Three days before a historic election, a disturbing twist has emerged: the possibility that agents in the country’s preeminent investigative service are attempting to swing the outcome.
Reuters reported on Thursday that FBI Director James Comey wrote his unprecedented letter to Congress last week in part because he feared his own employees might leak word of the Hillary Clinton email investigation to the press. Two sources told Reuters that investigators in the FBI’s New York field office are “known to be hostile” to Clinton. On Thursday, The Guardian reported its sources described the FBI as a “Trumpland,” where agents have “deep antipathy” toward Clinton.
Those reports follow a whirlwind week of leaks from the FBI that appear intended to cast a shadow over Clinton.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
A jury has found two of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s former allies guilty on all counts for their roles in the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal, capping a case that roiled state politics and captured national attention.
Christie’s ex-deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, and his former top Port Authority official, Bill Baroni, had faced nine counts of conspiracy and fraud stemming from the scheme to block access to the George Washington Bridge as a means to punish Democratic Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for not endorsing Christie’s re-election bid.
The verdict comes after seven weeks of dramatic testimony in which prosecutors argued the two spearheaded the plan in September 2013. Although Christie has maintained he had no knowledge or involvement in the lane closures, the so-called “Bridgegate” scandal has dogged the Republican for three years and undercut his failed presidential bid before it even began. Christie is a top Donald Trump surrogate and is currently planning the Republican nominee’s transition team if he wins the presidency.
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s former deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly, center, and her attorney Michael Critchley, second from left, leave Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Courthouse after a hearing on Sept. 26 in Newark. Mel Evans / AP
Rudy Giuliani said Friday that he knew the FBI planned to review more emails tied to Hillary Clinton before a public announcement about the investigation last week, confirming that the agency leaked information to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The former New York City mayor and Trump surrogate has recently dropped a series of hints that he knew in advance that the FBI planned to look at emails potentially connected to Clinton’s private server. The agency discovered the messages while investigating former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) for allegedly sexting with a minor. (Weiner’s estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is a top aide to Clinton.)
Giuliani has bragged about his close ties to the FBI for months, mentioning in interviews that “outraged FBI agents” have told him they’re frustrated by how the Clinton investigation was handled. And two days before FBI Director James Comey announced that the agency was reviewing the newly uncovered emails, Giuliani teased that Trump’s campaign had “a couple of surprises left.”
“You’ll see, and I think it will be enormously effective,” he said in an interview with Fox News.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
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I went to a white nationalist ethnostate in Indiana. I got bounced from a secret meeting in D.C. I spent weeks figuring out how hate gurgles up from the nastiest recesses of the Internet. And I’m sorry to report that unconscionable racists will be a force in American politics well beyond November 8.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Republican nominee Donald Trump has been treading treasonous territory for months now, raising eyebrows around the nation for a foreign policy that openly supports the ambitions of Vladimir Putin, the dictator of the Russian Federation. He’s surrounded himself with men with close ties to the Kremlin and the oligarchs that pull the strings behind the scenes; he’s being openly supported by Russian state-controlled media and by Russian intelligence services, who have breached the electronic servers of Democratic Party operatives and released selected pieces of information in an attempt to sow discord.
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Throughout all of this, Trump has insisted that he has no business ties to Russia. “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia” he tweeted in July. Now – brace yourself, this might come as a shock – it appears he’s been lying to us the whole time.
Two U.S. service members were killed during a fierce battle with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan early Thursday — which local officials said resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians.
The Americans were on a “train, advise and assist” mission led by Afghan forces when they came under heavy fire miles north of the restive city of Kunduz, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.
Said Mahmood Danish, spokesman for Kunduz Governor Asadullah Omarkhel, told NBC News that Afghan special forces called in airstrikes to try to beat back the militants, and that 30 civilians were killed in the fighting, many of them children.
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A map showing the Afghan city of Kunduz. Google Maps
With just one week left to go until the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are quite close in the polls, but a few pieces of data in particular are looking good for the Democratic candidate.
As of November 2nd, Real Clear Politics’ polling average has Donald Trump ahead of Hillary Clinton by 0.8 percentage points in Florida. That is a shift from this time last week, when Clinton was ahead of Trump in the state by an average of 2.4 percentage points.
But the latest poll that’s gaining a significant amount of attention is from William & Mary College, and it has Clinton ahead of Trump in Florida by eight points, 48 percent to 40 percent. Most surprisingly, though, that poll has Clinton winning 28 percent of Florida’s Republican early voters. On the other hand, Donald Trump is winning just six percent of Democratic early voters. Clinton is also winning early voters overall, with 55 percent of early voters saying they voted for Hillary Clinton and 43 percent saying they voted for Donald Trump. Among those who have not yet voted, though, this poll showed the race to be much tighter: 43 percent of these voters back Donald Trump, and 42 percent of them back Hillary Clinton.
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Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton at the second presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis. (Getty)
A black church in Mississippi was burned and vandalized with pro-Donald Trump graffiti late Tuesday.
Authorities responded to the fire at Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, Tuesday night. Delta Daily News reports that the majority of the damage was to the main sanctuary and there were no reported injuries. Someone had spray-painted the words “Vote Trump” along the side of the building.
A woman at the nearby Rose Hill Missionary Baptist Church told The Huffington Post that Hopewell is a historically black church. She said the community is in shock over what happened.
Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons called the incident “a heinous, hateful and cowardly act” in a press conference Wednesday, adding that it was “an attack on the black church and the black community.”
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Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press
The sanctuary of the church sustained the most damage.
Last month, several American white nationalists traveled to an anti-immigration conference in Wismar, Germany, and told attendants that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign represents a win for the movement—even if he loses the election.
Official speakers at the event— sponsored by an association of nationalistic parties in the European Union —included Kevin MacDonald, a retired professor at California State University, Long Beach who defends anti-Semitism and Tom Sunic, who has spoken at meetings sponsored by Klansmen, Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis, and who was “serving as interpreter … for a very classy private German audience,” he told The Huffington Post. William Johnson, a white nationalist who was briefly a Trump delegate, made an unscheduled address at the event. Non-U.S. speakers included Frank Rennicke, a German singer-songwriter who is also a far-right extremist and Nick Griffin, a British politician who was once convicted of incitement to racial hatred. (Griffin “chewed all white activists out for not getting married and not having children,” Johnson said.)
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
James' World 2 