Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives to take part in a roundtable of young Nevadans discussing immigration, as she campaigns for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, at Rancho High School in Las Vegas, Nevada May 5, 2015.
Democrats complained on Friday that a congressional panel probing the 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, appeared to be putting off calling Hillary Clinton to testify, prolonging a partisan attack on her.
Former Secretary of State Clinton has been hounded by the Benghazi inquiry. A Republican-led House of Representatives investigatory panel set up last year is digging deeper as Clinton ramps up her 2016 campaign for the White House.
One sentence in an interim progress report released Friday by the committee's majority Republicans, Democrats said, suggested that Clinton would not be called to testify to the panel in May, as had been anticipated.
"The committee will call Secretary Clinton to testify once it is satisfied that all the relevant information has been provided by both the State Department and her," the sentence in the interim report said.
It made no reference to the possibility of scheduling a hearing the week of May 18 that the panel's chairman, Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, had included in an April 23 letter to her lawyer David Kendall.
"At every turn, the Select Committee comes up with a new excuse to further delay its work and then blames its glacial pace on someone else," the Benghazi panel's senior Democrat, Representative Elijah Cummings, complained in a statement.
He said the year-old panel had nothing to show for its probe "other than a partisan attack against Secretary Clinton and her campaign for president."
Republican sources said an announcement of when Clinton would testify could come next week, after lawmakers return from a spring recess and have a chance to discuss it.
Gowdy has repeatedly denied that the committee's efforts constitute a partisan attack on Clinton.
Four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens were killed when militants stormed U.S. facilities in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11, 2012.
In his letter last month to Clinton's lawyer Kendall, Gowdy said he wanted Clinton to answer questions at two public hearings about Benghazi and her use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.
Gowdy suggested the week of May 18 for the first appearance, with the second to follow no later than June 18, with the specific dates to be coordinated with Kendall.
But Kendall has rejected that plan, saying one appearance from Clinton was enough.
U.S. Congressman says engagement with China has diminished under Xi
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks with U.S. State Secretary John Kerry (R) during a lunch banquet in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing November 12, 2014.
A United States Congressman told reporters that China's engagement with U.S. lawmakers has diminished under President Xi Jinping in a marked change from the policy of his predecessors.
He also said that Chinese and Hong Kong officials were looking for a scapegoat when they blamed last years' pro-democracy protests on "foreign forces".
"I think it has diminished," Congressman Matt Salmon said of China's engagement with U.S. lawmakers under President Xi. "This president has a whole different philosophy. In fact I think if anything, this president is moving in the other direction, (away) from constructive engagement from the past two presidents."
Salmon is chairman of the subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific under the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The Republican representative from Arizona is in the middle of his fifth term in Congress.
Salmon was in Hong Kong as the head of a U.S. Congressional delegation, which also visited Vietnam and discussed political, trade and economic issues.
Salmon said he had not been contacted by anyone from the Chinese Embassy since he became chairman of the Asia Pacific subcommittee.
"It's kind of strange because every other embassy in the region has reached out to me, and their ambassadors have asked for an audience with me, every one of them except for China," he said.
The United States and China are the world's two biggest economies. Chinese President Xi is scheduled to make his first state visit to the United States in September as the countries seek to ease tensions over issues ranging from trade and human rights to Internet hacking and theft.
Salmon said he and his delegation had met Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and told him the United States had not played any role in last year's pro-democracy protests, in which tens of thousands of people occupied major highways for two and a half months to demand open nominations in the city's next chief executive election.
Chinese and Hong Kong officials have blamed "foreign forces" for instigating the unrest, which Salmon said was "a convenient way to scapegoat someone else".
He added, "It kind of shifts the responsibility away from reality ... The reality is that there is growing sentiment in this country toward self-determination - not necessarily independence, but autonomy."
A statement from Leung's office on Friday evening said he had met the delegation to discuss Hong Kong's role as an economic and trade link between the United States, mainland China and Asia and the Hong Kong government's proposal for electoral reform.
The proposal reflects a decision by China's parliament last August to allow a vote in Hong Kong, but only between pre-screened candidates.
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, returned to Chinese Communist Party rule in 1997 by the British under a "one country, two systems" framework, which gave it a separate judiciary and some autonomy from the mainland but reserved ultimate authority for Beijing.
Hong Kong lawmakers are due to vote on the government's electoral proposal in late June or early July. The pan-democrats, who have a veto majority, have vowed to block it.
'Best for last': Obama visits South Dakota, his 50th U.S. state
President Barack Obama crossed the last state off his presidential bucket list on Friday with a stop in South Dakota, the final of the 50 U.S. states he has visited since taking office in 2009.
Fresh from a trip to Oregon, where he advocated for a trade agreement with Asian countries during a speech at Nike Inc's headquarters, Obama made a stop in Watertown, South Dakota, to give a commencement address at Lake Area Technical Institute, considered one of the top community colleges in the nation.
Obama has made boosting community colleges one of his key domestic policy priorities.
South Dakotans did not seem upset that the president waited until the final quarter of his presidency to come to their state.
"We knew he was saving the best for last," said South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard ahead of Obama's remarks.
T-shirts with "Saved the Best for Last" and Obama's picture on them were available for sale at a local store.
"I have now been to all 50 states as president, and I was saving the best for last," Obama said.
"To the other 49, I hope you take no offense," he quipped.
Obama went to South Dakota as a presidential candidate in 2008 but had not been back since.
There could be political reasons for that. The state is overwhelmingly Republican and has not voted for a Democrat in a presidential election in decades.
U.S. President Barack Obama arrives aboard Air Force One at Watertown Regional Airport in Watertown, South Dakota May 8, 2015.
Warren 'absolutely wrong' on trade pact threat to Dodd-Frank: Obama
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks at the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation's 2015 Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference in Washington, April 13, 2015.
President Barack Obama dismissed a liberal senator's warning that "fast-track" trade authorization being considered by Congress could weaken U.S. financial regulations he helped put in place after the 2007-2008 crisis that triggered the Great Recession.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, long a champion of stricter rules for Wall Street, said in a Tuesday speech that fast-track authority to push through a sweeping Pacific trade pact could be used to roll back the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
"She's absolutely wrong," Obama said in a Friday interview with Yahoo News that was posted on Yahoo.com on Saturday.
"Think about the logic of that. The notion that I had this massive fight with Wall Street to make sure that we don't repeat what happened in 2007 and 2008," Obama said. "And then I sign a provision that would unravel it? I'd have to be pretty stupid. And it doesn't make any sense."
The 2010 financial reform law is considered one of the Democratic president's signature legislative achievements.
Obama dismissed Warren's concerns as hypothetical, telling Yahoo: "There is no evidence that this could ever be used in this way. This is pure speculation."The U.S. Senate will begin debate next week on legislation granting Obama the fast-track negotiating authority that is key to completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Under fast-track, Obama can complete negotiations on the 12-country free trade deal knowing Congress can only approve or reject the measure, and not impose changes.
Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, on Tuesday warned that trade policy was "an overlooked threat to the safety of our financial markets."
She said fast-track authority would reduce Congress's ability to block any trade deals cut by any president over the next six years.
Noting Republican efforts to roll back Dodd-Frank, Warren said: "A Republican president could easily use a future trade deal to override our domestic financial rules. And this is hardly a hypothetical possibility."
Before her election to the Senate in 2012, Warren played a major role in cleaning up the wreckage left by the 2007-2008 financial crisis. She was the architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was formed after the debacle.
At Christian University, Jeb Bush seeks support from evangelicals
Probable U.S. Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush delivers the commencement address at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia May 9, 2015.
Republican Jeb Bush sought to bolster his support among evangelical Christians on Saturday in remarks at a Christian university, accusing liberals of trying to undermine religious freedom.
The potential presidential candidate in the November 2016 election gave the commencement speech to 34,000 people in the football stadium at Liberty University, a school founded by evangelical leader Jerry Falwell.
The former Florida governor, who is competing with a variety of Republican rivals for support from the Christian right, cited a series of cases that, he said, showed religious freedom was under assault and considered by some to be an "obstacle to enlightened thought."
One was an attempt by President Barack Obama's administration to require businesses to include contraception coverage in their employees' health insurance as part of Obama's signature healthcare law.
The decision was challenged in court by two companies owned by Christian families who felt that providing contraception violated their religious beliefs. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the businesses last June in a case known as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.
"The progressive political agenda is ready for its next great leap forward, and religious people or churches are getting in the way. Our friends on the Left like to view themselves as the agents of change and reform, and you and I are supposed to just get with the program," Bush said.
Another example he cited was a subpoena sent to five pastors last year by the city of Houston asking them to turn over speeches or sermons related to Houston's non-discrimination ordinance. After an outcry, the city dropped the subpoenas.
He said "fashionable opinion" has a problem with Christians and the only proper response is "a forthright defense" of the constitutional right to freedom of religion.
Bush's appearance allowed him to demonstrate to evangelicals his deeply held Catholic faith and reiterate his opposition to abortion.
He is held in suspicion by some conservatives, evangelicals included, for moderate positions on immigration reform and Common Core national education standards.
Bush, whose father and brother both served as president, gave a strong hint as to his plans in saying he was happy to meet Jonathan Falwell, son of Jerry Falwell and brother of Liberty president Jerry Falwell Jr.
"His father used to be president, and then his brother became president. Somehow, I don’t know what it was, we really hit it off," Bush chuckled.
Competition for the Christian right is active. Senator Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and former Texas Governor Rick Perry are all competing for evangelical support seen as critical in Iowa and South Carolina, which will hold two early contests ahead of next year's November election.
Republican candidates talk tough on Islamic State, offer few specifics
Seeking an edge on the national security issue, Republican presidential hopefuls on Saturday seized on the attack in Texas this week for which Islamic State claimed responsibility as an example of the threat they say the militant group poses to the United States.
“It’s not a matter of if another attempt is made on American soil, it is when,” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said at a gathering of declared or potential contenders in South Carolina. “I want a leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us.”
Two men were fatally shot on Sunday after opening fire with assault rifles at a heavily guarded exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in the Dallas suburb of Garland, Texas. The Syria- and Iraq-based Islamic State claimed responsibility, but offered no proof. U.S. officials have said they doubted the militant group's direct involvement.
Several Republican hopefuls who came to Greenville to address conservative voters in the early primary-voting state referred to the Texas attack in their comments.
But for Republicans, the struggle against Islamic State presents a challenge and a conundrum: How to talk tough about taking on the militants without rattling the nerves of voters worried about the country being plunged into yet another extended war in the Middle East.
Walker, like many of his fellow speakers, was short on specifics about how his approach to combating Islamic State would differ significantly from that of President Barack Obama. The president has sought to slow the militants' advance by providing support to Iraqi forces on the ground, backed by an air campaign by Washington and its allies in the region. He has ruled out using U.S. troops in large numbers.
Obama's request in February that Congress authorize the use of military force against Islamic State has made little headway. His fellow Democrats worry about getting involved in another Middle East war, while the Republicans who control Congress want stronger measures than what Obama proposed.
EMERGING AS A TOP ISSUE
The situation would seem to offer Republicans a political opportunity. Recent polls have shown national security and the fear of terrorism emerging as a top issue in the race in a way it did not in 2008 and 2012.
In a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released this week, voters listed national security as their second priority, behind the economy. For Republicans, the issue ranked first. The fight against Islamic State and what Republican speakers described as a radical Islamic ideology dominated the discussion on Saturday.
That meant plenty of tough talk, but little in the way of concrete proposals. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was one of the few speakers to mention deploying U.S ground forces to Iraq and Syria.
“The idea we would rule out ground troops is ridiculous,” he said in an interview, although adding: “Nobody is saying we’re sending in ground troops today.”
More typical was the rhetoric of Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania, who suggested the Obama administration was pursuing a half-hearted strategy in the fight against Islamic State. He said the United States should “load the bombers up and bomb them back to the 7th century.”
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has announced his candidacy, quoted the popular film "Taken" in describing his strategy against the militants. “We will look for you, we will find you, and we will kill you,” he said.
In a state where evangelicals comprise a significant and influential share of the Republican electorate, Walker, Rubio and Carly Fiorina, who announced her candidacy this week, referred to the beheadings of Christians by Islamic State.
“When I see Christians from Egypt and elsewhere around the world shot or beheaded just because of their faith, that’s something I feel right here, you feel in your heart and your soul,” said Walker, who has yet to enter the race.
Several potential contenders lambasted Obama for his refusal to describe the militants as adherents to a radical religious code and painted the conflict as one comparable to America’s struggle against German Nazism and Soviet Communism.
“The great issue of our time is a battle between the Western values of freedom and this totalitarian worldview of Islamic fanatics,” said former Texas Governor Rick Perry.
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) speaks during the Freedom Summit in Greenville, South Carolina May 9, 2015.
Presidential candidate Fiorina defends Hewlett-Packard tenure
Former Hewlett-Packard Co Chief Executive and Republican U.S. presidential candidate Carly Fiorina speaks during the TechCrunch Disrupt event in New York May 5, 2015.
(Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is defending her record as a corporate executive after a critic took over a website with her name on it to highlight job losses at Hewlett-Packard Co while she served as CEO.
Fiorina, who announced her candidacy on Monday in the 2016 race, said she would run on her record at Hewlett-Packard, but added in reference to the carlyfiorina.org website: "Obviously, would I have preferred that we bought up every conceivable domain name? Yes."
Visitors to carlyfiorina.org came across the message, "Carly Fiorina failed to register this domain. So I'm using it to tell you how many people she laid off at Hewlett-Packard."
The website showed sad-face emoticons to symbolize what it said were 30,000 job losses at the tech company for which she served as chief executive from 1999 to 2005.
"When you managed through a technology recession, every technology company - every one - laid people off. It's a terrible decision to have to make," Fiorina said in an interview taped on Monday with Katie Couric of Yahoo News.
"But sometimes there are tough decisions that must be made to strengthen a company for the long haul, which we clearly made. ... So it was a tough time I managed through. But we transformed a company from failing to succeeding," Fiorina added.
Fiorina said a quote attributed to her on the carlyfiorina.org website that "I wish I would have done them all faster" was taken out of context, and that when she decided to fire an executive "a lot of people came up to me and said, 'I wish you'd done that sooner.'"
She also gave her account of her departure from Hewlett-Packard as the company dealt with a $19 billion merger with then-rival computer maker Compaq.
"I was fired in a boardroom brawl over a two-week period at Hewlett-Packard because we had board members who were leaking confidential information," Fiorina said. " ... I know that when you're leading - which means you're challenging the status quo - you're going to make some enemies along the way. I made some enemies in the boardroom. I'm not embarrassed by it."
U.S. presidential hopeful Sanders: Break up the big banks
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) holds a news conference after he announced his candidacy for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, on Capitol Hill in Washington April 30, 2015.
(Reuters) - Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist U.S. senator who has launched a bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, said on Tuesday he will introduce a bill to break up the biggest banks, a position far to the left of the party's front runner, Hillary Clinton.
Calls for Wall Street's largest firms to be cut down were numerous after taxpayers spent billions of dollars to prevent the financial system from collapse during the 2007-09 financial crisis, but they have since gradually died down.
Sanders faces long odds against Clinton's fund-raising might, and his views might help position the former secretary of state and first lady more as a moderate and buttress her efforts to attract money from banks' deep pockets.
Under the Sanders proposal, regulators on the existing Financial Stability Oversight Council would compile a list of institutions that are 'too big to fail' and implicitly rely on government support during a crisis.
"If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist," Sanders said in a statement.
Within a year of enactment of the bill, the Treasury secretary would be required to break up these firms. They would also be prohibited from using any customer funds for risky or speculative activities on financial markets.
Sanders, an independent from Vermont, launched his long-shot bid last week, highlighting his fight against authorizing the Iraq war, which Clinton voted to authorize as a senator, and putting pressure on her political agenda from the left.
Sanders is not alone in his view that large banks still pose an undue risk to the economy after causing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a highly visible Democrat from Massachusetts, also wants to break up big banks. Among regulators, Tom Hoenig, second-in-command at the powerful Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, wants the same thing.
Still, the bill stands a near-zero chance of becoming law. Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, also backed the bill, but it has no Republican support. Republicans hold the majority in both houses of Congress.
President Barack Obama is also opposed to making any changes to the 2010 Dodd-Frank law aimed at reforming Wall Street.
On Clinton's age, Republican rivals imply -- but never say -- she's old
(Reuters) - Her campaign barely three weeks old, Hillary Clinton already has been attacked by Republicans on everything from donations to her family's charitable foundation, to her tenure as secretary of state and her ties to Wall Street. But her rivals, and the political action committees that support them, are treading more carefully on one incendiary subject: her age.
If elected in November 2016, Clinton would be, at 69, the second-oldest person to take the presidential oath for the first time, behind only Ronald Reagan, who turned 70 weeks after being sworn into office in 1981.
Questions of health and fitness for the presidency dogged two former candidates of a similar age, Bob Dole in the 1996 election and John McCain in 2008, each of whom was 71 at this point in the race. Time magazine featured Dole on the cover asking whether he was "too old" for the job. McCain was so determined to show that he was healthy that he often put in back-breaking campaign days.
"I do think age is an issue in a presidential campaign," said Steve Schmidt, who was McCain’s campaign manager. "There is a thin line between seasoned and decrepit."
But several Republican campaigns that seem best positioned to exploit it don't want to touch the issue - at least directly. That's a shift from just a few months ago, when presidential hopefuls Senator Rand Paul, 52, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, 47, explicitly referenced Clinton’s age as a possible disqualifier, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell likened her to a cast member of the hit TV show “The Golden Girls,” which featured four older women living together.
"It’s a rigorous physical ordeal, I think, to be able to campaign for the presidency," Paul said in November, referring to Clinton's age. Now, however, Paul’s presidential campaign doesn’t want to talk about the issue. It declined further comment. As did Walker’s political action committee, even though last fall, he, too, noted that he could run for president "20 years from now" and be the same age Clinton is today.
Campaign aides to Paul, Walker and Senator Marco Rubio, 43, as well as Republican strategists, told Reuters there was little appetite in the party at the moment for a direct assault on Clinton on the issues of her age and fitness for office, even after a 2012 fall that gave her a concussion and caused a potentially life-threatening blood clot.
Similarly, anti-Clinton political action committees such as American Crossroads, America Rising, and Citizens United said they had no plans to launch ads centered on her age.
POLL SHOWS DEMOCRATS UNFAZED
"It’s unwise to attack a political opponent based on her immutable characteristics, like race, gender and age," said Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway. She said she has met with at least five Republican presidential campaigns seeking her services and none of them has indicated they want to go after Clinton on issues involving her age.
With Clinton swamped by questions about foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and criticism of her use of a private email server while at the State Department, there is also simply no reason at the moment to engage in an attack that could be more divisive than beneficial, Republican strategists said.
They fear that highlighting Clinton’s age could alienate women voters whom Republicans need to be competitive in next year’s general election.
Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said women older than 50 would likely comprise the largest bloc of voters in 2016.
There is little evidence that Democrats and independent voters are concerned about having another president in their 70s. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this month showed that Clinton’s age would not influence how 67 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of independents voted in November 2016.
And rather than downplay her age, Clinton in recent campaign events in Iowa and New Hampshire embraced her role as a grandmother, striking sympathetic notes with other older women in the room about the responsibility of raising a grandchild.
Supporters have also sought to dismiss any concerns about her age as sexist, noting that she’s the same age as Mitt Romney when he ran four years ago. Romney largely avoided any protracted discussion about his health.
IT'S A GENERATIONAL THING
While eschewing direct attacks, some of the Republican presidential hopefuls have found other ways to strongly hint that Clinton's age should be an issue for voters. They have repackaged the issue as "generational" and suggested she is a product of the politics of the 20th Century. That argument will grow more vivid should Clinton face a candidate who could be a generation younger than her in the general election.
“When you look at Hilary Clinton’s age, it becomes an issue in a general election if she’s running against a 40-something new face as opposed to Governor Bush,” said Schmidt. Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, is 62.
Rubio, a quarter century younger than Clinton, referred to her as a "leader from yesterday" when he announced his candidacy last month.
"We welcome the contrast (with Clinton)," said a top adviser to Rubio. "This election is going to be about the future."
Clinton's campaign declined to comment on the various statements by the Republican hopefuls, referring questions to Correct the Record, a rapid-response operation run by the pro-Clinton group American Bridge. A spokeswoman, Adrienne Watson, said it was Clinton's rivals, not her, who were behind the times.
"Republican politicians are stuck in the 90s - the 1890s," Watson said. "I'm sure all Americans, Republicans included, would appreciate it if Republican leaders would join (Clinton) in talking about our future."
She saw Rubio's comments as a coded attack on Clinton's age.
"Marco Rubio basically disqualifies himself to be president when he diminishes any American for being too young or old or anything else," Watson said.
BILL CLINTON'S PLAYBOOK
Yet Rubio's approach is similar to the one employed by Clinton’s husband, Bill, in his reelection campaign against Dole in 1996.
"I don't think Senator Dole is too old to be president,” Clinton said at one debate. “It's the age of his ideas that I question."
Dick Morris, who served as Bill Clinton’s campaign manager, said it was a subtle enough way to remind voters of the age difference between the two candidates.
"We obviously couldn’t attack age directly because of older voters," Morris told Reuters. "What we did is adopt a whole strategy based on issues that would summon the memories and ideas of age without articulating it."
Dole released his medical records in 1995 to assuage concerns about his age. But the damage control was not entirely successful: he mistakenly called the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team “Brooklyn,” and he tumbled off a stage during a rally.
Hillary Clinton, too, had what her husband seemed to term a “senior” moment in 2008 when she erroneously claimed she had come under sniper fire while on a trip to Bosnia as first lady.
Bill Clinton blamed the episode on his wife being exhausted, adding that her critics, “when they’re 60, they’ll forget something when they’re tired at 11 at night, too.”
John Paul Filo/CBS(NEW YORK) — Michelle Obama brought a special surprise with her when she made her fifth and final appearance on CBS' Late Show with David Letterman on Thursday night.Letterman's interview with the first lady ended with Obama introducing a performance by the United States Marine Band.
She told Letterman, who steps down as Late Show host on May 20, "You've been just a tremendous support to me, my family, but mostly to our men and women in uniform and our veterans."
Earlier in the program, Obama suggested that she and Letterman can hang out once she and President Barack Obama leave the White House in early 2017. She quipped, "I would help you raise your children. I could help you through those dark times."
The first lady noted that the older of her two daughters, 16-year-old Malia, is now driving and has run errands. She added that Malia has a curfew, though it's flexible depending on whether she's attending a party. She acknowledged that boys attend the same parties as Malia, but her husband "is handling that OK." - See more at: http://www.wadk.com/politics-news#sthash.CfFuzaLu.dpuf
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie Political Ally David Wildstein to Plead Guilty in Bridge Probe, Sources Say
A key figure in the corruption scandal that threatens New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s political career is poised to plead guilty in federal court today, sources told ABC News.
Word of David Wildstein’s expected guilty plea was confirmed this morning by officials familiar with the situation, sources said.
The plea of the former Port Authority executive and one-time political blogger, who went to high school with Christie, would mark a dramatic step in the saga swirling around Christie.
The corruption probe that started with unannounced closings of access lanes at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 has, according to some, all but hobbled Christie as he seeks the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.
Wildstein was Christie’s enforcer and go-to guy at the Port Authority, which runs the New York City-area airports as well as the bridges and tunnels that connect New York and New Jersey. According to emails that were revealed in January 2014, Wildstein shut down two out of three local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge at the direction of Christie’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly. Their alleged goal was political payback against the mayor of Fort Lee -- where the bridge is anchored in New Jersey -- because the mayor would not endorse Christie’s re-election bid.
"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," Kelly wrote in an August 2013 email.
With those words disclosed, what had been a local political brush fire engulfed the pugnacious New Jersey governor. He fired Kelly and cast aside Bill Stepien, the man who ran his political organization and was expected to helm Christie’s impending presidential campaign.
ABC News
PHOTO: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks with ABC News' Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview on March 27, 2014.
Attorneys hired by Christie soon determined that the governor had no role in the scandal. But that did nothing to quiet matters.
In December, Christie himself was interrogated for more than seven hours by federal investigators probing the bridge scandal. He has denied having any role in the lane closings and has repeatedly said he did nothing wrong.
Last year, the governor told ABC’s Diane Sawyer he didn’t even “inspire” his aides and loyalists to shut down lanes to the world’s busiest bridge.
"This is not something that I think I inspired, and to the extent that any of them thought that this was acceptable conduct, then I fell short," Christie said at the time.
The governor also said that he does not believe the bridge affair was even done on his behalf.
"I don’t believe it was for me," he said.
Spartanburg Herald Journal/AP Photo
PHOTO: Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey show support for each other at a drive-in restaurant in Spartanburg, S.C., on Nov. 2, 2014.
The New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI have spent 16 months investigating the September 2013 lane closings, which caused unprecedented traffic jams for the better part of a week and crippled Fort Lee.
The scandal thrust Christie and his inner circle into a crisis first marked by a marathon news conference and then two months of dodging questions on the incident. Christie has since returned to public view, but his popularity among voters is at all-time lows and most observers see his chances of winning the GOP nomination as nearly non-existent.
In addition to the federal investigation in New Jersey, Christie and his aides are still facing continued scrutiny from a series of other probes being conducted by the Manhattan District Attorney in New York City, the New Jersey State Legislature and the Port Authority Inspector General's Office over the land closures. The results of the FBI probe could also be turned over to state prosecutors in the event they want to file their own charges in connection with the lane closing.
Ehrenreich accuses Smit of being racist
Independent Newspapers.Cosatu Provincial Secretary for the Western Cape Tony Ehrenreich. Picture: David Ritchie.Cape Town - Accusations of racism flew during Thursday’s council meeting, just minutes after the acting mayor outlined the progress of the City of Cape Town’s “Inclusive City” campaign.
During his mayoral speech, Brett Herron said the city had spent the past five weeks in “intensive engagement” with sector bodies and the community about ways to deal with racism.
“We wanted to understand, by asking as many people as possible, what we can do to make the business of fighting racism part of the everyday business of government and of other institutions.”
But minutes later, Tony Ehrenreich of the ANC accused the Speaker, Dirk Smit, of being a racist.
Outraged, Smit asked Ehrenreich repeatedly to withdraw the remark.
Eventually, he asked Ehrenreich to leave the chamber.
As the DA councillors applauded, Ehrenreich said: “Are you not a racist?” Smit responded, saying: “I’m not a racist.”
Ehrenreich agreed to withdraw the remark for the purpose of the meeting only.
Later in the meeting, the ANC’s chief whip, Xolani Sotashe, said the city council was an evil organisation characterised by satanism.
He also accused the DA of being “political prostitutes”.
DA councillor Belinda Walker immediately asked: “Who among us are murderers and satanists? It would be helpful to know.”
To which Sotashe replied, “All those who perpetuated the injustices of the past.”
Herron said: “The mayor’s racism campaign, and the success of it, has touched a nerve with the ANC.
“The party’s comments were an attempt to trivialise the campaign,” he added. “The ANC is making no contribution and (the party) is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the City of Cape Town.”
During his speech, Herron said the city therefore planned to hold diversity workshops between and among management and staff as part of its commitment to promoting rights.
The city would also allow Capetonians to complain about racism by contacting the mayor’s office directly via e-mail.
Other proposals include fighting racism on a scheduled basis in its various structures and displaying the city’s anti-racism message at all public events.
New Inspecting Judge for prison service
INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERSFile photo by Matthew JordaanCape Town - President Jacob Zuma on Thursday appointed Mr Justice Thembile Lewis Skweyiya as Inspecting Judge of Correctional Services.
The Presidency said in a statement that the president had appointed Skweyiya for a period of three years with effect from 1 May 2015 in terms of section 86 of the Correctional Services Act, 1998 (Act No. 111 of 1998).
“We wish the Honourable Justice Skweyiya well in the discharging of this very important responsibility for our country,” Zuma said in a statement.
R4.6bn for Nelson Mandela Bay housing
INDEPENDENT MEDIANational government would be pumping R4.6 billion rand over the next four years into fast-tracking housing delivery in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality as it takes over responsibility of the metro s human settlements function. File picture: Timothy BernardParliament, Cape Town – National government would be pumping R4.6 billion rand over the next four years into fast-tracking housing delivery in the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality as it takes over responsibility of the metro’s human settlements function, Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said on Thursday.
“We took a decision…in cabinet that the national department of human settlements, supported by the departmens of Treasury, department of COGTA (Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs) and the department of sanitation and water will be intervening in the Nelson Mandela municipality to take over the responsiblities of the division of human settlements there,” Sisulu said.
“We are experiencing grave difficulty there in our supply chain management and the delivery of housing and we’ve decided that we’re going to intervene and with the laws that govern human settlements and aligned with the constitutional provision section 100.”
The R4.6b would come from the human settlements grants, the urban settlements grant, the municipal water infrastructure grant, and the national skills funds.
“We are going to be building 6 000 houses in Bethalsdorp. We will be building 7000 houses in Kayamandi, 2200 houses in Walmer and 491 houses in Chatty,” she said.
The department would also be providing bulk services to some 15,700 residential sites earmarked for future development.
“This is the biggest intervention that government has had but we are also very excited about it because if it works we’ll be able to support municipalities…where they do not have the necessary resources or skills to do what they’re supposed to do,” Sisulu said.
The housing projects would also be used to create jobs in the area.
“We will be using our Housing Development Agency as the lead agency and hoping we would use to a very large extent the same method that is used by public works…that they use in creating public works projects.”
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