERVIEW — TOM FITTON – President of JUDICIAL WATCH

Judicial Watch Statement on Decision by FBI Director James Comey Not to Recommend Indictment of Hillary Clinton

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding the decision by Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James B. Comey that the Department of Justice not indict former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the disclosure of classified information on her non-state.gov email:

 FBI Director James Comey detailed Hillary Clinton’s massive destruction of government records and grossly negligent handling of classified information.  Frankly, there’s a disconnect between Comey’s devastating findings and his weak recommendation not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.  Federal prosecutors, independent of politics, need to consider whether to pursue the potential violations of law confirmed by the FBI.

    Judicial Watch helped break open the Clinton email scandal and, in the meantime, will independently continue its groundbreaking litigation and investigation.

7am – B   Celebrity News

• At this rate, Tom, the only thing you’re going to be licensed to kill . . . is your credibility (Piers Morgan) (DailyMail) Oh Tom. Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, TOM. What the hell were you thinking????? My grandmother used to say there were three things to always be wary of in a man: an inability to pronounce the letter ‘R’, a large bundle of keys hanging from a belt, and the simultaneous wearing of white socks and black shoes. To which I’m fairly sure she would have added: ‘Sporting a T-shirt and tattoo proclaiming your love for the woman in your life.’ I’ve been firmly in Camp Swift-Hiddleston since news first broke of their unlikely liaison three weeks ago. Taylor’s one of my favourite entertainers, combining sublime talent with a thoroughly engaging personality. Tom’s a brilliant actor and from what I’ve seen of him on talk shows and red carpets, a very charming chap. Together, they make sweet A-list romantic music and I have ferociously contested all efforts by more cynical journalist colleagues to categorise their paparazzi-fuelled fling as some kind of PR stunt. But even my faith in the purity of Cupid’s bow is taking a bit of a dent this morning.
• Miley Cyrus Shows Off Ring on Fourth of July Date With Liam Hemsworth, Gets New Puppy (ETOnline)  Despite ending their engagement in September 2013, the couple has been spending a lot of time together since January, with the 23-year-old singer’s ring fueling speculation that the wedding plans are back on. Meanwhile, Miley’s four-legged family grew by one more! On Friday, the pop star introduced an adorable new beagle, Barbie, to her already robust pack of pets.

7am – C         Starbucks prices to increase, and no one’s happy about it (AOL) Apparently, it’s happening again. Brace yourselves. The prices of prized Starbucks coffee is going up, and of course, no one is happy about it. And it’s not even something we can (mentally or financially) prep for. In a recent press statement, Starbucks announced that there was a computer glitch that overcharged its customers. Even worse than the 30 cent mistake is that the increase will be permanent, they revealed. It’s an eminent change — the company simply enacted the price change prematurely. But it’s going to happen in one week. July 12 is doomsday.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – KT MCFARLAND – Fox News National Security Analyst

• Her thoughts on National Security Concerns regarding Comey’s Statements
• Also what does she think of the rise of terror attacks in recent weeks?

Hillary Clinton News

• Dershowitz: Aides Involved in Email Scandal Likely Won’t Get Security Clearance in Clinton WH (Mediaite) Alan Dershowitz said today that one potential consequence of the Hillary Clinton email scandal is that her aides involved in the scandal might be kept out of her administration as a consequences. Dershowitz today told Newsmax TV host Steve Malzberg that Comey pretty much put a pin in any hopes that there would be any charges brought forward where Clinton herself is concerned.
• Trump: Clinton Decision “Miscarriage Of Justice,” Showed “If She’s Not Dishonest, She’s Incompetent” (Real Clear Politics) Donald Trumps reacts to the FBI’s decision not to recommend prosecution for Hillary Clinton with Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday’s broadcast of the Factor on the FOX News Channel: DONALD TRUMP: It was certainly surprising especially in the middle of the talk when he talked about all the mistakes that she made. She made great mistakes and it sounded to me like there was no choice but to convict or to go to some form of very harsh punishment and they didn’t do that and I can tell you 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…    My problem is that I know people in the FBI. I have such respect for the FBI that I just don’t understand what happened here. Everybody knows, everybody realizes, I spoke to many, many lawyers as you have and you’ve had them on your show and you’ve read about it and everybody knows she’s extremely guilty. And they really said she was guilty today and then they said we’re not going to prosecute. Then you remember what happened to General Petraeus and other people and they suffered tremendous consequences for what they did…
• Megyn Kelly Tears Into Hillary Clinton’s Email Excuses: She Told Us ‘A Bunch of Nonsense!’ (Mediaite) Megyn Kelly started her show tonight with a pretty blistering juxtaposition of all the claims Hillary Clinton made about her emails with FBI Director James Comey debunking each one of them. Kelly ran the gamut from Clinton claiming she neither sent nor received classified email to her claim it “was permitted,” and somewhat skeptically brought up how she wasn’t charged. Brit Hume said that what Hume did was “blow up her own network of lies.” Kelly agreed with Comey’s point that this case is unlike others that were prosecuted in the past, but still said the “recitation of the lies” is a problem.”
• Trump: Bernie Just Lost The FBI Primary; Today Proves He Was Right About The Rigged System (Real Clear Politics) Donald Trump comments on the end of what he called the “FBI Primary,” saying that Bernie Sanders has so far refused to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination in hopes that Clinton might be indicted. He says that the FBI’s recommendation not to indict proves Sanders was right when he said the Democratic primary was “rigged.” “Today is the best evidence ever that we have seen that our system is totally, absolutely rigged,” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina. “It’s rigged,” Trump said. “And I used that term nationally when I was running in the Republican primaries, and I was the first to use it, and then all of a sudden it became a hot term and everyone was using the word rigged, rigged, rigged. But if you remember, I won Louisiana. And I didn’t get enough delegate, what happened? Places like Colorado, which was so good to me, but all of a sudden we find out that they don’t have the vote… I’ll be honest, if I didn’t win in landslides, I wouldn’t be standing here. You would be watching some politician who will lose to Hillary. “I learned about the rigged system really fast. All of a sudden, Bernie started using it and now everyone talks about the system being rigged,” he said.

7am – E         More trouble in Rio: Study may have found super bacteria in venues for #Rio2016 (USA Today) Sailors and health experts have voiced concerns about the pollution issues in the waters that encompass the Rio Olympics’ sailing venue. Boats are turning brown in Guanabara Bay, something sailors blame on an oil slick that has entered the waters. Not so apparent is another potentially more dangerous issue: so-called “super bacteria” in the waterway that is resistant to antibiotics. “These bacteria should not be present in these waters,” Renata Picao, a professor at Rio’s federal university whose study found the super bug told Scientific American. “They should not be present in the sea.” Researchers believe the bacteria entered the bay from raw sewage that has flowed in from tributaries from not only thousands of households in Rio, but also hospitals where the super bug is generally found. Issues with Guanabara Bay along with surrounding beaches were the studied by researchers as part of two studies, which took samples in 2013 and 2014. The 2016 Olympics will be in Rio. As scheduled. Now just hope for the best.

Lady Gaga ‘Finally’ Gets Her Driver’s License: ‘I’m Free’ (People) Lady Gaga is now a licensed driver. After “years of driving with a learner’s permit” and “an adult present,” the 30-year-old singer and actress passed her road test in California, she shared on Friday. “Thelma and Puhleaaaze,” Gaga captioned an Instagram shot of her and her friend, explaining her new license. “I’M FREE. Rollin’ with the homies,” she added. On Saturday, Gaga took to Instagram to show some of the fun behind her new authorization. And she just might be the only person to look thrilled to be inside the DMV. “Me at the DMV,” Gaga wrote in one pic, which shows the blonde-haired beauty dressed in an oversized grey blazer sitting at a desk in an empty classroom “SCHOOL’S OUT,” she captioned the snap. Another snap has the Golden Globe winner alongside her white Mercedes-Benz praying to the ground after passing her road test, “Praise him” she captioned the shot, which also shows her test administrator looking on.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — SHANNEN COFFIN –  is a contributing editor of National Review. He was a senior lawyer in the George W. Bush Justice Department and White House.

• FBI Director Comey Is Wrong: The Case for Prosecuting Hillary Clinton Is Strong by Shannen W. Coffin The FBI built a solid case for prosecuting Hillary Clinton’s criminal misdeeds — but then inexplicably decided not to recommend her prosecution. Like Andy McCarthy, I worked with Jim Comey at the Department of Justice. Jim has always been very cordial and accommodating to me, including supporting some charity fundraising I have done. He is not a close personal friend, but he is someone I worked closely with at times, and have always regarded warmly. With that said, it is clear to me that Director Comey blinked under pressure. Comey’s Tuesday morning press conference read like the opening statement for the prosecution. He dismantled several of the lies that Hillary’s camp has propounded over the last 16 months. As to her claim that there were never any classified materials or classified markings in her e-mail, he concluded that 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains contained information that was classified at the time they were sent. Eight of those e-mail chains were classified top secret and seven contained special-access (or “SCI”) material, the most sensitive secrets our government protects. Some of those classified e-mails — albeit a “very small number” (the exact number is undisclosed) — “bore markings that indicated the presence of classified information.” With respect to the SCI material, Comey reasoned that “any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about the matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.” None of these e-mails “should have been on any kind of unclassified system.”

8am – B/C     INTERVIEW — REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R-VA) — House Judiciary Committee Chairman

• Paul Ryan: House GOP will ask Comey to testify over FBI’s Clinton email probe.  (CNN) House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday night House Republicans would ask FBI Director James Comey to testify on Capitol Hill about his recommendation to not prosecute Hillary Clinton for her private email server use. Ryan told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly that the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, would call upon Comey to divulge more information on how he could square his scalding of Clinton’s decisions with his suggestion that she is not legally culpable.
• Goodlatte Presses for Information on FBI’s Investigation into Hillary Clinton (PRESS RELEASE) Washington, D.C.  – House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) today issued the following statement on the FBI’s decision to not recommend criminal charges against former State Department Secretary Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified information through private email servers and sent a letter to FBI Director Comey raising concerns about the Bureau’s decision. “I am concerned that despite finding Secretary Clinton acted with extreme carelessness and there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, the FBI is recommending no criminal charges against former Secretary Hillary Clinton. This defies logic. The American people expect government officials to abide by the law just like everyone else. The fact that Secretary Clinton ignored the law and faces no consequences for doing so diminishes the American people’s trust in their government.

8am – D         INTERVIEW — REP. MIKE ROGERS – Former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and former Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its Chicago office, specializing in organized crime and public corruption, 1989–1994

• His thoughts on National Security Concerns regarding Comey’s Statements
• As a former FBI agent, what did he make of Comey’s comments?

8am – E         Matt Damon speaks out about gun control in Jason Bourne interview (EW) “I wish we could be sensible like [Australia],’ the actor says Jason Bourne is getting tough on guns. Asked to comment on gun control while promoting his new film, Jason Bourne, in Sydney, Australia, Matt Damon told The Sydney Morning Herald he wishes America would learn from the land down under. “You guys did it here in one fell swoop and I wish that could happen in my country, but it’s such a personal issue for people that we cannot talk about it sensibly. We just can’t,” he said. “People get so emotional that even when you make a suggestion about not selling AK-47s to people on terror watch lists, that’s a non-starter. I don’t know what needs to happen.”