Archive for the ‘Hillary Clinton’ Category

Hillary Clinton Wants to Put Bill ‘In Charge’ of the Economy

Hillary Clinton has always made known that she wants Bill Clinton to have some kind of role in the White House should she become president, and over the past few weeks, she's begun to reveal more about what exactly that would be.

During a campaign event in Fort Mitchell today, the Democratic presidential candidate was more blunt than ever about what her husband's role would be in a future Clinton administration saying she plans to to put the former president "in charge of economic revitalization."

"My husband, who I'm going to put in charge of revitalizing the economy, 'cause you know he knows how to do it," Clinton told the crowd at an outdoor organizing rally. "And especially in places like coal country and inner cities and other parts of our country that have really been left out."

Clinton made similar remarks earlier this month during her first visit to Kentucky, a state where Bill Clinton remains popular among the largely white, working class voters.

"I've told my husband he's got to come out of retirement and be in charge of this because you know hes got more ideas a minute than anybody I know," she said, while talking about manufacturing and jobs.

Over the course of the campaign, Clinton has repeatedly said she would seek her husband's advice if she takes office.

Last month on ABC's "The View," she had this to say when asked about how she sees his role: "I think he'll I hope he'll have a lot of involvement in starting the economy to really take off."

And last year, in an interview on MSNBC, she said, "He's a great adviser, and he knows as much about the economy and job creation as anyone I could talk to."

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Hillary Clinton Wants to Put Bill 'In Charge' of the Economy

Hillary Clinton says she’ll put Bill ‘in charge’ of fixing …

During a speech in Kentucky Sunday she referred to "my husband, who I will put in charge of revitalizing the economy 'cause he knows what he's doing."

The U.S. economy boomed during President Clinton's administration. His economic record is an effective selling point, especially as U.S. growth remains sluggish, and most voters worry about the economy.

During Clinton's eight years as president, the U.S. economy added more than 22 million jobs. That's slightly more jobs than were added during the combined 22-year tenure of the four most recent Republican presidents.

In the spring of 2000, Clinton's final year in office, a greater percentage of Americans had jobs than any time since record-keeping began soon after World War II.

Giving Clinton's policies full credit for boosting the economy isn't entirely fair. The rapid growth of the Internet during his eight years in office greatly increased business productivity and profits and helped to fuel the hiring boom. There was also a bubble in Internet stocks, which poured money into the tech sector and helped spurred hiring.

But government policies did help also. The federal government actually ran surpluses rather than deficits during Clinton's final three years in office, and that reduced the need for government borrowing and helped to keep interest rates relatively low.

Related: Which candidate would be better for the stock market?

But there are critics on both the right and the left who argue that Clinton's policies laid the groundwork for the economic problems that were to follow.

Many regulations were eliminated during Clinton's administration that had previously prevented commercial banks from moving into investment banking and insurance, which had been the turf of Wall Street firms. Some critics have blamed the loss of those protections for the financial market's meltdown and the need to bail out banks that occurred in 2008.

Related: Is trade really killing middle class jobs?

The North American Free Trade Agreement, which lowered trade barriers with Mexico and Canada, was signed into law early in the Clinton administration. China and the U.S. also signed a trade accord in 1999 which led to China joining the World Trade Organization. Those moves led to dramatic increases in imports from Mexico and China, which critics say cost U.S. workers their jobs.

Advocates of those deals says that the U.S. economy was bound to lose many of those jobs to lower wage countries even without the trade pacts.

Hillary Clinton's campaign's press secretary Nick Merrill said that her comments don't reflect any decision to name her husband to a some specific post in her administration.

"It would be getting ahead of ourselves to talk about any sort of formalized role for anyone in her administration," he said. "I think that her point has been time and again that he has a lot to offer and it would be foolish not to use that in some capacity. It has not gone any further than that."

Earlier this month in another speech in Kentucky she said, "I told my husband he's got to come out of retirement and be in charge of this because you know he's got more ideas a minute that anybody I know."

CNN's Dan Merica contributed to this report.

CNNMoney (New York) First published May 16, 2016: 8:35 AM ET

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Emails Add to Hillary Clintons Central Problem: Voters Just …

John Locher/Associated Press Hillary Clinton spoke at a rally at Hartnell College on Wednesday in Salinas, Calif.

For more than a year, Hillary Clinton has traveled the country talking to voters about her policy plans. She vowed to improve infrastructure in her first 100 days in office, promised to increase funding for Alzheimers research and proposed a $10 billion plan to combat drug and alcohol addiction.

But as the Democratic primary contest comes to a close, any hopes Mrs. Clinton had of running a high-minded, policy-focused campaign have collided with a more visceral problem.

Voters just dont trust her.

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The Clinton campaign had hoped to use the coming weeks to do everything they could to shed that image and convince voters that Mrs. Clinton can be trusted. Instead, they must contend with a damaging new report by the State Departments inspector general that Mrs. Clinton had not sought or received approval to use a private email server while she was secretary of state.

It is not just that the inspector general found fault with her email practices. The report speaks directly to a wounding perception that Mrs. Clinton is not forthright or transparent.

After months of saying she used a private email for convenience, and that she was willing to cooperate fully with investigations into her handling of official business at the State Department, the report, delivered to Congress on Wednesday, undermined both claims.

Mrs. Clinton, through her lawyers, declined to be interviewed by the inspector general as part of the review. And when staff members raised concerns about the wisdom of her using a nongovernment email address, they were hushed by State Department officials, who instructed them never to speak of the secretarys personal email system again.

In November 2010, when a State Department aide requested she release her personal email address or start using an official address, Mrs. Clinton said she was open to using a second device or email address but added,I dont want any risk of the personal being accessible.

Mrs. Clintons allies on Wednesday jumped on the fact that the report also revealed that Colin Powell, the secretary of state under President George W. Bush, and other State Department officials had also exclusively used personal email accounts. The inspector general documents just how consistent her email practices were with those of other secretaries and senior officials at the State Department, said Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesman.

But Mr. Powell is not running for president against a likely opponent, Donald J. Trump, who has now adopted the drumbeat of Crooked Hillary.

Crooked Hillary, crooked Hillary, shes as crooked as they come, Mr. Trump said at a rally in Anaheim, Calif.

His attacks came as Mrs. Clinton tried to break through with her own criticism that Mr. Trump had profited from the 2008 housing crisis.

But the Clinton campaigns new effort to define Mr. Trump as a con man who rips off the little guy for his own gain will be met with the trickle of new developments related to Mrs. Clintons private email. The F.B.I. is separately investigating whether Mrs. Clinton and her aides exposed sensitive national security information in their email correspondence. She has already turned over 55,000 pages of emails to the State Department.

And Mrs. Clintons campaign has struggled to put the issue behind her. Mrs. Clinton spent much of last summer insisting she did not need to apologize for keeping a private server in her home in Chappaqua, N.Y. because the practice was allowed. Then, in September, she offered a tortured apology, acknowledging in an interview with ABC News that using a private email server had been a mistake. She added, Im sorry about that.

Mrs. Clinton has long contended that voters care more about issues like equal pay for women, widely available child care, and making college more affordable than how she handled her emails as secretary of state. Even her Democratic primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, tried to squelch the storm over the private server during the first Democratic debate last fall.

But something has seeped into the electorate. A presidential campaign always contends with incoming fire, but it is also designed to serve as an infomercial to present a candidates best attributes. Instead, Mrs. Clinton has gone from a 69 percent approval rating and one of the most popular public figures in the country when she left the State Department in 2013 to having one of the highest disapproval ratings of any likely presidential nominee of a major party.

Roughly 53 percent of voters said they had an unfavorable opinion of Mrs. Clinton in a new ABC-News Washington Post poll. Some 60 percent of voters said they had an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Trump.

When asked if Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump are honest and trustworthy, 64 percent of registered voters replied no, according to a recent New York Times-CBS News poll. Ask voters why they dont trust Mrs. Clinton, and again and again they will answer with a single word: Emails.

I dont believe a word when she says she didnt know what she was doing with those emails, said Debbie Figel, 57. She plans to vote for Mr. Trump.

This email business really concerns me, said John Dunn, 58 of Oneida, N.Y.

Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.

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Emails Add to Hillary Clintons Central Problem: Voters Just ...

Hillary Clinton aide moves to block release of deposition …

Cheryl Mills' filing asserts that audio or video clips would be more easily taken out of context than a transcript | AP Photo

By Josh Gerstein

05/25/16 05:42 PM EDT

Updated 05/25/16 06:30 PM EDT

Hillary Clinton's former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, is asking a federal judge to order a conservative group not to release audio or video recordings of a deposition Mills is scheduled to give Friday about Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

Mills' attorneys filed a motion Wednesday afternoon saying they fear that the group that sought Mills' deposition in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Judicial Watch, will use any recording to distort Mills' testimony and advance the group's anti-Clinton agenda.

"We are concerned that snippets or soundbites of the deposition may be publicized in a way that exploits Ms. Mills image and voice in an unfair and misleading manner," attorneys Beth Wilkinson and Alexandra Walsh wrote in the motion submitted to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan. "Ms. Mills is not a party to this action. She is a private citizen appearing voluntarily to assist in providing the limited discovery the Court has permitted. ... Judicial Watch should not be allowed to manipulate Ms. Mills testimony, and invade her personal privacy, to advance a partisan agenda that should have nothing to do with this litigation."

The motion says Mills has no objection to releasing the transcript of her testimony, although the State Department has said it may object if the testimony strays into areas that are supposed to be off-limits according to the judge's order permitting the deposition.

Mills' filing asserts that audio or video clips would be more easily taken out of context than a transcript but does not make entirely clear why written quotes could not be similarly distorted.

Sullivan issued an order shortly after the motion was filed giving the conservative group until noon Thursday to offer a formal response to the motion.

A spokeswoman for Judicial Watch said the group is evaluating the motion and will respond by the judge's deadline.

In addition to Mills, former Clinton deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and computer technician Bryan Pagliano are scheduled to give depositions in the coming weeks. It's unclear whether any limits put on videos of Mills' testimony would be applied to their appearances, but if the judge agrees to Mills' request it seems likely the others would ask for similar treatment.

One current State Department official gave a deposition last week, and several others are expected to do so over the next month or so in accordance with an order Sullivan issued earlier this month.

Sullivan has left open the possibility of calling Clinton for a deposition in the case. Judicial Watch has already formally asked a judge handling a parallel case to order Clinton to give testimony, but there's been no ruling on that request.

UPDATE (Wednesday, 6:17 p.m.): This post has been updated with Sullivan's scheduling order, comment from Judicial Watch and additional context.

Josh Gerstein is a senior reporter for POLITICO.

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Hillary Clinton Doubles Down on Email Scandal, Saying ‘It …

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton doubled down on defending her email practices as Secretary of State, arguing that the use of a personal account was allowed, and rules have since been clarified.

This report makes clear that personal email use was the practice for other secretaries of state, Clinton told ABC News in an interview in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was allowed. And the rules have been clarified since I left.

Yesterday, a report released by the State Departments Office of Inspector General said that Clinton shouldn't have used a private email server to conduct official business and would have not been allowed to do so had she asked. It also found that she should have turned over emails after her tenure and violated department policy.

She has faced the issue for more than a year as she battles to become the Democratic nominee.

Clinton explained why she did not cooperate with State Department investigators, despite repeatedly saying she would talk to anyone, anytime about her emails.

"I have talked about this for many, many months," she said. "I testified for 11 hours before the Benghazi committee. I have answered numerous questions. We have posted information on our website and the information that we had is out there. Its been clearly public and my email use was widely known throughout the department, throughout the government, and I have provided all of my work related emails, and Ive asked that they be made public."

Clinton has not been charged with a crime and her spokesman, Brian Fallon, said the former secretary's email use was in line with former secretaries of state. He also said that political opponents were using the report in a misleading way.

Ive said many times, if I could go back, I would do it differently," she told ABC News. "I know people have concerns about this.

Clinton also weighed in on a potential debate between Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump and her main rival, Bernie Sanders.

Well, I understood they said that was a joke, Clinton quipped, adding Im gonna look forward to debating Donald Trump.

In an interview on ABCs "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Trump said if he and Sanders had a one-on-one they would have high ratings.

The Vermont senator quickly responded on Twitter, writing, "Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary."

When asked if she has reached out to the Sanders campaign in an effort to unify the party, Clinton said both campaigns are certainly communicating.

I know that were both trying to do our best in the upcoming contest, but I have every reason to believe that after June 7th, we will begin to unify the Democratic party, Clinton said.

Clinton also opened the door to party concessions, saying she and Sanders are going to talk about everything.

Were gonna go into the convention unified, were gonna come out even more unified, and were going to defeat Donald Trump in November.

The Democratic front-runner also didn't dismiss the idea of changing her platform to a $15 minimum wage. "Were gonna have those conversations at the platform committee," she said. (Clinton is for a $12 federal min wage with $15 in some cities. Sanders is for $15 nationwide).

Back in April, Clinton told MSNBCs Rachel Maddow that she shouldnt need to make conditions for Sanders to support her. "I did not put down conditions," Clinton said. "I didn't say, 'You know what, if Senator Obama does x, y and z, maybe I'll support him."

ABCs Justin Fishel and Cecilia Vega contributed to this report.

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