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JOURNALIST Christopher Sign revealed he and his family received death threats after he broke the news of the 2016 secret "tarmac meeting" involving Bill Clinton and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

The Alabama TV anchor, 45, was found dead at his home in Hoover on Saturday and cops are investigating his death as a suicide.

Read our Christopher Sign live blog for the latest news and updates...

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Sign, a former University of Alabama football player, penned a book about the meeting between Clinton and Lynch, which happened during the presidential election in June 2016.

Its reported that the meeting took place on a private jet at Phoenix airport amid the investigation into Hillary Clintons private email server.

The book "Secret on the Tarmac" was published in 2019.

The journalist told Fox News in February last year that he and his family received death threats and his credit cards were hacked.

He said: My family received significant death threats shortly after breaking this story.

Sign revealed that he and his wife had given their children secret code words in case something happened to them.

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Clinton and Lynch claimed it was a "friendly" chat, centered around their grandchildren.

But, it took place days before the FBI decided it would not recommend criminal charges against Hillary.

The meeting sparked suspicions about whether Bill was lobbying her on behalf of his wife - at the time a presidential candidate.

Sign said the get-together "was a planned meeting, it was not a coincidence".

He said: [Secret on the Tarmac] "details everything that they dont want you to know and everything they think you forgot.

"But Bill Clinton was on that plane for 20 minutes and it wasnt just about golf, grandkids, andBrexit. There's so much that doesnt add up."

Sign's source told him that Clinton had arrived at the airport, and he was waiting for Lynch.

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The journalist said: He then sat and waited in his car with the motorcade, her airstairs come down, most of her staff gets off, he then gets on as the Secret Service and FBI are figuring out How in the world are we supposed to handle this? What are we supposed to do?

Lynch testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2018.

Sign said: "She mentioned that Bill Clinton flattered her, talked about Eric Holder, talked about how things were going at Justice, talked about her job performance, not this golf-grandkids, Brexit."

But Bill rejected the journalist's claims and said that he was "offended" over allegations of misconduct regarding the airport meeting.

Clinton told investigators, according to a 2018 report released by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz: I thought, you know, I dont know whether Im more offended that they think Im crooked or that they think Im stupid.

The ABC 33/40 newsman was found dead at his home at around 8am on Saturday and the news network released a statement mourning the loss of their colleague.

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It read: To know Chris was to love Chris. His family was the single most important thing in his life which is why he ended up returning to ABC 33/40 four years ago."

The veteran anchor worked as a reporter in Montgomery and Midland/Odessa, Texas, Birmingham, and Phoenix.

He returned to ABC 33/40 in 2017 after turning down an opportunity to work at a major news network so he could spend more time with his family.

The outlet said: "What most people don't know is Chris turned down an opportunity to work for one of the national networks to come to ABC 33/40, and he made that decision because of his family.

"That decision put him in a place where he could see his boys off to school in the mornings, watch them play baseball in the evenings, and take them fishing on the weekends."

The former college footballer played for the University of Alabama under Coach Gene Stallings in the 1990s, the outlet reported.

Sign won several awards for his journalistic work throughout the years.

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In 2014, he got an Emmy Award for breaking news for his coverage of the shootings of two Phoenix police officers.

In 2016, he earned an Edward Murrow Award for spot news for his coverage of the search for the "Baseline Killer" and "Serial Shooter" in Phoenix.

He and his wife, Laura, met while attending the University of Alabama and went on to marry and have three sons.

If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.

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Anchor Christopher Sign who killed himself was hit with death threats after exposing Clintons 2016 tarm... - The US Sun

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

President Biden uttered its simply, simply wrong when news arrived that the Trump Justice Department had spied on reporters phone records and emails to try to catch leakers.

Mr. Bidens verdict sounded great for the First Amendment in an era of left-wing muzzling.

You would never guess that the not-so-long-ago Obama-Biden administration conducted some of the most mindboggling spying on journalists in modern U.S. history.

How does the Kremlin or Tehran or Beijing top this? The last Democratic administration bugged the Washington bureau of the nations leading wire service, the Associated Press.

The AP operation was part of a larger press assault. The Obama-Biden team displayed little hesitancy in targeting journalists not only to find sources, but to make examples for any sources in waiting.

In 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder approved the extensive intrusion into the APs daily reporter-source communications. He wanted to know who tipped off the wire service to a CIA operation that stopped an al Qaeda airplane bomb plot hatched in Yemen.

Obama-Biden was not content with just spying on the APs D.C. bureau. The feds harvested a large number of records including reporters home and cell phone calls from APs Hartford and New York offices and its bureau in the House of Representatives.

It was not mob-style wiretapping, with agents in headsets in a disguised van. Instead, the FBI secretly collected a larger number of digits who called whom revealing just about everyone APs reporters routinely contacted.

This sort of activity really amounts to massive government monitoring of the actions of the press, and it really puts a dagger at the heart of APs newsgathering activities, APs lawyer David Schultz, told NPR.

There were no subpoenas to AP. No warnings. Just raw data collection. (Imagine what Adam Schiff would do if Trump).

So offended was Gary B. Pruitt, APs president and chief executive, that he wrote directly to Mr. Holder in May 2013.

There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of the Associated Press and its reporters, Mr. Pruitt wrote. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to APs newsgathering operations, and disclose information about APs activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.

He said Mr. Holder violated the departments own regulations to make subpoenas on a news reporters call records as narrow as possible.

That same month the Obama-Biden team outdid itself. Not content with bugging bureaus, they decided to stalk a reporter, James Rosen, then of Fox News.

An FBI May 2010 affidavit revealed the Justice Department viewed the diplomatic reporter as a criminal a co-conspirator for reporting classified information on a North Korean nuclear test.

There is probable cause to believe that the Reporter has committed or is committing a violation of section 793(d), an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator, to which the materials relate, the FBI agent wrote.

Federal law 793 makes it a crime to leak classified information and conviction can bring a maximum 10-year prison sentence.

The FBI tailed Mr. Rosens comings and goings at the State Department by monitoring his card swipes and by prying into his personal GMail account.

We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter, Michael Clemente, then Fox News executive vice president of news, said at the time. In fact, it is downright chilling.

The liberal website Slate.com weighed in: Government spying on Fox News Reporter Even Worse Than AP Case.

The Obama-era FBI used reporters emails to nail other leakers, including:

CIA covert officer John Kiriakou. He leaked two names of covert officers involved in the infamous enhanced interrogations of captured Islamic terrorists to The New York Times and other news organizations. The Obama administration opened a probe in 2010 and charged him in 2012 based on his back-in-forth emails with reporters.

Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, said to be Mr. Obamas favorite general when he served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The FBI read his email communications with a New York Times reporter about the secret U.S. operation to inject the Stuxnet malware into Irans nuclear machinery. Confronted with the emails, he confessed to the FBI.

By 2016, the Obama-Biden administration racked up quite a record: the most anti-leak administration in modern history, if the judging is based on criminal convictions. Such cases had been relatively rare. They scored nine of them against government officials.

The Obama-Biden anti-press history is relevant given President Bidens dismissal of President Trumps efforts to find leakers using journalists phone and email records. Three such cases at the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN came to light recently.

Why not? Trump people might say. The Obama-Biden penchant for reading reporters emails, texts and phone logs well, it works.

They nabbed James Rosens source, who went to prison. Mr. Cartwright pleaded guilty as did Mr. Kiriakou.

As for Mr. Holders AP bureau phone sweep it also hit pay dirt.

The leaker was former FBI special agent bomb technician Donald Sachtleben, who then worked as a bureau contractor. His name showed up via AP reporters phone records. The FBI then obtained Mr. Sachtlebens texts and emails from his devices. A judge sentenced him to three years in prison. (He also pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography.)

The Obama-Biden team had a loathsome record on another facet of open government.

An Associated Press analysis released in 2015 said Obama administration bureaucrats set a record for refusing open-records requests, filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The backlog of unanswered requests grew by an astounding 55%.

Mr. Biden likes pronouncing things wrong, simply wrong. He used the phrase against Mitt Romney in the 2012 election and against Mr. Trump in 2020.

Wrong, simply wrong spoken to a CNN reporter last month is a good media play. Mr. Biden knows the liberal mass media is his most important constituency.

He occasionally keeps them in check with a scolding dismissive retort when a question veers to a conservative theme. During the 2020 campaign, Today Show co-host Savannah Guthrie asked Mr. Biden if it was wrong for son Hunter to take a lucrative corporate board job in 2014 in Ukraine. Critics say it was an attempt to buy influence with the vice president.

Well, thats not true. Youre saying things you do not know what youre talking about, Mr. Biden snapped.

During the transition, aides guided Mr. Biden away after delivering a statement alongside congressional Democrats.

CBS News Bo Erickson then asked if the president-elect would urge the teachers union to get kids back in the classroom.

Why are you the only guy that always shouts out questions? Mr. Biden shot back, and walked away.

Conservatives are asking the same question.

Rowan Scarborough can be reached by email at rscarborough@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter at @RoScarborough.

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Rank hypocrisy in Biden's press criticisms of Trump - Washington Times

The Justice Department said it would no longer seek records of reporters contacts when investigating government leaks of sensitive informationa change that reverses a longstanding practice after President Biden said he believed it was wrong.

Department spokesman Anthony Coley on Saturday said the agency completed a review of pending requests for reporters records and in the future federal prosecutors will not seek compulsory legal process in leak investigations to obtain source information from members of the news media doing their jobs.

Scrutiny of the practice rose in recent weeks after the department notified reporters at the Washington Post, CNN, and the New York Times that, under the Trump administration, the agency sought and obtained their phone records from 2017. That drew objections from the news outlets and press-freedom organizations.

Prosecutors have sought such records in leak investigations for years, often after exhausting other options for identifying suspects. Under the Obama administration, for example, the Justice Department used the tool for investigations involving reporting by the Associated Press and Fox News. Multiple former government employees and senior officials were prosecuted by the Obama Justice Department.

In response to a backlash from press advocates and others, then-Attorney General Eric Holder in 2013 added new hurdles that prosecutors had to clear before they could obtain subpoenas and search warrants targeting reporters. The measures included requiring prosecutors to give a media organization notice before a subpoena could be issued to seize records, unless the attorney general certified that doing so would harm the investigation.

The rest is here:
Justice Department to End Pursuit of Reporters Contact Records Over Leaks - The Wall Street Journal

MADISON -Already thin, Republican support for nonpartisan redistricting in Wisconsin may be fading.

Democrats say they want to take partisanship out of redistricting so legislative and congressional maps are drawn in a neutral way. Republicans are not on board with that idea, saying they dont believe map drawing can be depoliticized.

Democrats point to polling to say the public is on their side, but if anything their support from Republicans is slipping.

Two years ago, five Republican lawmakers signed onto a bill that would require congressional and legislative districts to be drawn by an independent panel. This session, three Republicans have signed up.

The lack of Republican backing is a reminder that the effort to overhaul redistricting in Wisconsin is headed nowhere in the short term.

States must draw new districts every decade to account for population changes. Ten years ago, Republicans controlled all of state government and approved maps that greatly helped them.

This time, Republicans again control the Legislature, but Democratic Gov. Tony Evers can veto whatever maps they draw. Without an agreement between them, it would be left to courts to decide where to draw the lines.

Evers and other Democrats say the state should avoid a court fight by having a nonpartisan body draw the lines. Democrats in the Legislature recently unveiled a billthat would do that.

Its getting scant attention from Republicans, who have commanding majorities in the Senate and Assembly.

Signing onto the nonpartisan redistricting legislation this year were Republican Reps. Joel Kitchens of Sturgeon Bay, Todd Novak of Dodgeville and Travis Tranel of Cuba City. They also backed the bill two years ago.

Two others who joined them last time Republican Reps. Jeffrey Mursau of Crivitz and Loren Oldenburg of Viroqua havent done so this time. They didnt say why they hadnt.

A sixth Republican, Rep. Jon Plumer of Lodi, has repeatedly said he would vote for nonpartisan redistricting but has not signed onto the bill.

Eric Holder, who served as attorney general for President Barack Obama, acknowledged Democrats were unlikely to persuade many Republican lawmakers on the legislation like the bill in Wisconsin.

Republican voters might see it differently, said Holder, who leads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. His group pushes for nonpartisan redistricting.

The Republican public I think can be reached and can be convinced theres a better way to do the process that has happened in the past in Wisconsin, Holder said. Republican politicians Im not sure they can be reached.

Republican lawmakers dont buy Holders claims that he wants nonpartisan maps, noting his group filed paperwork with the Internal Revenue Service saying its mission is to "favorably position Democrats for the redistricting process."

Former Republican Gov. Scott Walkerin a tweet last year said Holder and his group "want to throw out old maps in many states and gerrymander Democrats into long-term control of the House."

Holder said hes committed to nonpartisan causes, noting he opposed Democratic gerrymandering efforts in Maryland in court and pushed for Democrats in Virginia to give up power by creating a nonpartisan commission.

ContactPatrick Marley at patrick.marley@jrn.com. Followhim on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.

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Split between Wisconsin Democrats and Republicans on redistricting reform appears to be widening - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Then-president Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual meeting at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md., February 29, 2020. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

On the menu today: contemplating the uncomfortable question of whether the most lasting legacy of the Trump presidency will be a culturally dominant progressive left; a closer look at the early outlook for the 2022 House elections; the CIA offers a duh report; and an absolutely bonkers attempt to demonize Pfizer.

Were Woke Progressives the Real Winners from the Trump Presidency?

If youre a Republican officeholder, it is a fact of life that most of the media will be against you, and look for opportunities to make you look stupid, reckless, ill-informed, malevolent, and hopelessly out of date. You will have your own media that will be friendlier Fox News Channel, talk radio, etc. but by and large, youre going to have the wind in your face every day youre running for office and in office. While this could change someday, it does not appear likely to change anytime soon, and is arguably getting worse, as more and more media prioritize dramatic and partisan narratives over the facts in pursuit of clicks and television ratings.

Its also worth keeping in mind that the bias of the media is a hurdle that can be overcome; otherwise, no Republican would ever win anywhere. The Republican Party has 50 Senate seats, 212 House seats (with one more to be settled in a runoff soon), 27 governors mansions, 61 state legislative chambers, and a grand total of 4,008 state legislative seats. I would contend that many subpar GOP candidates use the media was biased against me as an excuse to cover their own bad decisions and flaws.

No doubt, communication skills matter a great deal for Republican officeholders, particularly the closer they get to the national stage. Theyre not going to get the airbrushed, protective coverage that insists Nancy Pelosi is a master strategist.

But even the most brilliant communication skills in the world arent much help if they arent connected to good judgment. Maybe one of the most underrated and under-discussed duties of a GOP elected official is to not make the job of the opposition easier. Dont hand them effective and accurate lines of criticism. Everybodys going to make mistakes, but a good elected official avoids the dumb ones. Dont practice cronyism or get caught in other scandals. Dont tell lies, and if you must spin, try to make the spin plausible. Dont overpromise, and whatever you promise, dont under-deliver. Work hard, and make sure people see you working hard. Hold your own people accountable. Know what youre talking about, and when you dont know, dont try to wing it. Have a set list of priorities that will product tangible results for your constituents, and dont get distracted by every media controversy that comes down the pike. And for Gods sake, dont waste any time or energy worrying about what Mika Brzezinski or Don Lemon is saying about you.

Our last Republican president broke just about all of those rules, and a recent Ross Douthat column spotlights the argument that the progressive Left was the true big winner from the Trump presidency:

[Richard Hanania, who runs the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology] argues that its not simply that the millennials and Gen Z are more liberal, or that the Democrats are the professional-class party and so liberalism dominates the professional spheres. These tilts are real, but there are still enough conservative-leaning consumers, enough young and wealthy and well-educated Republicans, to create incentives for institutions to be apolitical or politically neutral.

The key difference, he argues, isnt sheer numbers but engagement, intensity and zeal. Liberals lately seem to just care a lot more about politics: They donate more, they protest more, they agitate more, in ways that change the incentives for public-facing institutions. Some of these gaps are longstanding, but others have opened only recently, with 2016 as the crucial turning point. That was the year when the mobilization gap exploded, creating irresistible pressure from both within and outside corporations for them to take a stand on almost all hot button issues.

Why 2016? Well, probably because of Donald Trump: In Hananias data, his nomination and election looks like the great accelerant, with anti-Trump backlash driving liberal hyper-investment in politics to new heights, enabling progressives to achieve true mass mobilization in a way conservatives never have in the modern era. That mobilization has consolidated progressive norms in almost every institution susceptible to pressure from activists (or activist-employees), and its pulled the entire American establishment leftward, so that conservatives are suddenly at war with Major League Baseball and Coca-Cola instead of just Harvard and the Ford Foundation, and the custodians of the national security state are eager to prove their enlightenment by speaking in the argot of the academic left.

For a long time, progressives and Democrats argued that Republicans were villains and Trump cheerfully and gleefully embraced that role. Quite a few Republican grassroots voters signed on for that characterization as well; having seen Mitt Romney demonized, Republicans figured they might as well gain the advantages of nominating a devil. That paid off in 2016, although we will probably be arguing until the end of time whether only Trump could have beaten Hillary Clinton, or whether she was such a quietly weak and overrated candidate that multiple Republicans could have beaten her.

But the progressive Left is a much stronger cultural force in 2021 than it was on Election Day 2016, and it is hard to believe that Trumps presidency had nothing to do with that. Nor is there much reason to think that any future version of Trump will be any less of a cultural accelerant; in a March interview with Laura Ingraham, Trump said of the January 6 Capitol Hill riot,It was zero threat, right from the start, it was zero threat. Look, they went in, they shouldnt have done it. Some of them went in, and they are hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know, they had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in and they walked out.

This is something to think about as House Republicans contemplate kicking Liz Cheney out of leadership while taking a wait and see attitude toward Matt Gaetz.

Full House

One day after this newsletter told you that the odds of Democrats keeping the House keep getting worse. Post-census redistricting will help Republicans here and there, and the retirements of Democratic incumbents from swing-y districts keep piling up, the New York Times informs its readers that with 18 months left before the midterms, a spate of Democratic departures from the House is threatening to erode the partys slim majority in the House and imperil President Bidens far-reaching policy agenda.

The Times notes that we probably havent seen the last Democratic House retirement from a swing district this cycle:

[In addition to Charlie Crist], two other Democratic representatives, Stephanie Murphy of Winter Park and Val Demings of Orlando, are weighing runs for statewide office.

All three now hold seats in districts President Biden carried handily last November, but with Republicans in control of Floridas redistricting process, the states congressional map is likely to soon be much better for Republicans than it is now.

Representative Filemon Vela of Texas, whose Rio Grande Valley district became eight percentage points more Republican from 2016 to 2020, chose retirement rather than compete in what was likely to be his first competitive re-election bid.

Heres a dirty little secret about the House of Representative elections: Very few Washington political reporters pay close attention to them until the very end of the cycle, because theyre way more complicated and harder to get a handle on than statewide Senate elections. If I say Pennsylvania, you probably picture the Liberty Bell, Valley Forge, and steel mills. If I tell you that The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, chaired by Obama-era attorney general Eric Holder, released a statement calling for Pennsylvanias 15th congressional district to be eliminated, you probably have no idea where that district is. (Its a big chunk of the northwest corner of the state, but does not include Erie or much of the Pittsburgh suburbs.)

Theres still plenty of road ahead between now and the midterm elections. But these trends tend to pick up momentum as the cycle progresses. When a president wins, he brings out a lot of grassroots supporters to the polls who wont be as motivated in off-year special elections, gubernatorial elections, and midterm congressional elections. For the two-year span after a president wins, the opposition grassroots get fired up and the presidents grassroots get complacent. It doesnt happen every year, but it happened in 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018. (Yes, the GOP picked up two Senate seats in 2018, mitigating the effect somewhat. Republicans still got clobbered in the House and gubernatorial races.) White Houses and their affiliated party committees know about this pattern and exert enormous effort to counter it but most cycles, their efforts dont do much good.

All over the map, there are House Democrats who won in 2020 in part because turnout in a presidential year was just high enough to put them over the top. In New Jerseys seventh district, Tom Malinowski won by 1.2 percentage points while Biden was carrying the district, 54 percent to 44 percent. In Illinoiss 14th congressional district, Lauren Underwood won by 1.4 percentage points while Biden won by two points. In Iowas 3rd congressional district, Cindy Axne won by 1.4 percentage points, while Trump won that district by a tenth of a percentage point. In Virginias seventh district, Abigail Spanberger won by 1.8 percentage points, while Biden won by one point.

It works the other way, too; Republicans Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, Claudia Tenney of New York, Mike Garcia and David Valadao of California, and Burgess Owens of Utah all won by the skin of their teeth in 2020 and should expect serious challenges and have little room for error in 2022.

Control of the House will probably come down to the mood of the country and the issue environment in the fall of 2022 and Bidens approval rating will probably be one useful measurement tool. By October 2010, Obamas approval rating in the Gallup poll had dropped from the post-inauguration 66 percent to 45 percent. In the FiveThirtyEight poll aggregator, Bidens approval rating started at 53 percent . . . and remains at 53 percent.

Thanks a Lot, Guys

I dont usually like to pick on the U.S. intelligence community, but sometimes you see a report that almost seems tailor-made to elicit a duh response: U.S. intelligence agencies are warning that any gains in womens rights in Afghanistan made in the last two decades will be at risk after U.S. troops withdraw later this year.

Thats great, guys. Now could we get an update to the National Intelligence Estimate that water is wet?

ADDENDUM: Former secretary of labor Robert Reich complains that Pfizer made $3.5 billion on its COVID-19 vaccine in the past three months.

How much should that company make for creating and mass producing 430 million doses of the most effective coronavirus vaccine out there, the first mRNA vaccine ever produced, that is helping to stop a global pandemic that has killed 3.2 million people around the world?

By my math, $3.5 billion divided by 430 million doses comes out to $8 a dose. Hey, Reich, let me find a Hamilton, a Lincoln, and a Washington and Ill cover Pfizers profit on your doses.

The New York Times reports that Pfizers profit margins on the vaccine would be in the high 20 percent range. When you save the world, I think youre entitled to bring home the bacon!

More here:
After Trump, the Woke Left Roars - National Review