Subject: Correct The Record Tuesday July 8, 2014 Morning Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2014 09:03:47 -0400
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**

*Correct The Record Tuesday July 8, 2014 Morning Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*Politico: “Clinton Foundation disclosures sought”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/clinton-foundation-disclosures-108631.html#ixzz36pdLARTC>*

“Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the pro-Clinton group Correct the
Record, blasted back that America Rising was ‘attacking Hillary Clinton for
donating all honoraria from colleges and universities to the Clinton
Foundation to help people around the world who need assistance — for
example, children who need clean water and protection from malaria and
young Americans who will receive additional skills training to help them
gain employment.’ She added, ‘Paid for by private donors, Clinton’s
honorarium at UNLV is a win-win, considering even before the university
sent invitations, they raised more than $350,000 in table sponsorships.’”

*USA Today: “House Benghazi panel may cost $3 million this year”
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/07/07/benghazi-committee-33-million-republicans/12301935/>*

“House Republicans are planning to spend as much as $3.3 million for this
year's operations of the special committee they created in May to
investigate the September 2012 Benghazi attacks, a bigger budget than the
House Veterans Affairs and Ethics committees were given this year.”

*National Journal: “The Media's Made-Up Catfight Between Hillary Clinton
and Elizabeth Warren”
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/the-media-s-made-up-catfight-between-hillary-clinton-and-elizabeth-warren-20140707>*

"This type of sourcing is completely irrelevant and guaranteed not to
produce any real news, just pot shots (it's not Whalen's fault; if you give
a mouse a cookie, etc.)."

*Politico: “Benghazi panel ramps up”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/benghazi-trey-gowdy-108625.html?ml=tb>*

“While the South Carolina Republican [Rep. Gowdy] isn’t committing to
specifics, such as whether there will be public hearings with high-profile
witnesses like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his methodical
approach could help the GOP savor a scandal that has at times looked more
like a political sideshow.”

*New York Times: “Wall Street Offers Clinton a Thorny Embrace”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/us/08wallst.html>*

“As its relationship with Democrats hits a historic low, Wall Street sees a
solution on the horizon: Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

*Associated Press: “Hillary Clinton: US-Europe Must Nurture Ties”
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/hillary-clinton-us-europe-must-nurture-ties>*

“Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says that Europe and
the United States must nurture their ties because ‘there is no more
important force for progress, prosperity and peace than the trans-Atlantic
alliance.’”

*CNN: “Clinton explains defense in controversial rape case”
<http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/07/clinton-explains-defense-in-controversial-rape-case/>*

“Hillary Clinton pushed back at ongoing criticism of her providing legal
defense decades ago to an accused rapist, explaining that she had asked not
to be assigned to the case but ultimately had a responsibility to represent
her client."

*Business Insider: “Hillary Clinton's Inner Circle Calls This Man The Most
'Despicable' Person In The World”
<http://www.businessinsider.com/ed-klein-hillary-clinton-inner-circle-despicable-2014-7>*

“The Clinton confidante described Klein's writing about Hillary as
‘creepy.’”

*Daily Caller: “Jimmy Fallon Mocks Hillary Clinton’s Hairstyle”
<http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/08/jimmy-fallon-mocks-hillary-clintons-hairstyle/>*

“During Monday night’s edition of NBC’s ‘The Tonight Show,’ Fallon noted
how Hillary’s book sales have dropped dramatically since its release and
suggested it could be because the book lacked a catchy title.”

*Daily Mail (U.K.): “Girl power! Liv Tyler champions Hillary Clinton for
president as she flashes her long slender legs in outdoor fashion shoot”
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2683912/Liv-Tyler-champions-Hillary-Clinton-president-flashes-long-slender-legs-outdoor-fashion-shoot.html>*

“The Lord Of The Rings star strikes an inspired, triumphant pose, with one
fist in the air, while rooting for the 66-year-old former Secretary Of
State.”

*Articles:*

*Politico: “Clinton Foundation disclosures sought”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/clinton-foundation-disclosures-108631.html#ixzz36pdLARTC>*

By Maggie Haberman

July 7, 2014, 7:11 p.m. EDT

The Republican research group America Rising is calling on the Clinton
Foundation to make sweeping public disclosures about how it spends its
money, after Hillary Clinton said she’s donated her six-figure speaking
fees to her family’s nonprofit.

Clinton’s payments from universities have become controversial in the wake
of an uproar over her $225,000 speaking fee from the University of Nevada,
Las Vegas. School officials said over a week ago that the honorarium will
be paid to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

Some critics have questioned the propriety of accepting large speaking fees
from universities at a time when tuitions and student debt are rising. In
many cases, officials have said, the money was earmarked from a donor and
not from tuition. Clinton said in recent days that she’s given those
speaking fees, which are estimated at more than $2 million, to the
foundation.

The foundation files IRS Form 990 (for tax-exempt organizations) annually,
although America Rising executive Tim Miller said the one due last month
had not yet been filed. Miller called for a more thorough accounting on a
number of specific points.

“In the past, the Clinton Foundation has spent millions on opulent travel
and lodging for her family, financed glitzy, celebrity-fueled donor events
and paid key Democratic aides who would likely play key roles in her
presidential campaign,” Miller said. “For Americans to credibly believe
these speaking fees are being donated to charitable endeavors, the
foundation must be transparent about how and where it has spent its
millions since Hillary Clinton joined last year.”

Clinton aides declined to comment on the America Rising push.

The foundation became fodder for critics last year after media reports
about an internal review of practices that was conducted in 2011. Clinton
allies argue the foundation was always going to come under renewed scrutiny
if she ran for president, but the speaking fees controversy has accelerated
that process.

Miller called on the Clinton Foundation to release any financial audits
stemming from the 2011 review; a full list of staff or paid consultants who
have worked for Bill or Hillary Clinton in their official government
offices, the Democratic National Committee or the Obama campaign; costs
related to the Clinton Global Initiative; travel expenses incurred by all
three Clintons; and whether Bill Clinton had any of his own speaking fees
paid to the foundation.

Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the pro-Clinton group Correct the
Record, blasted back that America Rising was “attacking Hillary Clinton for
donating all honoraria from colleges and universities to the Clinton
Foundation to help people around the world who need assistance — for
example, children who need clean water and protection from malaria and
young Americans who will receive additional skills training to help them
gain employment.”

She added, “Paid for by private donors, Clinton’s honorarium at UNLV is a
win-win, considering even before the university sent invitations, they
raised more than $350,000 in table sponsorships.”

*USA Today: “House Benghazi panel may cost $3 million this year”
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/07/07/benghazi-committee-33-million-republicans/12301935/>*

By Paul Singer

July 7, 2014, 7:12 p.m. EDT

House Republicans are planning to spend as much as $3.3 million for this
year's operations of the special committee they created in May to
investigate the September 2012 Benghazi attacks, a bigger budget than the
House Veterans Affairs and Ethics committees were given this year.

According to a committee document provided by Democratic leader Nancy
Pelosi's office, House Republicans want a $3.3 million budget for this
year's operations of the 12-member select committee on the Benghazi
attacks. As with most congressional committees, the document indicates the
majority party gets the bigger share of the resources for the panel; the
budget provides just under $2.2 million for Republicans and just over $1
million for Democrats on the committee. There are seven GOP lawmakers and
five Democrats serving on the committee, and it is expected to have a staff
of 30.

By comparison, the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs — which has a
roster of 25 lawmakers and about 27 staff members — spent $2.5 million in
2013 and has a $3 million budget for 2014. The Ethics Committee budget for
2014 was more than $3 million, with a staff of about 25 serving 10
lawmakers.

Amanda Duvall, spokeswoman for committee chairman Trey Gowdy, R- S.C., said
Monday, the budget is "the high end estimate, and we expect there will be
less spent as the staffing process is still ongoing, and since not all the
staff came on board immediately in May." USA TODAY has reported that hiring
for the committee was going slowly because of the need for security
clearances.

Duvall noted that the funding for the committee "comes from
already-appropriated legislative branch funds," so it does not represent a
new expenditure.

"This money funds the functions of an investigatory committee and ensures
sufficient funds are available to the Republicans and Democrats at a
two-thirds, one-third split, per typical committee allocation," Duvall
explained. "These costs include salaries for staff, technology, IT support,
publications and document management for classified information."

Since the Benghazi committee was created in May, its full-year equivalent
budget would be more than $5 million. This is more than the House
Intelligence Committee, which has a $4.4 million budget this year and spent
$4.1 million last year. The largest House committees — Energy and Commerce;
Oversight and Government Reform; Transportation and Infrastructure — have
budgets between $8 million and $9.5 million for the year.

A special committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming created by
Democrats in 2007 spent about $2 million a year until it was shut down by
the new Republican majority in January 2011.

The Benghazi committee has no deadline for a final report, and it is almost
certain it will continue into next year.

Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence
Committee, said, "It is unfathomable that House Republicans are spending
more taxpayer money per day on this new committee to re-investigate
Benghazi than the committee charged with oversight of the entire U.S.
intelligence community."

The budget for the Benghazi committee does not include the costs of other
Benghazi investigations that have already been done by four other House
committees: Oversight and Government Reform; Foreign Affairs; Intelligence;
and Armed Services. Those costs are impossible to calculate because they
are part of the committees' regular operating budgets.

*National Journal: “The Media's Made-Up Catfight Between Hillary Clinton
and Elizabeth Warren”
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/the-media-s-made-up-catfight-between-hillary-clinton-and-elizabeth-warren-20140707>*

By Emma Roller

July 7, 2014

[Subtitle:] Here comes the return of the '"Dems in Disarray" narrative.

On Sunday, Edward Klein wrote what was supposed to be an explosive story in
the New York Post setting up the "blood feud" between the Obamas and the
Clintons in 2016.

Klein is the author of Blood Feud, a new book documenting the (allegedly)
frosty relationship between the Obamas and the Clintons. Klein's book
currently sits at No. 2 in The New York Times' list of nonfiction
bestsellers—right behind Hillary Clinton's own book, Hard Choices.

In his Post story, Klein reports that President Obama "quietly promised" to
fully support Elizabeth Warren if she decided to run for president, and he
instructed Valerie Jarrett to "conduct a full-court press to convince
Warren to throw her hat into the ring."

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal alley-ooped Klein's thesis with its own
story positing that Clinton is trying to distance herself from the Obamas
"in tone and substance." The evidence? A less cheery tone about the
economy, and this money quote:

“Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and former chief
speechwriter for Pete Wilson when the Republican was California's governor,
suggested that Mrs. Clinton's distancing strategy at least partly reflects
Mr. Obama's lackluster popularity.”

This type of sourcing is completely irrelevant and guaranteed not to
produce any real news, just pot shots (it's not Whalen's fault; if you give
a mouse a cookie, etc.). But the narrative that Klein et al are crafting is
basically Dems In Disarray, 2.0—a theme that relies on reports from both
conservative and liberal voices that are short on facts and long on
speculation.

It's true that Clinton and Obama don't exactly have a Vulcan mindmeld—but
they never have. Check the 2008 Democratic primaries. That doesn't mean
Clinton is "distancing" herself from Obama. It means that Clinton and Obama
have always held fundamentally different views on some topics (such as
foreign policy), and now is a convenient time in the news cycle to talk
about them.

The reports of an impending Warren-Clinton catfight are also overblown.
Warren has repeatedly said, "I am not running for president," while
avoiding a Shermanesque statement about whether she will be running in the
future. In 2003, Warren called Clinton a hypocrite for allying with
corporate interests on a bankruptcy bill. Since then, however, Warren has
publicly endorsed a Clinton candidacy. "All all of the women—Democratic
women, I should say—of the Senate urged Hillary Clinton to run, and I hope
she does. Hillary is terrific," Warren told ABC in April.

Klein also doesn't attribute any of his juicy tidbits to a source until the
10th paragraph of the story—and all of his sources are, naturally,
anonymous. In the story, one "Obama administration source" tells Klein that
Warren, like Obama, "wants to transform America into a European-style
democratic-socialist state." But, ruling out some serious Deep Throat-level
subterfuge, it's hard to believe that a source with that negative a view of
Obama would have the clearance level within the White House required to
actually know that.

Klein does not exactly have the reputation of Woodward and Bernstein. In
the past, Klein has suggested that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. His
support? Clinton attended Wellesley, an all-women's college, and has
friends who are gay. Klein has somewhat of a fixation on powerful
women—he's written one other book about Clinton, along with a book about
Katie Couric and three separate books about Jackie Kennedy.

Media Matters has called Klein a "smear peddler" and a "conspiracy
theorist," and points out that even conservative pundits such as Brian
Kilmeade, Rush Limbaugh, and James Taranto have called Klein's sourcing
into question. (All of these accusations raise the question: If the
Clintons are as devious and coldly strategic as Klein paints them, wouldn't
they have ferreted out his sources by now?)

And then there's the criticism Klein has gotten from the left. When his
last book, The Amateur, came out in 2012, White House spokesman Eric
Schultz had this to say: "Ed Klein has a proven history of reckless
fabrication in order to sell books. Nobody in their right mind would
believe the nonsense in this one."

Unlike Klein and his ilk, left-leaning news outlets haven't settled on a
unified Warren-versus-Clinton narrative. Last August, Daily Kos argued that
a Clinton-Warren primary challenge would be terrific for the Democratic
Party. In November, Noam Scheiber wrote a much-shared cover story for The
New Republic calling Warren "Hillary's Nightmare" (since then, he's written
another cover story calling Clinton the inevitable Democratic pick).

It's a good rule that when there is a news vacuum, pundits will happily
fill the void with "truthy" theories about 2016. But until you see photos
of Warren and Clinton brawling outside a Georgetown bar, you'd do well to
take these reports with a big block of Himalayan salt.

*Politico: “Benghazi panel ramps up”
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/benghazi-trey-gowdy-108625.html?ml=tb>*

By Lauren French

July 7, 2014, 5:58 p.m. EDT

There are no Benghazi hearings on the House calendar, but the silence
doesn’t mean the investigation is fading away.

Rep. Trey Gowdy is launching a special committee to wrangle a probe that’s
sprawled across the jurisdictions of multiple headline-hungry committee
chairmen.

And while the South Carolina Republican isn’t committing to specifics, such
as whether there will be public hearings with high-profile witnesses like
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his methodical approach could
help the GOP savor a scandal that has at times looked more like a political
sideshow.

“No one [has] defended the five-minute questioning [process] as the most
calculated way of eliciting the most amount of information,” Gowdy said in
an interview. “There is most assuredly a place for hearings but not if your
primary focus is to gather facts.”

While there isn’t much happening publicly, the House select committee
investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. facility in Benghazi,
Libya, is busy behind the scenes.

The panel is examining subpoenas from committees that previously
investigated the Benghazi attacks to develop a list of unanswered questions
from the Obama administration. There is also outreach to agencies that
received requests for information.

Meanwhile, Gowdy is planning a series of closed-door meetings this month
that could include a screening of a classified video from the Benghazi
compound. He’s also checking with the 11 other lawmakers on the panel about
working through the August recess.

And committee leaders from both parties are busy staffing up.

The response to the 2012 attack on a diplomatic mission in Benghazi deeply
divided Congress. The attack left four Americans, including Ambassador
Chris Stevens, dead. Republicans accuse the Obama administration of
covering up evidence that the attack was linked to terrorism while
Democrats argue the GOP is simply drumming up a scandal.

As the committee’s investigation unfolds, perhaps the biggest challenge for
Gowdy is to prove that his work isn’t simply a partisan exercise.

“I don’t want to appear naive but I do hold out some hope that a few things
left remaining in politics, or in our society, can be above politics,”
Gowdy said. “People who have worked with me in the past and the people on
the other side of the aisle who I work with now, I don’t think they are at
all surprised this is the approach that I am taking. My goal is to find out
what happened.”

So far, Gowdy seems to be forging productive relationships with Democrats.
He meets regularly with Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on
the panel, and the two often chat privately in the speaker’s lobby during
House votes.

“I have a great working relationship with Chairman Gowdy, and I am hopeful
that this will be the serious, bipartisan fact-finding investigation that
he has promised,” Cummings told POLITICO.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) gave Gowdy a loose set of guidelines to
pursue his investigation: Determine how the attacks occurred and issue
recommendations on ways the U.S. could avoid future assaults on diplomatic
outposts. Gowdy isn’t setting a timeline for the committee, but the
investigation is expected to extend into 2015.

The committee has been allocated an expansive budget from the House. The
panel has $3.3 million to spend this year on operations, according to
documents from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office.

That amounts to about $2.2 million for the Republicans and just above $1
million for the Democrats.

The budget was first reported by USA Today.

Panel members are already examining the notes, documents and interview
transcripts provided by the other congressional committees that
investigated the terrorist attacks, including the House Oversight and
Government Reform, Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and
Judiciary committees.

That amounts to nearly 25,000 pages of documents, Gowdy said, which all
need to be reorganized and categorized for the new committee.

“They have to be assimilated,” he said. “I was on OGR, but I would have no
way of knowing what Intel or HASC had or how it was cataloged.”

Beyond sifting through documents, Gowdy said most of the focus right now is
on hiring employees for the committee. He plans to personally interview job
candidates, but finding qualified staffers with the appropriate security
clearance is a slow-going task. The committee will dive into classified
material, which limits much of the staffing pool to those with established
clearances.

“Obviously, going from not existing to fully functioning takes some time,”
Gowdy said. “Hiring staff is widely important but not always terribly
exciting from a reader’s or viewer’s standpoint. …. You have to do that
before you can fully constitute a committee and start work.”

Republicans tapped former Smith-Free Group Vice Chairman Phil Kiko as the
panel’s staff director in May. The party hopes to fill roughly half of the
staff positions by the end of July.

Democrats on the committee recently hired Susanne Sachsman Grooms as their
staff director. She is a former Department of Justice prosecutor, who was
the lead attorney for Oversight Committee Democrats on three highly
controversial investigations: the Fast and Furious gun-walking operation,
the IRS targeting of tea party groups, and Benghazi.

*New York Times: “Wall Street Offers Clinton a Thorny Embrace”
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/us/08wallst.html>*

By Nicholas Confessore and Amy Chozick

July 7, 2014

As its relationship with Democrats hits a historic low, Wall Street sees a
solution on the horizon: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton was the industry’s home state senator, and the financial
sector was the second-largest giver to her presidential campaign in 2008.
In her post-State Department life, she has been showered with lucrative
speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan and other financial firms.
In her talks, she says it is unproductive to vilify the industry, and she
avoids the kind of language that puts off financial executives, as when
President Obama referred to “fat cat” bankers in 2009.

But as Wall Street hopes for a warm embrace from the former secretary of
state, Mrs. Clinton must grapple with a populist surge coursing through
politics, on both the right and the left.

Attacks on Wall Street bailouts are a staple of Tea Party campaigns.
Republicans, many of whom deliberately stood on the sidelines during the
legislative battle over the Dodd-Frank legislation and have quietly reaped
the benefits of Wall Street’s disenchantment with Mr. Obama, are now
reeling from the primary election defeat of Representative Eric Cantor of
Virginia, the former majority leader. Mr. Cantor’s opponent, David Brat,
won in part by attacking Mr. Cantor’s ties to the financial world.

In Mrs. Clinton’s years away from politics, income inequality has become a
defining political issue in the Democratic Party, elevating a new
generation of stars like Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has
pushed for the breakup of large financial institutions.

Late last month, Ms. Warren campaigned in Kentucky for Alison Lundergan
Grimes, the Democratic candidate for Senate, a sign that some in the party
believe the Massachusetts senator’s message resonates well beyond the left.
(Mrs. Clinton has not yet campaigned on behalf of Ms. Grimes, though an
adviser said she will likely do so this fall.)

“I think there’s a potential window for Democrats to come back, but if it
is one wing of the party pushing the populist line — anti-big banks,
punishing people whether or not they had anything to do with the crisis —
they’ll lock this crowd into a Republican alternative,” said Bill Daley, a
former chief of staff to Mr. Obama and commerce secretary under President
Bill Clinton who is now a hedge fund executive.

During her 2008 primary campaign against Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton emphasized
her husband’s economic record. But running on the 1990s will not work in
2016, Mr. Daley suggested. “She has to figure out where she is going
forward,” Mr. Daley said.

At stake is not merely tens of millions of dollars in campaign money, but
the shape of debates about social mobility, taxation and regulation. In the
next few years, lawmakers may consider proposals to allow American
corporations to “repatriate” overseas income at a reduced tax rate; change
how the government backs home mortgages; eliminate the “carried interest”
loophole that allows private equity managers to avoid paying higher tax
rates; and more tightly regulate commodities trading.

“Secretary Clinton’s time in the Senate was characterized by a willingness
to work with all of the stakeholders, but she left the Senate just as the
crisis was hitting its low point,” said Francis Creighton, the top lobbyist
for the Financial Services Roundtable, a trade association representing the
largest banks and financial firms. “As an industry, we’re not sure how her
views have evolved over the last five years on what we do. The question is:
Will her perspective have changed?”

The last time Mrs. Clinton waded deeply into these issues, she was locked
in a heated primary and the country was on the verge of the worst economic
crisis since the Great Depression. She was early to call for tougher
regulation of financial derivatives and private-equity markets, and in a
2007 speech called for major federal intervention in the market for
subprime loans, arguing that “we need to acknowledge that Wall Street has
played a significant role in our current problems, and in particular the
housing crisis.”

Several people who advised Mrs. Clinton on her 2008 presidential campaign
said the speech angered some of her Wall Street donors, who complained
about what they viewed as her increasing antagonism to the industry. Mrs.
Clinton has also called for eliminating the carried interest tax loophole.

“If you look at her positions, in my view, she was very aggressive on
ensuring that Wall Street was better regulated and her argument about all
these proposals is that this is going to be better for all of us,” said
Neera Tanden, who was Mrs. Clinton’s policy director during the 2008
campaign.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, declined to describe her
positions on a variety of current regulatory and Wall Street issues but
said in an email: “Reducing inequality and increasing upward mobility has
been an uninterrupted pursuit of hers through every job she’s held, and it
continues to this day in her work at the Clinton Foundation.”

If Mrs. Clinton runs for president, she will step into a heated debate
about the interplay between financial regulation, growing inequality and
the economic squeeze of the middle class.

The Third Way, a center-left think tank founded by two former Clinton
administration aides, has assailed Ms. Warren, saying her economic populism
would be “disastrous for Democrats.”

As Democrats debate whether to get tougher on Wall Street, the industry
appears to have taken notice. Securities and investment firm employees have
given a smaller proportion of their political donations to Democrats over
the last three years than any period for which data is available, according
to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Financial regulation has also become a pivotal issue in the jockeying over
who will become chairman of the Senate Banking Committee should Democrats
keep control of the Senate.

Some Wall Street donors have been unwilling to give to Senate Democrats’
re-election efforts, according to two Democratic lobbyists, because one of
the leading contenders for the chairmanship of the Banking Committee is
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who is pushing for a host of measures
resisted by Wall Street, including higher capital requirements for big
banks and a closer look at potential manipulation of commodities trading.

“I think most Democrats agree that Wall Street is too powerful,” Mr. Brown
said. “I understand some don’t — talk to them about why. Too many in my
party are too close to Wall Street.”

Few political families are closer to Wall Street than the Clintons. Their
family foundation has raised millions from financiers and the foundations
of big banks, and recently held its annual briefing for donors in the
auditorium of Goldman Sachs’s headquarters in Manhattan. Major financial
firms are stocked with Clinton alumni.

And the Clintons often interact with the titans of finance on the Manhattan
charity circuit and during their vacations in the Hamptons. Last month, Mr.
and Mrs. Clinton sat at a table with Hamilton E. James, president of the
Blackstone Group, and mingled with the billionaire David H. Koch at a
benefit for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Mrs. Clinton has recently staked some ground in the debate over wealth and
opportunity, sprinkling speeches with calls to address what she has called
the “cancer of inequality.” In an opinion article in The Denver Post, Mrs.
Clinton wrote: “No matter who you are or where you come from, if you work
hard and play by the rules, you should have the opportunity to build a good
life.”

But Mrs. Clinton has also taken heat for recent comments she has made about
her family’s own wealth, including the lament about being “dead broke”
after leaving the White House.

And some on the left say Mrs. Clinton’s less combative approach to issues
of taxation, Wall Street regulation and growth — “We’re all in this mess
together,” as one person who had attended several of Mrs. Clinton’s paid
speeches described her message — was out of step with the current political
climate.

In 2016, said Michael Lux, a political consultant who worked in the Clinton
White House, “People are going to be in a surly mood, a populist mood. To
have a Democrat too close to Wall Street, raising too much money from them,
having a ‘We’re all in this together’ message is a big mistake.”

*Associated Press: “Hillary Clinton: US-Europe Must Nurture Ties”
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/hillary-clinton-us-europe-must-nurture-ties>*

[No Writer Mentioned]

July 7, 2014, 4:09 p.m. EDT

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says that Europe and
the United States must nurture their ties because "there is no more
important force for progress, prosperity and peace than the trans-Atlantic
alliance."

Clinton, who was in Paris Monday for the publication of her book "Hard
Choices" there, said "we have to constantly be nurturing it, helping it to
stay on course."

At a gathering hosted by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Clinton
said she was happy waiting to become a grandmother this fall, instead of
dealing with papers like those on Fabius' desk.

Noting last week's Fourth of July celebrations, Clinton had warm words for
France, which "took a chance on us" fighting in the Revolutionary War.

*CNN: “Clinton explains defense in controversial rape case”
<http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/07/clinton-explains-defense-in-controversial-rape-case/>*

[No Writer Mentioned]

July 7, 2014, 2:49 p.m. EDT

Hillary Clinton pushed back at ongoing criticism of her providing legal
defense decades ago to an accused rapist, explaining that she had asked not
to be assigned to the case but ultimately had a responsibility to represent
her client.

In 1975, Clinton, a 27-year-old attorney, was appointed by a judge to
represent Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41-year-old man accused of raping a young
girl, for free while working at the legal aid clinic at the University of
Arkansas.

"I asked to be relieved of that responsibility but I was not and I had a
professional duty to represent my client to the best of my ability, which I
did," Clinton told Mumsnet, a British-based online parenting network, in an
interview publishedSaturday.

Based on court documents obtained by CNN and Clinton's own account in her
2003 memoir "Living History," she won a plea deal for Taylor, securing a
significantly reduced charge and sentence, based on a forensic mistake that
cast doubt on the semen and blood samples found in the defendant's
underwear.

Critics have pounced on Clinton's involvement in the nearly four-decade-old
case to suggest that the likely 2016 presidential candidate is not the
champion of women's issues she frames herself to be, pointing to court
documents that show then Hillary Rodham questioned the girl's emotional
state and an audio recording of Clinton from the 1980s where she says she
believed her client was guilty.

Asked about her defense method, Clinton told the British outlet: "When
you're a lawyer you often don't have the choice as to who you will
represent and, by the very nature of criminal law, there will be those you
represent that you don't approve of but, at least in our system, you have
an obligation, and once I was appointed I fulfilled that obligation."

Previously Mahlon Gibson, the prosecuting attorney in the case, told CNN
Clinton was appointed by the judge and expressed reservations in taking the
case.

*Business Insider: “Hillary Clinton's Inner Circle Calls This Man The Most
'Despicable' Person In The World”
<http://www.businessinsider.com/ed-klein-hillary-clinton-inner-circle-despicable-2014-7>*

By Hunter Walker

July 8, 2014

Author Ed Klein has published hundreds of pages of attacks on President
Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton.

On Monday, as Klein's latest "exposé" of the former first family topped
Hillary's memoir on the bestseller list, a source close to the Clintons
fired back with a scathing, lengthy email to Business Insider blasting
Klein as a pathological liar.

"This might sound hyperbolic, but there is no bigger liar in the entire
world," the source said of Klein. "Lying isn't even the word for it. It's
some kind of sickness where every single thing you write is fabricated.
Every. Single. Thing. I mean, even the photos in his book were found to be
altered."

Klein, who made headlines last weekend with a questionable article in
Sunday's New York Post in which he claimed President Barack Obama is
backing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren rather than Hillary Clinton in
the 2016 presidential election, would not discuss criticism of his work
when Business Insider called him Monday. Instead, he repeatedly referred us
to his publicist, Jeremy Little, who provided us with a three sentence
statement from Klein defending his reporting.

"In typical Clinton fashion, when people can’t handle or respond to the
truth, they attack the messenger," Klein said.

Klein also cited a Wall Street Journal report published Monday that
described Hillary Clinton, who is widely viewed as the Democratic
frontrunner for 2016, distancing herself from some of the Obama
administration's policies. He implied this proved his claim Obama "has
quietly promised Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren complete support if
she runs for president."

"Reports surfaced this morning that Hillary Clinton is deliberately
separating herself from the Obamas and their agenda. This is why, as I
reported yesterday in the New York Post, the Obamas are searching for a new
candidate for 2016 who is willing to carry on their legacy," Klein said.

However, there is a long history of alleged factual issues in Klein's work.
As the source close to the Clintons noted, a photographer released evidence
showing Klein misrepresented a salaciously cropped photo of President
Clinton in his 2005 book, "The Truth About Hillary." That's just one of
many problems that emerged from the book where Klein cast Hillary Clinton
as "the most polarizing figure in American politics."

The Clinton confidante described Klein's writing about Hillary as "creepy."

"We have had to contend with all sorts of dastardly characters over the
years, being a bad actor isn't unique in this business. But there is a
special circle of hell reserved for his combination of pathological lying,
hate, and just flat out creepiness," the source said of Klein, adding, "But
he's got a good gig. He sits in his creepy lair and once every few years
bangs out another pack of lies, doesn't have to bother with any nettlesome
issues that get in the way, like sources or facts."

After writing "The Truth About Hillary," Klein moved on to President Barack
Obama.

Klein co-authored "The Obama Identity" in 2010. It was a fictional work
that delved into the widely debunked conspiracy theories about Obama's
birthplace. In 2012, Klein released "The Amateur," which attempted to
expose Obama as "a callow, thin-skinned, arrogant president with messianic
dreams of grandeur supported by a cast of true-believers, all of them
united by leftist politics and an amateurish understanding of executive
leadership." New York Magazine subsequently found an error on the book's
very first page.

In addition to specific factual errors, Klein's political books have been
widely criticized for their widespread reliance on anonymous sources to
provide detailed behind-the-scenes stories from Obama and the Clintons'
inner circles. These accounts have included shocking revelations and
conversations that people on all sides of the political spectrum have
described as improbable.

Klein's latest book, "Blood Feud," purports to reveal "the mutual loathing"
that he claims exists between Obama and Hillary Clinton, the president's
former secretary of state. Multiple close Obama allies did not respond to
requests for comment on Klein including Valerie Jarrett, the senior White
House advisor Klein claimed was leading the "full-court press" to convince
Warren to challenge Hillary Clinton in 2016. An aide to Jarrett responded
to an email from Business Insider by pointing to comments  White House
Press Secretary Josh Earnest made about Klein's claims Obama was pushing
Warren to run for president.

"At this point it’s still in the middle of 2014," Earnest said. "I’m not
aware of any particular positions or candidates — or all that much
thinking, to be honest with you — that the president has done as it relates
to the next presidential elections. I haven’t actually seen those reports."

Earnest may not have seen reports based on Klein's claims, but they have
been generating substantial media coverage. However, the source close to
the Clintons argued Klein doesn't get as much attention as he did when he
wrote his first book about Hillary.

"On it getting traction, I don't think he gets much anymore. When he did
this in 05 people thought, Wow, he's a former NYT Magazine editor, he's
reputable. It was a real fight to keep him off mainstream air," the source
explained. "But as soon as people read any of it, it was absurd. I mean, he
contends that Chelsea Clinton was conceived in a rape. He'll claim he
didn't say that, but go back and read the chapter. It is nothing short of
despicable."

The questions raised about Klein's work over the years do seem to have
affected his standing in the mainstream media. In April, Buzzfeed reported
the major publishing house HarperCollins terminated its contract with Klein
due to concerns about his reporting. Both "The Amateur" and "Blood Feud"
were published by a smaller, conservative publishing house, Regnery. In
addition to his past roles as an editor at Newsweek and the New York Times
Magazine in the 1970's and 80's, Klein has been a contributing editor at
Vanity Fair, which excerpted both "The Truth About Hillary" and "The Obama
Identity." Vanity Fair spokeswoman Beth Kseniak told Business Insider Klein
is still with the magazine, however, "we are not excerpting Ed's current
book."

According to the Clinton source who emailed Business Insider, Hillary's
team was unaware of "Blood Feud" until it came out because Klein made no
effort to contact them during the course of his reporting. They also said
no one in Hillary's inner circle reached out to her to report being
approached by Klein about the book.

"In terms of contacting us, no, he hasn't. But that's neither here or
there. What's amazing is that when people work on anything, a story, a
documentary, a book, you hear from SOMEONE who checks in and say, Hey, I
got a call from this guy Ed Klein, are you guys cooperating with him,
should I talk to him?" the source said. "In this case, not one person. Not
a single solitary human being. Didn't know about the book until it came
out."

The source described this apparent lack of effort by Klein to contact
Hillary's team and allies as proof his new book is fabricated.

"Do you know how hard that is?" the source said of the fact they heard from
no one who spoke to Klein. "It's impossible. UNLESS you are fabricating
every word, in which case you don't need to talk to anyone. Which is why he
didn't. I haven't even looked at the book, but I'd be curious who he quoted
and whether it was an interview or if the sourcing indicates that it's
taken from the public record."

Klein and his publicist did not respond to questions from Business Insider
about whether he attempted to contact Hillary's team and whether this
called his work into question.

The Clinton source concluded with a blunt assessment of Klein:

"I'll end by saying the same thing I started with: there is no one anywhere
near this despicable. Nobody."

*Daily Caller: “Jimmy Fallon Mocks Hillary Clinton’s Hairstyle”
<http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/08/jimmy-fallon-mocks-hillary-clintons-hairstyle/>*

By Jamie Weinstein

July 8, 2014, 12:09 a.m. EDT

After mocking Hillary Clinton for dressing like a man, Jimmy Fallon has
moved on to poking fun of her history of hairstyles.

During Monday night’s edition of NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” Fallon noted how
Hillary’s book sales have dropped dramatically since its release and
suggested it could be because the book lacked a catchy title. So Fallon
offered a few possible alternatives, including a couple that knocked
Hillary for her appearance.

“Hillary Clinton And The Deathly Haircuts,” Fallon put forward as one
possible alternative Hillary book title.

Watch the video to see the rest.

[VIDEO]

*Daily Mail (U.K.): “Girl power! Liv Tyler champions Hillary Clinton for
president as she flashes her long slender legs in outdoor fashion shoot”
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2683912/Liv-Tyler-champions-Hillary-Clinton-president-flashes-long-slender-legs-outdoor-fashion-shoot.html>*

By Helen Zhao

July 7, 2014

The Lord Of The Rings star strikes an inspired, triumphant pose, with one
fist in the air, while rooting for the 66-year-old former Secretary Of
State.

Her long brown hair cascades down her back as she gazes with hopeful blue
eyes toward the sky.

Liv, who is currently starring in the new HBO TV series The Leftover, was
also pictured seated on a log, with her feet dipped in a body of water,
flashing her long slender legs.

The daughter of Steven Tyler is shrouded in a flannel blanket and
expressing great mirth while caught in mid laugh.

Liv was also captured in a couple more pensive moments, one gazing off to
the side with her hands touching, showing off the bright blue nail polish
that brought out the colour of her eyes.

In another, she is lying on her back, appearing almost frozen, while clad
in a striped red and white knit sweater.

Liv shared her appreciation for women with the publication.

‘It’s a competitive world I guess, but all we can do is feel our best,’ the
Jersey Girl star said.

‘I’m not a competitive person. I love women, I’m intrigued by them. I think
they’re fascinating and complex.’

She also emphasized the importance of inner beauty, asserting, ‘There’s no
cream that can fix you if you’re not beautiful on the inside.’

*Calendar:*

*Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official
schedule.*

·  July 8 – France (AFP
<https://uk.news.yahoo.com/clinton-takes-book-tour-europe-164143589.html#8EKq7Zq>
)

·  August 9 – Water Mill, NY: Sec. Clinton fundraises for the Clinton
Foundation at the home of George and Joan Hornig (WSJ
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/06/17/for-50000-best-dinner-seats-with-the-clintons-in-the-hamptons/>
)

·  August 28 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes Nexenta’s OpenSDx
Summit (BusinessWire
<http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140702005709/en/Secretary-State-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton-Deliver-Keynote#.U7QoafldV8E>
)

·  September 4 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton speaks at the National Clean
Energy Summit (Solar Novis Today
<http://www.solarnovus.com/hillary-rodham-clinto-to-deliver-keynote-at-national-clean-energy-summit-7-0_N7646.html>
)

·  October 2 – Miami Beach, FL: Sec. Clinton keynotes the CREW Network
Convention & Marketplace (CREW Network
<http://events.crewnetwork.org/2014convention/>)

·  October 13 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton keynotes the UNLV Foundation
Annual Dinner (UNLV
<http://www.unlv.edu/event/unlv-foundation-annual-dinner?delta=0>)