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Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, speaks with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., before an Oversight of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and Attempts to Influence U.S. Elections hearing on July 27, 2017. (Getty Images)

A story online that says a witness will speak out against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as part of a larger investigation into her actions is a muddled mix of real developments misleadingly retold.

"Breaking: A witness will testify against Hillary Clinton," read the headline on a July 30, 2017, post on CoffeeBreakForYou.com. Facebook users flagged the story as being potentially fabricated as part of the social media sites efforts to combat fake news.

The post said that Clinton would be "held accountable for the many wrongdoings she has been charged with," although it never specifies what those charges may be. It said President Donald Trump had tasked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate Clintons ties to Russia.

Thats where the "key witness" comes in.

"Glenn Simpson has been friends with the Clinton family for many years," the post read. "Not coincidentally, he is also a co-founder of the firm Fusion GPS that disseminated the widely debunked fake news dossier containing over-the-top stories about Donald Trump going to Russian hotels."

The CoffeeBreakForYou.com article said the Senate Judiciary Committee had subpoenaed Simpson. The post asked readers whether they thought Simpson "will share crucial information about how Hillary attempted to frame Donald Trump."

The story appears to have originated as a July 30 post on Conservative101.com. The byline on the post was Christopher Reynolds. We attempted to reach Conservative101.com through the websites contact form (the only method of contact available) but didnt get a response.

The story isn't fake in the sense that it makes up all its content, but it does spin things to the point of being misleading or incorrect.The most notable issues are whetherClinton is really being investigated, and for what reasons the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to talk to Simpson.

Trump has publicly criticized Sessions for failing to investigate Clinton for deleting emails from her private server and for allegedly getting information from Ukraine during her presidential campaign.

The Justice Department has not publicly acknowledged an investigation into Clinton, although the Senate Judiciary Committee has demanded the agency disclose if its investigating the Ukrainian allegations. The Justice Department has until Aug. 3 to respond. House Republicans have requested FBI documents into the campaign investigation and have asked for a special counsel for a Clinton probe.

The Senate committee has been looking into the extent of Russian influence on the 2016 election.

Simpson is a real person. He is a former journalist who is a founding partner of opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Simpson was initially being subpoenaed for a hearing, but not explicitly to expose Clinton. The committee wanted to compel him to discuss details of his companys Trump dossier, which became public in January 2017.

Simpson wanted to protect the Democratic-leaning client who hired Fusion GPS to create the Trump dossier, according to the Daily Beast.

Simpson had originally intended to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination, but struck a deal in which he would provide a transcribed interview. The Senate Judiciary Committee agreed and withdrew its subpoena.

We couldnt find any proof that Simpson was "friends with the Clinton family," although the New York Post reported that Fusion GPS was "actually an opposition-research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary Clinton, anti-Trump agenda."

But trying to protect the identity of a Clinton ally who paid for opposition research against Trump is not the same as testifying against Clinton.

In addition to the Trump opposition report, Fusion GPS also had reportedly worked to ease sanctions against Russia, through ties with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya. Shes the same lawyer Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had met in a controversial and previously undisclosed 2016 meeting.

Our ruling

Bloggers said, "A witness will testify against Hillary Clinton."

The post used details from several real news events in a way that would lead readers to draw some unproven conclusions. The article said that a founding partner in an opposition research firm was being called to testify against Clinton.

Simpson was being asked to discuss details about a dossier filled with unsavory (and largely unsubstantiated) details about Trump as part of an investigation into Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election.

We rate this statement False.

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Internet post misleads by saying witness will testify specifically against Hillary Clinton - PolitiFact (blog)

Hillary Clinton has hired two political operatives from her 2016 presidential campaign to help manage Onward Together, the project she founded this spring with former governor Howard Dean to fund and support a coalition of Democratic groups led by activists and organizers.

The new additions, Emmy Ruiz and Adam Parkhomenko, held central roles on Clintons campaign: Ruiz delivered key victories as state director in Nevada during the primary and in Colorado during the general election; Parkhomenko worked in headquarters as her director of grassroots engagement before moving to the Democratic National Committee. Both served on Clintons first presidential bid in 2008.

Dean, the Onward Together co-founder, confirmed the recent hires on Friday.

The group, registered in May as a 501c4 organization with an affiliated super PAC, is working to establish a small but diverse cooperative of about 10 to 12 grassroots efforts, each one focused on a different area of the energy and activism set off by Donald Trumps election and presidency. Dean said they are still in the process vetting groups to add to the coalition, which already includes organizations such as Swing Left, Emerge America, and Run For Something.

Ruiz, last with Tom Perezs successful campaign for DNC chair, has been working to systemize and add structure to that process, steering the process and guiding next steps, while also working the collection of outside groups.

Shes moving us right on task, which is what we really needed, said Dean.

Parkhomenko, a longtime Clinton loyalist who founded the PAC Ready For Hillary in early 2013, will focus on the larger political landscape for both Onward Together and, tangentially, Clintons activity on behalf of Democrats, looking at the question of how, when, and where she can be helpful to candidates in upcoming races.

Both former campaign aides will be working as consultants.

That Clinton play a role at all in electoral politics after her failed 2016 campaign is a source of debate among Democrats, some of whom have said that the former candidate needs to step back, clearing the way for new voices in politics. Clinton, however, has made it clear she is receding entirely into private life: She has made headlines for pointed remarks about Trump and Russia and has a memoir coming out next month that aides have described as a candid, at times raw account of the Democratic primary fight and her race against Trump.

Clinton has received at least one request to campaign on behalf of Phil Murphy, the Democratic candidate for governor in New Jersey, according to a Democrat close the campaign there. In the 2018 midterm elections, there will be races in 23 congressional districts that Clinton carried at the top of the ticket but Republicans held down-ballot.

Ruiz and Parkhomenko, who both started their work at Onward Together this summer, will join a small core team that includes Dean, the former Vermont governor and DNC chair, along with Judith McHale, an undersecretary under Clinton at the State Department, and Amy Rao, a Silicon Valley businesswoman and a longtime supporter and donor. The aides in Clintons New York office, including former campaign vice chair Huma Abedin, finance director Dennis Cheng, and press secretary Nick Merrill, are also working on the project.

Dean and McHale in particular have been working on vetting groups, which are expected to submit a budget for funding and provide a full account of their activity and management setup.

Clinton and her aides have also spent the summer on her new memoir, What Happened, which comes out in September and will be followed by a book tour.

Some of the fundraising work has already started, but its been slow going because weve all been so busy, said Dean. Now that weve got some staff its really terrific. Somebody had to have the big picture, and that would now be Emmy and Adam."

See original here:
Hillary Clinton Hires Two Former Campaign Aides For "Resistance" PAC - BuzzFeed News

August 4 at 6:10 PM

Does Kathleen Parker know what she wants? Indeed, according to her Aug. 2 op-ed, Who can save us from ourselves?, Ms. Parker seeks a leader who is well-read and erudite. The American Library Association apparently did not consider Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton a head-nodding yes woman when it invited her to give the closing keynote at its annual conference in June. Her speech showed her to be one of the thinkiest people to run for the presidency since her husband and Barack Obama.

Listening to one of Ms. Clintons speeches from beginning to end leaves no doubt about where the candidate stood on the issues. Her platform was perfectly clear. How did President Trump win? It is a question people, including me, ask every day. The difference in temperament and policy could not have been sharper. I know whom I chose.

This is the world Ms. Parker helped create, by vilifying Ms. Clinton throughout the campaign, and she should own it.

Shari Rathet, West Chester, Pa.

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Want a 'thinky' leader? That's Hillary Clinton. - Washington Post

A Twitter account President Trump retweeted Friday morning has posted a series of incendiary tweets, including one accusing Hillary Clinton of murdering former DNC staffer Seth Rich. Another tweet claimed the former president Barack Obama had a secret male lover.

Nonetheless, Trump retweeted this tweet from @Team_Trump45 to his more than 35 million followers:

Other tweets from the account are far more incendiary.Larry Sinclair is a disturbed individual who claims to be Barack Obamas former lover.

Conspiracy theorists have seized on the murder of former DNC staffer Seth Rich as a way of deflecting blame from Russian hackers. The account not only advanced that theory but accused Hillary Clinton of murdering Rich.

This is not the first time Trump has retweeted hate-mongering accounts. During the campaign, Trump routinely retweeted top influencers in the white genocide movement. In March 2016, he retweeted a picture unfavorably comparing the physical appearance of Ted Cruzs wife to his wife Melania.

In November 2015, Trump defended his decision to retweet a user who posted an inaccurate, racist graphic about black crime stats, telling then-Fox News host Bill OReilly, All it was is a retweet. It wasnt from me, and it did it came out of a radio show and other places.

Trump has been a bit more discerning about who he retweets since the election, but his tweets on Friday suggest he may be reverting to old form on the first day of his 17-day summer golf vacation.

Though Trump accuses Democrats of being unable to move past the election, his retweet of @Team_Trump45 came the morning after he urged new investigations of Hillary Clinton during a rally in West Virginia. Hes reportedly considered hanging a similar picture of the electoral results in the White House, and recently urged a Washington Post reporter to try and have the paper run an image of the map on its front page.

As the Post broke down on Friday morning, the map Trump retweeted is misleading. It only depicts for geographical space, not the number of people who live in each county. Deep-blue Los Angeles County, for instance, doesnt appear large on a map, but Clinton won the county by 48 points.

The Hill reports that @Team_Trump45 is followed by several top Trump allies on Twitter, including Fox News host Sean Hannity, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, and former national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn.

View post:
Trump retweets account that traffics in wild conspiracy theories, accused Hillary Clinton of murder - ThinkProgress

The FBI monitored social media on Election Day last year to track a campaign of "fake news," believed to be orchestrated by Russia to benefit the Trump campaign, according to a report Friday.

CNN reports that dozens of agents and analysts were stationed at a command center watching social media feeds sharing stories thought to be part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Many of the stories, shared on Facebook and Twitter, were used to spread viral news stories focused on making false claims about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president.

Teams at the FBI, Homeland Security Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence held conference calls with the White House every three hours on Election Day to report updates.

U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed Russian interfered in the 2016 election, and part of its efforts including spreading disinformation. Multiple committees in Congress and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating Russia's election intrusion, and the possibility the Trump campaign conspired with Russia.

More here:
FBI monitored social media on Election Day for 'fake news' about Hillary Clinton: Report - Washington Examiner