Joining Morning Joe for today's show are Howard Dean, Jonathan Capehart, Jeremy Peters, Joshua Green, Rep. Tom Cole, Wes Moore, Lawrence O’Donnell, Peter Baker, Jayne Miller, Joseph Stiglitz, Peter Neumann, Leigh Gallagher, Ronan Farrow and Suzanne Somers.
The Media Is Hyping A New, Unreleased Anti-Hillary Book. Here’s What It Really Says.
An upcoming book about the Clintons’ foreign donors has whipped the media into a frenzy. After presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) teased for weeks that the book contained scandalous revelations about Hillary Clinton’s actions in the State Department, many in the media are asserting its contents could “derail her campaign.”
Clinton Cash, by former Bush speechwriter and Breitbart.com contributor Peter Schweizer, is billed as a game-changer for Clinton’s candidacy, revealing that the Clinton State Department traded favors for big donations to the Clinton Foundation and speaking fees for Bill Clinton. “The author, Peter Schweizer, says he has evidence of a pay-to-play scheme,” Fox News’ Sean Hannity noted.
ThinkProgress obtained an advance copy of Clinton Cash, which will be released May 5. Schweizer makes clear that he does not intend to present a smoking gun, despite the media speculation. The book relies heavily on timing, stitching together the dates of donations to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton’s speaking fees with actions by the State Department.
Schweizer explains he cannot prove the allegations, leaving that up to investigative journalists and possibly law enforcement. “Short of someone involved coming forward to give sworn testimony, we don’t know what might or might not have been said in private conversations, the exact nature of the transition, or why people in power make the decision they do,” he writes. Later, he concludes, “We cannot ultimately know what goes on in their minds and ultimately provide the links between the money they took and the benefits that subsequently accrued to themselves, their friends, and their associates.”
Though Schweizer is unable to provide direct evidence that State Department actions were influenced by Clinton Foundation donations, he does raise questions about unsavory donors and possible conflicts of interest, regardless of whether or not they dictated Clinton’s policy.
The book alleges the Clinton Foundation has failed to disclose some of its donors, digging up Canadian tax records as evidence of a $2 million donation from the Fernwood Foundation that Schweizer says went unreported. He also says he found a $40,000 donation in the form of stocks from the Dattels Family Foundation that was listed on their website but not on the Clintons’ donor list.
Schweizer also zeroes in on some of the foundation’s voluntarily disclosed but somewhat shady donors, including the Lundin Group, a mining, oil and gas company that was investigated for war crimes in Sudan and has reportedly reaped massive profits in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. Lundin committed $100 million to the Clinton Foundation shortly after Hillary announced her presidential candidacy in 2007. Schweizer points to a 2006 law co-sponsored by Clinton and Obama, which gave the secretary of state powers to hold destabilizing forces in the DRC accountable, and notes that Clinton declined to employ those powers after Lundin’s donation.
Schweizer highlights another large donor to the Clinton Foundation, Mohammed al-Amoudi — Saudi Arabia’s second-richest man, who supposedly owed his fortune to his relationship with Ethiopia’s government. An Ethiopian American human rights group sent an open letter in 2009 to the Clinton Foundation and the Secretary of State’s Office warning that they believed Amoudi’s huge donation was funneled from the Ethiopian government, as Amoudi was not known for his philanthropy.
Another murky practice discussed in the book was the State Department’s use of the special government employee (SGE) rule, which allowed some staffers to simultaneously work for the State Department and non-government organizations, including the Clinton Foundation. The Senate Judiciary Committee is currently investigating Clinton’s use of the SGE after a ProPublica investigation found there were at least 100 State Department employees who worked for other organizations at the same time.
Schweizer also fingers Bill Clinton’s speaking fees, a favorite target in conservative circles, as a potential avenue to influence Hillary. He links the timing of the State Department’s generally positive report on the Keystone XL Pipeline with a slew of Clinton speeches paid for by TD Bank, a major shareholder in the project. As proof of how crucial Clinton’s support for the pipeline was to the bank, Schweizer quotes a press release that claimed TD Bank would “begin selling its $1.6 billion worth of shares in the massive but potentially still-born Keystone XL crude pipeline project” after Clinton left office. The press release was quickly revealed to be fake in 2013. Yet Schweizer, apparently unaware of the hoax, remarks, “Too bad for TD Bank. But the Clintons got paid regardless.”
As Media Matters has documented, Schweizer has a record of making inaccurate claims, factual errors, and retractions. Much of Clinton Cash also relies on previously reported issues. But the Clinton Foundation’s finances have come under scrutiny ever since President Obama asked the charity to disclose its donors as a condition of Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State. The foundation also agreed to stop taking contributions from most foreign governments during Clinton’s tenure. Still, media investigations have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interests stemming from the charity’s private donors.
Clinton herself dismissed the book as a “distraction.” But the allegations may not go away anytime soon; in an unusual arrangement, several top media outlets have reportedly agreed to further investigate some of the issues raised in the book.
Sanders forces delay of trade bill consideration.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tried on Wednesday to block the Finance Committee from being able to consider a fast-track trade bill. Sanders objected to a unanimous consent request from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to let the Finance Committee meet, forcing a delay in the consideration of the legislation. The Vermont senator, who is mulling a 2016 White House bid, said there has not been "a lot of transparency" on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) legislation. "Not only is there massive opposition to this TPP agreement, but there is a lot of concern that the American people have not been involved in the process, and there's not a lot of transparency," Sanders said.
The Finance Committee is expected to take up trade legislation Wednesday afternoon to give President Obama fast-track authority to push new trade deals through Congress with up-or-down votes. McConnell said that because of Sanders's objection, the Finance Committee will still meet, but the Senate will have to recess. "All this objection is going to do will be to require us to recess after the votes on trafficking and stay in session, because we're going to finish the bill in the Finance Committee today," McConnell said. "I'm just making the point that this particular way to oppose it will not be successful today."
The Kentucky Republican added the "committee will simply be inconvenienced by the current actions of the senator from Vermont." A handful of Senate Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who liberals call to run in 2016, are opposing the legislation, because they worry that it could harm American workers. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), asked if he would support the legislation, said that "the answer is not only no, but hell no."
There is a lot to sort through today. The New York Times reports that cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company. Joshua Green is reporting now that Clinton Cash Author Is Targeting Jeb Bush Next.The past week can’t have been very pleasant for Peter Schweizer. On Sunday, the New York Times revealed that his forthcoming book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, was roiling the political world—“the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy,” as the Times put it.
That landed Schweizer squarely in the crosshairs of the Clinton team and allied liberal groups, which have launched a campaign to discredit Schweizer as “disreputable” and blinded by partisan animosity. Anyone familiar with Schweizer’s work knows better: he wrote a well-regarded book about the Bush dynasty and another, detailing insider trading in Congress, that led to a new law, the bipartisan STOCK Act of 2012, which aims to curb these abuses.
That hasn’t quieted the left-wing clamor that Schweizer is simply out to get Hillary Clinton. But maybe this will: Schweizer is working on a similar investigation of Jeb Bush’s finances that he expects to publish this summer. “What we’re doing is a drill-down investigation of Jeb’s finances similar to what we did with the Clintons." “What we’re doing is a drill-down investigation of Jeb’s finances similar to what we did with the Clintons in terms of looking at financial dealings, cronyism, who he’s been involved with,” Schweizer told me on Thursday. “We’ve found some interesting things.”
Schweizer says he and a team of researchers have been pouring over Bush’s financial life for about four months. Among other things, they’re scrutinizing various Florida land deals, an airport deal while Bush was governor that involved state funds, and Chinese investors in Bush’s private equity funds (something I wrote about for Bloomberg last year).
As he did with the Clinton book, Schweizer is hoping to partner with media organizations interested in reporting on and advancing his examination of Bush’s finances—an arrangement Schweizer feels has been mischaracterized in the media. “With the Clinton book, we didn’t just give it to reporters with the expectation that they would report on the book,” he says. “We shared it early on with investigative reporters at ABC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post because we wanted that additional scrutiny [of the book’s subjects]. And we want similar scrutiny for this project.”
Schweizer also wanted to rebut the implication that he may have been paid by news organizations for an early look at the book. “There was absolutely no money that changed hands,” he says. “It’s ridiculous to suggest so. “On May 5, Clinton Cash will finally hit bookstore shelves and people will be able to form their own judgments. By then, Schweizer will no doubt be very busy, fending off attacks not just from Clintonites, but from Bushies, too.
Morning Papers: Arresting officers provide statements in Freddie Gray death. Five of the six officers suspended with pay after their parts in arresting Freddie Gray have provided statements to investigators, the Baltimore Police Department said Wednesday. The department will not release personnel records or photos because doing so would violate the law, the police said in a statement.
"They have completely cooperated with the investigation from Day 1," Michael Davey, an attorney for the officers involved, told reporters. He defended their interactions with Gray, and said that police did not need probable cause to arrest. "There is a Supreme Court case that states that if you are in a high-crime area, and you flee from the police unprovoked, the police have the legal ability to pursue you, and that's what they did," he said. "In this type of an incident, you do not need probable cause to arrest. You just need a reasonable suspicion to make the stop."
The department released the officers' names earlier: Lt. Brian Rice, 41, who joined the department in 1997; Officer Caesar Goodson, 45, who joined in 1999; Sgt. Alicia White, 30, who joined in 2010; Officer William Porter, 25, who joined in 2012; Officer Garrett Miller, 26, who joined in 2012; and Officer Edward Nero, 29, who joined in 2012.
Of the six officers, three were on bikes and initially approached Gray, another made eye contact with Gray, another officer joined in the arrest after it was initiated and one drove the police van, Capt. Eric Kowalczyk said. Another person, who was inside the prisoner transport van carrying Gray, is a witness in a criminal investigation, so his name won't be released, police said.
"The investigation, as it stands, will be turned over to the State's Attorney's Office for review on May 1, 2015," the statement said. "As with any criminal investigation, detectives will continue to pursue the evidence wherever it leads, for as long as it takes."Protests continued. The emotions are raw and protests are growing in Baltimore, where a community wants answers in the Gray's death. As protesters chanted, "No justice, no peace!" Tuesday evening, Gray's distraught mother, Gloria Darden, collapsed in tears at the spot where her son was arrested this month. She was whisked away.
Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died of a spinal injury on Sunday, one week after he was taken into custody. The demonstrations are gaining momentum. The crowd was back late Wednesday, and on Thursday, a rally is planned in front of City Hall. "We won't stop," one man said Tuesday. "We have the power and, of course, today shows we have the numbers." Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said she understands where the protesters are coming from. She understands their frustration.
"Mr. Gray's family deserves justice, and our community deserves an opportunity to heal, to get better and to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again," she said. But not everyone is pleased by the presence of protesters. A statement from the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 compared the demonstrations to a "lynch mob." "While we appreciate the right of our citizens to protest and applaud the fact that, to date, the protests have been peaceful, we are very concerned about the rhetoric of the protests. In fact, the images seen on television look and sound much like a lynch mob in that they are calling for the immediate imprisonment of these officers without them ever receiving the due process that is the constitutional right of every citizen, including law enforcement officers," it read.
Feds getting involved
The increasing public pressure comes as the Department of Justice announced it was opening an investigation into the case. A spokesman said the agency is investigating whether Gray's civil rights were violated during the April 12 arrest. An autopsy found that Gray died from a spinal cord injury, but Baltimore Deputy Police Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez told reporters Monday that there is no indication how the injury occurred. "We welcome outside review," Kowalczyk said. "We want to be open. We want to be transparent. We owe it to the city, and we owe it to the Gray family to find out exactly what happened." It will be up to the state's attorney's office to decide whether to file charges.
Adding to the community's frustration is an autopsy that hasn't yielded many answers in Gray's death. In fact, some feel it's prompted more questions. "I'm going to make sure that as we get information that we can confirm, we're going to put that information out in the public," Rawlings-Blake said. "I want people to understand that I have no interest in hiding information, holding back information." She's angry, she said, and among the questions she wants answered are: Why did police stop Gray in the first place? And why did arresting officers make what she called the mistake of not immediately requesting medical attention when Gray asked for it?
"We will get to the bottom of it, and we will go where the facts lead us," she said. "We will hold people accountable if we find there was wrongdoing." The mayor has requested a meeting with the Gray family, but the Grays declined, saying they were focused on funeral arrangements, so the timing wasn't appropriate, said Zach McDaniel, who is part of the family's legal team.
Family attorney William Murphy urged patience in the case and called for a careful investigation. "Now am I skeptical of the police investigation? You bet. Do I have reason to be skeptical? Yes. I am a normal human being who understands the history of the relationship between white police and black people in this country," he said. "That's enough to make me skeptical." According to documents, the incident began when Gray ran from police.
While the court documents allege that one of the arresting officers, Miller, took Gray into custody after finding a switchblade in his pocket, Murphy called the allegation a "sideshow." Gray was carrying a "pocketknife of legal size," he said. Police never saw the knife and chased Gray only after he took off running, the attorney said. Court documents say Gray "fled unprovoked upon noticing police presence." "The officer noticed a knife clipped to the inside of (Gray's) front right pants pocket. The defendant was arrested without force or incident," the documents say. "The knife was recovered by this officer and found to be a spring assisted, one-hand-operated knife."
The mayor has questioned whether police should have pursued Gray in the first place. "It is not necessarily probable cause to chase someone. So we still have questions," Rawlings-Blake said. Gray was in perfect health until police chased and tackled him, Murphy said. Less than an hour later, he was on his way to a trauma clinic with a spinal injury, where he fell into a coma. The family has not seen the autopsy report yet, Murphy said. The medical examiner's office told CNN it could take up to 90 days to release the report, which is typical.
On Wednesday afternoon, the medical examiner cleared the body to be released to the family, Gray family co-counsel Jason Downs said. The family intends to have a second, private autopsy conducted once Baltimore police turn over the body, the attorney said. Police, according to their own timeline, spotted Gray, gave chase, caught him, cuffed him and requested a paddy wagon in fewer than four minutes.
"The officers that I saw there were not out of control. They weren't causing him any pain ... And when they lifted him up they grabbed him under his armpits and they moved him as best they can," Police Commissioner Anthony Batts told CNN affiliate WJZ. The transport van left with Gray about 11 minutes afterward, police said, and another 30 minutes passed before "units request paramedics to the Western District to transport the suspect to an area hospital."
Murphy and angry residents of Baltimore want to know what happened in those 30 minutes. When cell phones began recording, Gray was already on the ground with three officers kneeling over him. He let out long screams. "Our position is something happened in that van. We just don't know what," said Davey, the attorney representing the officers involved in the incident. He also said he does not think Gray was wearing a seat belt inside the van he was placed in after his arrest. Police said Gray requested medical attention, including an inhaler, and an ambulance took him to the University of Maryland Medical Center's Shock Trauma Center.
"He lapsed into a coma, died, was resuscitated, stayed in a coma and on Monday underwent extensive surgery at Shock Trauma to save his life," Murphy said. "He clung to life for seven days." What we know and don't know about Gray's death. CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, Kevin Conlon, Shawn Nottingham, AnneClaire Stapleton, Julian Cummings, Chris Cuomo, Ben Brumfield and Dana Ford contributed to this report.
Next, Lindsey Graham, John McCain bite back at Paul over 'lapdog' diss. POLITICO reports how the Senate’s Two Amigos are firing back at Rand Paul’s “lapdog” diss. Paul, the 2016 GOP presidential contender who’s tussled with Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain over foreign policy, took aim at the hawkish duo this week by charging that they are “lapdogs” for President Barack Obama’s policies abroad.
On Wednesday, Graham — considering a 2016 bid of his own — dismissed the Kentucky Republican’s criticism and said Paul would have the “worst chance of anybody to make a case against Obama’s foreign policy.” “At the end of the day, his record, in my view, shows a foreign policy vision one step behind leading from behind,” Graham said during a briefing with reporters on Capitol Hill. “And all I can say is that if he’s the nominee, I will support him. But if he’s the nominee of the party, we risk giving up the central issue of the 2016 campaign, which will be foreign policy.”
FILE - In this Sept. 2, 2013, file photo Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., right, speaks with reporters outside the White House in Washington after a closed-door meeting about Syria with President Barack Obama. In a statement released Saturday, Sept. 14, 2013, McCain and Graham said a Syrian chemical weapons agreement is meaningless. They said friends and enemies of the U.S. will view the deal, reached between the U.S. and Russia Saturday, as 'an act of provocative weakness' by America, that it will embolden Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon, and that Syrian President Bashar Assad will just use the time the agreement gives him to delay and deceive the world. Graham added: “I think Sen. Paul’s record on this issue is quite frankly behind that of President Obama.” Meanwhile, McCain said an anonymous Obama administration official has compared him and Graham to Doberman Pinschers — rather than lapdogs. “I’ll let people be the judge as to whether there’s anyone, particularly in this administration, that thinks that Lindsey Graham and I are lapdogs,” McCain said when asked about Paul’s comment, barely able to contain his laughter. He then mimicked a dog barking. “I mean, c’mon,” McCain concluded.
The author (Joseph Stiglitz) of the the book, 'The Great Divide' is on the Morning Joe show along with Lawrence O'Donnell. Along with Greece and Detroit, the modern liberal economic argument has gone completely bankrupt. That’s what Joseph E. Stiglitz proves in “The Great Divide.” The book, which is a compilation of articles written over the past seven years by the former World Bank chief economist, is built on three major themes. First, it blames the financial crisis of 2008 on President George W. Bush, bankers, deregulation and inequality. Second, it laments the great income divide in America. Mr. Stiglitz describes himself as a “comrade in arms” with contemporary Marxist economist Thomas Piketty, while making the argument that contemporary democracy is “closer to a system of one dollar one vote than to one person one vote.” Third, Mr. Stiglitz thinks that if he could just run the world, all would be well.
The National Bureau of Economic research reports about the issue that it's one of the biggest socioeconomic questions in America today: Why is income inequality rising in the United States, especially between the top 10 percent of workers and everybody else? In Controversies about the Rise of American Inequality: A Survey (NBER Working Paper No. 13982) , authors Robert J. Gordon and Ian Dew-Becker provide a comprehensive survey of seven aspects of rising inequality that are usually discussed separately: changes in labor's share of income; inequality at the bottom of the income distribution, including labor mobility; skill-biased technical change; inequality among high income groups; consumption inequality; geographical inequality; and international differences in the income distribution, particularly at the top.
They conclude that changes in labor's share of income play no role in rising inequality of labor income: by one measure, labor's income share was almost the same in 2007 as in 1950. However, there are gender differences in income inequality: between 1979 and 2005, for example, the income gap between women working for the median wage (the 50th percentile) and low-earning women (at the 10th percentile) grew much more than it did for men at those income levels during the same period. That suggests that the decline in the real value of the minimum wage over that time played a causal role, the authors argue. That's not surprising, in one sense, since women are, roughly speaking, twice as likely to work for the minimum wage as men are.
If women were more affected by the minimum wage, men bore the brunt of the decline in unionization over the least three decades, the survey finds. One study the authors cite suggests that the fall in organized labor's share of the workforce can explain 14 percent of the rise in the variance among male wages between 1973 and 2001 (but it had no apparent effect on the variance of female wages).
There is little evidence on the effects of imports. And, the ambiguous literature on immigration implies a small overall impact on the wages of the average native-born American, a significant downward effect on the wages of high-school dropouts, and a potentially large impact on previous immigrants who work in occupations in which immigrants specialize.
The authors introduce two new issues, disparities in the growth of price indexes and in life expectancy between the rich and the poor. "While the poor may do better when price indexes are corrected, they do much worse when their health outcomes are considered," the authors write. They cite evidence that between 1980 and 2000 the life expectancy of the bottom 10 percent of earners increased at only half the rate of the top 10 percent. "This may be the most important single source of the increase in inequality in the United States, and it combines not only unequal access to medical care services and insurance, but also to differences in personal habits and environment related to education and income," the authors conclude.
The most controversial section of the survey looks at the question of why the rich have gotten so much richer. In a 2005 study, the authors found that the top 10 percent of earners saw their share of overall income rise from 27 percent in 1966 to 45 percent in 2001. But that study also documented that fully half of that increase came from the relative gains made at the very top of that spectrum - those at the 95th percentile and above. That study also distinguished between "superstars," whose incomes were market-driven, and CEOs, whose incomes were "chosen by their peers." In their new survey, the authors carve out a third group - high-income professionals, especially lawyers and investment bankers, whose pay is market-driven but who don't enjoy the benefits of "audience magnification," whereby the superstars can fill entire arenas or sell recordings to millions of people. Their point: income inequality is growing even among the top 10 percent of earners as the superstars and CEOs increase their pay faster than lawyers and investment bankers. But at least the pay of the superstars, lawyers, and investment bankers is market-driven. The pay of CEOs is not.
Their review of the CEO debate places equal emphasis on the market, in showering capital gains through stock options, and an arbitrary management-power hypothesis based on numerous non-market aspects of executive pay. "CEOs, through compensation committees and inbreeding of boards of directors, have a unique ability to control their own compensation," the authors write. "Furthermore, if a director approves a higher compensation package, that may subsequently lead her to receive more compensation at her own firm."
They cite one study of 1,500 firms that found that the compensation earned by the top five corporate officers in 1993-5 equaled 5 percent of their firms' total profits during that period; by 2000-2, that ratio had more than doubled to 12.8 percent. The trend was caused in equal parts by arbitrary pay decisions by corporate boards and by the showering of stock options on CEOs, they conclude.
Furthermore, the survey cites a study showing "ample evidence that firms work to disguise the magnitude of CEO pay," such as lifetime healthcare, below-market-rate loans, and above-market-rate loans when CEOs defer their compensation, to lessen shareholder outrage. Such research "is important because it tells shareholders what to expect and where their outrage constraint should be set," the authors write.
This skewing of pay at the very top in the United States contrasts with other countries, especially Japan. There, the income share of the top 0.1 percent peaked at 9.2 percent in 1938, reached stability of close to 2.0 percent after 1947, and ended up at 1.7 percent in 1998. Initially, America also saw an initial peak (8.2 percent in 1928) fall to a low (1.9 percent in 1973). But then the income share of America's top 0.1 percent rebounded (7.3 percent in 2000). Canada and the United Kingdom mimicked the U.S. pattern, though their most recent upturns were less dramatic. France, like Japan, has seen the income share of its very top earners stay quite stable since the mid-1940s.
Why the disparity? America's CEOs have had their pay inflated by generous stock options and having their pay set by peers on corporate boards, the survey finds, as well as institutional differences between the United States and other nations, including such things as regulations, unions, and social norms.
The New York Daily News reported yesterday that Republicans will likely delay the release of a hotly anticipated congressional report on Hillary Clinton’s role in handling the attacks in Benghazi until the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign — and Democrats — are crying foul.
“Factors beyond the committee’s control, including witness availability, compliance with documents requests, the granting of security clearances and accreditations — all of which are controlled by the Executive branch — could continue to impact the timing of the inquiry’s conclusion,” House special committee GOP spokesman Jamal Ware told Bloomberg News. Clinton’s campaign fired back, calling the delay “The most telling evidence yet that (Republicans’) investigation is solely about playing politics in the 2016 presidential campaign.”
“This action is the latest example in a broad concerted effort by Republicans and their allies to launch false attacks against Hillary Clinton’s record and deep experience on foreign affairs and national security,” campaign chairman John Podesta said in a Wednesday evening statement. “There have already been 21 congressional hearings, five independent or bipartisan reports and millions of tax dollars spent in the process of investigating this three-year-old tragedy. This investigation would now be longer than the investigations of Iran-Contra, the Kennedy Assassination, Watergate and 9/11.”Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time, has been criticized for her handling of the 2012 attacks in Libya in which four Americans were killed.
We are truly know the underlying meaning and message which that there is nothing to it. John Beohner and whomever can project to blame Hilary Clinton and maybe even the email controversy but again, there was nothing in the first place. that email controversy single handedly resurrected the Benghazi issue for Trey Gowdy. It was a dead issue until that week when the story broke about the emails and Hilary (Clinton).
Regardless of it all today, please stay in touch.
