Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) has been reported to Secret Service after he was caught on tape this week joking that gun owners should think about shooting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
In an audio tape obtained by CNN, Burr said that "nothing made me feel better" than seeing Clinton's picture on the front of a rifle magazine during a recent visit to a gun shop.
"I was a little bit shocked at that -- it didn't have a bullseye on it," he quipped to supporters.
Burr later apologized and acknowledged that the remarks were "inappropriate."
The group Democratic Coalition Against Trump on Monday asked the Secret Service to take the threat seriously.
"On Monday evening, the Democratic Coalition Against Trump reported the threats made against Secretary Clinton by Senator Richard Burr to the North Carolina Secret Service," according to a statement from the group.
“Thanks to Donald Trump’s place at the top of the ticket, Republicans, namely Senator Richard Burr, believe that they can joke about bullseyes being placed on the back of someone running for the highest office in the country," Democratic Coalition Against Trump Senior Advisor Scott Dworkin explained. “We cannot allow this type of rhetoric to continue in our political system- I can only hope it all will end when Trump is defeated next week."
The byline on one of the latest critical news reports about Donald Trump is a familiar one to the Republican presidential nominee and his supporters: Kurt Eichenwald. In a cover story for the new edition of Newsweek, Eichenwald reports that "over the course of decades, Donald Trump's companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails,…
Univision's Jorge Ramos has been one of Donald Trump's sharpest media critics, and this week he posted a video showing how Trump's campaign is terrifying young Latino children in the United States.
The video, which is part of the documentary Hate Rising that Ramos made with Fusion, shows the Univision anchor sitting in a classroom and talking with young children who have parents of Mexican descent about their fears of a Trump presidency.
"My dad is from Mexico, and if Donald Trump wins, he's going back to Mexico and we're going to be separate," one young boy told Ramos. "Because my mom is from here, and my dad is from Mexico."
Other children around the room chimed in to say that they also feared being separated from their parents should Trump win the election.
"Me and my sister will stay here, and my mom and dad will go to Mexico," said another boy.
Another boy started to cry and said, "I don't want my grandma to go to Mexico because she already takes care of me."
Donald Trump likes to talk about how the election is rigged, but if anything is rigged it's the shockingly low numbers of Americans who are interested in participating in the process.
The United States electorate has seen a dramatic increase in voter registration, particularly among people of color due to Trump's statements. According to a Guardian report, Trump's attacks on people of color and people with disabilities has prompted an uprising in voter participation.
But when it comes to people with disabilities the numbers just aren't there. A new report reveals that people with disability face unbelievable barriers. Many are treated like "second-class citizens" despite efforts to pass legislation to ensure voting sites provide access to people with disabilities.
For some, the access is about public transportation that helps people with disabilities get to their polling place. For others, it's about a polling place that is in a building that isn't handicapped accessible. The only other alternative options are voting by mail or working with someone who can assist them casting a vote. However, these substitutes hardly make the system an inclusive one and make the voter uncomfortable either from privacy or preventing the voter from making their own choice.
That isn't all. Election materials and online voter registration aren't typically available for those who have visual impairments. Add to that a poll worker who isn't trained to handle someone with a disability and it makes the experience even more difficult.
Physical disabilities aren't the only problem either. Groups like Mind and Rethink Mental Illness have argued for years that the nation's most vulnerable like the homeless with mental health problems face even greater barriers.
All of these factors put one in seven disabled Americans in a difficult position simply to fulfill their Constitutional rights.
These examples aren't anecdotal either, in 2013, the Government Accountability Office calculated that 73 percent of polling locations had some kind of "potential impediment" to a person with disability voting. The research looked at voting in 27 states, a substantial number of people were blocked from voting or have restrictions on their voting rights.
The 2016 election put attacking people with disabilities front and center after Donald Trump mocked a New York Times reporter who has a condition that limits the ability of using of his joints. So while many groups like Latinos and African Americans are fight back against Trump with their votes, those with disability are having a tougher time of it.
Survivalists, also known as “preppers”, are people who embrace extreme disaster preparedness in anticipation of a possibly imminent total breakdown of society. The US has a long legacy of survivalist culture, and the archetypal survivalist is a pervasive, familiar stereotype: a right-wing macho-man paramilitary enthusiast hoarding weaponry in a nuclear bunker in the woods, poised to leave society behind and begin a new life “off the grid”.
Historically, survivalism in the US has revolved around consumption. It has been described as a symptom of the “anxiety of affluence”, an expensive hobby of accumulation and hoarding undertaken primarily by rich libertarian Midwesterners. This image has only been reinforced by the characters who populate TV shows such as Doomsday Preppers and films such as The Survivalist.
But the stereotype doesn’t quite hold true – and there’s a lot more to survivalism than so-called “disaster capitalism”. To find out more, I visited the western US state of Colorado just the US was slogging through the final act of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s presidential tug-of-war. There, I spoke to survivalists who are preparing for what could be a very new era in American politics.
This is not the manpocalypse
Defying the image of a movement driven by paranoid fantasy, survivalist culture is in fact deeply rational. Being based in rural states where natural hazards and harsh weather are plentiful, survivalists have to be prepared for emergencies if they are to be resilient in the absence of outside help.
A current hot topic for emergency planners is resilience in the face of “climate change”, which has now taken its place alongside nuclear war, terrorism and malicious technology in the survivalist imagination.
The current wave of survivalism is more balanced than its predecessors. It has moved away from macho culture and the accumulation of stuff, and has a greater emphasis upon the development of survival skills and provision of community support – and a lot of this is down to a generational shift.
As I found when I met them, millennial survivalists are sociable, socially aware, and interested in ethical living and environmentalism. Like the millennial generation more generally, they are more centrist and left-wing than right-wing. They also reject much of our era’s darker side – the inundation of social media, individualism, and what many of them deem to be narcissism.
Outside of society.
Author provided
This all makes them a distinctive new breed. These newcomers are interested in sharing practical survival skills, not just developing them for themselves; they view resilience as something that demands strong community networks, not a matter of individual toughness.
I spoke to Daniel Spikowski, 26, part of this younger wave. He’s concerned about societal breakdown, but rather than hoarding tinned food, he’s working to develop useful skills and maintain his health. Consumption and hoarding, he told me, won’t keep you safe when society falls apart: “If you have a stockpile of things, then you’ll become a target for those things; whereas if you have a stockpile of skills, you’ll be the person that people work to keep alive … I’m not a big fan of guns in general.”
I asked him what he thought of the presidential race, and he said “I’m completely disillusioned, that would be the best way to describe it. I don’t know what to think, is the most accurate answer. I don’t have an opinion. You’re given two terrible options and you’re supposed to pick one or the other”. This antipathy towards both Trump and Clinton is echoed across his generation.
However, this new focus on gaining and sharing survival skills isn’t limited to millennials. I talked to Don Davis, 67, who has been a Fort Collins Search and Rescue volunteer since 1981. Don is a survivalist who apprenticed under the movement’s icon Papa Bear Whitmore 34 years ago. He offers free training in survival skills “to teach people how to take care of themselves and be prepared”. He described the traditional idea of survivalism as “extreme … a lot of those people are anti-government, they’re just waiting for the apocalypse or rapture. Some of them are conspiracy theorists.”
We talked about the impending election, and he told me “I don’t like to talk politics. I have to vote for the lesser of two evils. Trump is an unknown, and Hillary has a lot of negative baggage. As for Bernie [Sanders], well, socialism doesn’t work!”. Davis will be voting, but he’ll make his decision on the day.
Survivalism’s turn away from machismo and individualism says a lot about the sort of movement it is. Far from a bizarre fringe element isolated from the mainstream, its ebbs and flows say a lot about our contemporary economic and political climate.
In a fragmented age where hardline, far-right forces have suddenly returned to the fore, many communities feel less secure than they have in a long time. Survivalists have found an organised, material way of expressing their lack of faith in their government – which as they see it is less able than ever to protect them from a rapidly changing world.
Whatever the outcome on November 8, the survivalists will be ready.
While it was predictable that Democrats would rip James Comey for his vague letter that reigniting the Hillary Clinton email controversy, a surprising number of Republicans have criticized the FBI director for it as well.
One of the most surprising conservative Comey critics so far is Andrew Napolitano -- Fox News's resident Clinton-hating legal analyst -- who surprised Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning by saying the FBI director overstepped his bounds with his latest update on the investigation.
"In my view, what Director Comey did... was to give the public a snapshot of where this investigation was at the time, which is prohibited by Department of Justice regulations and FBI regulations because it can be a misleading snapshot," Napolitano said. "His job is not to answer to the public, and it's not to answer to the Congress, it's to gather facts, give them to the Justice Department, let them decide what to do with it."
Other conservatives who have criticized Comey's handling of the latest developments in the case include Fox News bomb-thrower Jeanine Pirro and former Tea Party Rep. Joe Walsh.
Watch the whole video of Napolitano's analysis below.
A witness who's backing a woman's child rape claims against Donald Trump also accused the Republican presidential nominee of sexually assaulting another, even younger girl.
Trump is due to appear in federal court Dec. 16 for a status conference after a judge allowed the lawsuit, which seeks $75,000 in damages, to move forward.
The alleged victim, identified in the suit as "Jane Doe," claims Trump brutally raped her in 1994, when she was 13 years old, and threatened to harm her and her family if she talked.
The suit was originally filed last year in California by a woman named Katie Johnson, but that case was thrown out May 2 because the complaint failed to properly state any specific federal civil rights violations.
The lawsuit was refiled in New York in June, but without Johnson's name, her request for $100 million and absent several explosive claims from the previous suit -- including an allegation that Trump had given money to the victim and ordered her to get an abortion.
Two other women -- identified as "Joan Doe" and "Tiffany Doe" -- have been added to the newer suit as witnesses.
Both witnesses say they worked as "party planners" for billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who paid them to "attract adolescent women" to events he hosted at the Wexner Mansion in New York.
Tiffany Doe says in court documents that she lured Jane Doe to a party with the promise of money and meeting contacts in the modeling industry.
She claims in the documents that she personally witnessed the girl being forced to engage in various sex acts with Trump and Epstein, who she said were aware of her age.
"I personally witnessed four sexual encounters that the Plaintiff was forced to have with Mr. Trump during this period, including the fourth of these encounters where Mr. Trump forcibly raped her despite her pleas to stop," Tiffany Doe alleges.
Tiffany Doe said she also witnessed Trump forcing Jane Doe and a 12-year-old girl identified as "Maria" to perform oral sex on him and then physically abuse both of them afterward.
The woman said her job duties required her to "personally witness and supervise encounters between the underage girls that Mr. Epstein hired and his guests," according to court documents.
Epstein, a financier who was also friends with Bill and Hillary Clinton, was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution and served 13 months of an 18-year prison term.
Tiffany Doe said both Trump and Epstein threatened to harm Jane Doe if she ever revealed the physical and sexual abuse she endured -- and she said the future GOP presidential nominee's warning was particularly ominous.
"I personally witnessed Defendant Trump telling the Plaintiff that she shouldn't ever say anything if she didn't want to disappear like the 12-year-old female Maria, and that he was capable of having her whole family killed," Tiffany Doe alleged.
Tiffany Doe said after she stopped working for Epstein in 2002, he threatened to kill her and her family if she ever revealed the child rape operation he oversaw.
The woman, who started working for Epstein in 1990, said she had put herself at great risk by agreeing to back Jane Doe's claims against Trump but swore her allegations were truthful.
"I fully understand that that the life of myself and my family is now in grave danger," she said.
This piece is part of The Conversation Global’s ‘The View From …’ series, explaining how governments and citizens in key countries worldwide view the US election. Today, Richard Maher explains why Europe is so afraid of Donald Trump, and how it all comes down to Russia, NATO and trade.
As the US presidential election enters its final week, most poll-based models show Democratic nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in front of Republican challenger, Donald Trump.
There are questions about how Clinton’s ratings will bounce back from the announcement that the FBI is reviewing a newly discovered trove of emails that relate to her use of a personal server for government business when she was secretary of state. But her significant lead in the polls will be hard to beat.
While Clinton has not garnered the same level of enthusiasm across Europe as current US President Barack Obama received in 2008 or 2012, European leaders are no doubt breathing easier now that a Clinton victory seems more likely.
In mid-summer, polls showed a real possibility that Trump could win the election and become the 45th President of the United States, an outcome that was seen as catastrophic across Europe.
European leaders watched Trump’s ascent first with dismay and then with growing alarm. Some offered uncharacteristically blunt assessments of his fitness to be a party nominee, and their preferred electoral outcome.
French President François Hollande said that Trump “makes you want to retch”. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi criticised what he called Trump’s “policy of fear”, and made clear his “very strong” support for Hillary Clinton.
German foreign secretary Frank-Walter Steinmeier called Trump’s portrait of the United States as being beset by internal and external enemies “grotesque”, and warned that a Trump presidency would lead to “many uncertainties for the trans-Atlantic relationship”.
For European leaders thinking about the election, three major issues occupy attention: the future of the NATO alliance; the West’s relations with Russia; and whether the moribund Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) can or should be revived.
NATO
The candidates’ views of NATO mark one of their most striking foreign policy differences.
While Clinton has called the alliance “one of the best investments America has ever made”, Trump has said the alliance is “obsolete”. Trump has also been coy over whether he would respond automatically to a hypothetical Russian incursion into one of the Baltic republics, which have been NATO members for more than a decade.
NATO jets patrol the Baltics in 2015.
Ints Kalnins/Reuters
Every US president since Truman has interpreted Article 5 of the NATO Treaty – the mutual defence clause – as establishing a legal and moral obligation on the United States to aid another alliance member facing external attack. Instead of automatically upholding this commitment, Trump has said that he would condition a US response on whether the NATO ally had previously “fulfilled their obligations to us”.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Danish prime minister and former NATO secretary general, condemned this statement, saying it undermined US credibility and risked allowing Russia to increase its influence in Europe.
Russia
No Democratic or Republican presidential nominee in history has spoken with such admiration of Russia as Donald Trump. Russia is, at the very least, a country most US and European security experts continue to view as a rival if not an actual adversary.
Trump has praised Putin’s intelligence and leadership style, invited Russia to commit cyberespionage against Clinton, and suggested that, as president, he might formally recognise Crimea as part of Russia. This is despite the fact that, in the most blatant and serious challenge to post-Cold War Europe’s political and security order, Russian military forces forcibly seized the peninsula from Ukraine in a show of force reminiscent of Europe’s darker periods.
If elected, Clinton would enter office with the most strained and contentious relationship with Russia of any president since the end of the Cold War. As David Sanger of the New York Times has reported, some of Clinton’s longtime advisers are already thinking of ways to put pressure on the Russian government and on Putin himself. These include the imposition of additional sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and international condemnation.
Hillary Clinton has an uneasy relationship with Russia.
Reuters
While European leaders would hardly welcome an escalation of US-Russia tensions – especially since the question of how to respond to Russian actions in Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere is already dividing European governments – Trump’s apparent infatuation with the Kremlin creates even more unease.
Trade deals
A key battleground for the US election has been the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which aims to widen market access, enhance regulatory cooperation, and set common rules to promote transatlantic trade and investment. The 15th and latest round of talks took place in New York in October 2016.
For the United States, TTIP is a corollary to the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was signed in February 2016 but has not yet been ratified.
Regardless of who wins the election, the odds of concluding the TTIP agreement seem unlikely. Trump (along with Democratic Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders) has stoked opposition in the United States to free trade agreements generally.
Trump has made opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and the TPP a core element of his candidacy. While bemoaning the loss of domestic manufacturing jobs to globalisation and free trade, he has proposed a range of tariffs and other protectionist measures unseen in the United States since the 1930s.
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Clinton supports the expansion of free trade agreements less enthusiastically than Obama, who pushed hard during his presidency for both the TPP and TTIP. As president, Clinton is unlikely to make TTIP a priority.
Even if Clinton decides to push for the conclusion of TTIP negotiations, however, diminishing popular appeal in both parties for new free trade agreements will make it hard for her to get it ratified by Congress, even though many economists on both sides of the Atlantic have said that the agreement would create jobs and give an important boost to sluggish economic growth in the EU.
If the talks fail, Europe may lose more than just greater access to transatlantic trade and investment. Its ability to promote its values and set global standards – in areas such as workers’ rights, environmental protection, and sustainable development – through trade would take a hit.
Cheering for Clinton
A Trump victory on November 8 would be viewed across European capitals as calamitous. While Clinton is well known to European leaders, they view Trump as erratic, unpredictable, and even unstable.
Trump’s views regarding NATO, his overtures to a revanchist and increasingly authoritarian Russia, and his opposition to the expansion of free trade deviate in profound ways from America’s approach to Europe since the end of the second world war – an era that has spanned twelve presidential administrations, six Democratic and six Republican.
European leaders are also worried that a Trump victory might embolden their own national populist movements.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front, has said that she would vote for Trump. Nigel Farage, who led the successful Leave campaign in the UK referendum on EU membership, has appeared on the campaign trail with Trump. Anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders appeared at a fringe event of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July, praising Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration into the United States.
For all these reasons and more, leaders across Europe are rooting for a Clinton victory on November 8, some quietly and some more openly.
The terrifying world of what America would look like just a few years after Donald Trump takes over the presidency became the Halloween horror story that Trevor Noah filled American minds with on last night's "Daily Show."
"Picture the worst thing you can think of," the words flash on the screen over a darkened field of daisies. "Not that bad, but it's close. Now with only a few days left, President Trump is confident he can secure a second term."
The sheer terror comes straight out of the Divergent series or Hunger Games. "Vote for me, or else," Trump says in the imaginary campaign aid.
Trevor Noah and the folks at the "Daily Show" have been run underground by the new Trump regime. Their broadcast is being pirated from a bunker and the news team is in positions around the globe to safeguard against potential attacks by the anti-media Trump goons. Desi Lydic even had to eat a rat. Luckily Ronny Chieng got out though and has been living the high life in China, where Trump's trade policies made the country rich.
"I've come out of hiding to broadcast one more episode of 'The Daily Show,'" Noah says from the bunker. "I know I'm taking a risk. I'm risking my life and yours by broadcasting this show but with the election just days away it's a risk worth taking, people. You know, it's like getting a chance to f*ck Beyonce when you don't have any condoms. You've got to do it. So what if she has something? She probably doesn't but you've got to do it."
Noah explains to his audience how important it is not to allow Trump to become the president again and confesses he didn't know how it happened the first time. "Things were going great!" Noah explains. "And then the emails. The f*cking emails, man. A week before the election we got sidetracked by those emails and then it turned out there was nothing new! It was 600,000 of Anthony Weiner's dick pics."
It turns out over the course of the four years, President Trump even changed the Washington Monument into the Weiner Monument, because it was that weiner that gave him the election. "Look at that, one dick got another dick elected! It's only gotten worse!" Noah exclaims.
Even the news has been taken over. The only news network allowed is Trump News Network, thanks to the Trumpaganda force and the new libel laws. It's even hosted with a beauty pageant queen as the anchor. "Stay tuned for more completely true news," she tells the audience. From there a shocking revelation that CNN themselves had stolen the missing Malaysian Airlines flight, however, Steve Harvey and Kevin Hart are somehow still beloved.
Like a scene out of "V for Vendetta," John Oliver is arrested while doing a passionate investigation into eggs. "I'm going to miss you, grown-up Harry Potter-face," Noah laments, after Oliver is lead away in handcuffs.
Roy Wood Jr. has been driven into the inner city. But Trump calls any place where black people are the inner city so he explains that he could actually be anywhere. African-Americans have all been outfitted with automatic stop-and-frisk devices that pat them down every 90 seconds. Wood's keeps trying to arrest him for his antacids in his pocket.
The terrifying election for Trump's second term is likely because no one seems to be willing to risk their life to run against him. Hillary Clinton has been sent to "Super Guantanamo," a detention facility they also sent Mike Pence. Ted Cruz lost his mind and is teaching kindergartners in the inner city. Joe Biden sneaks on the Elon Musk rocket that delivered the Obama family to Mars for safety.
"Look, even if the candidate you like isn't in this election, it doesn't mean you shouldn't vote," Noah pleads. "Hell, vote for anyone. You could even vote for The Woman of the Woods, Elizabeth Warren," He says holding up a photo of Warren driven into the forrest for survival. "Sure she might raise taxes but at least she has a plan!"
In the few years Trump has taken over, he's repealed Obamacare and replaced it with an energy drink and dropped a bomb on Iceland because he claimed that's where ISIS came from. Trump has been such a disaster on the international stage that he's been banned from most countries. Even sexually assaulted a penguin on Antartica by grabbing it by the p*ssy.
Even white people aren't having a good time. A smuggled BBC report reveals that even after a four-year construction on "The Wall" the wall only stands four feet tall. Even white guy Jordan Klepper didn't think that Trump's America would be that bad, but the total economic collapse really did cause problems after all. "Oh yeah, thinks definitely need to change" Klepper explains. "That's why I've voting for Trump. He really tells it how it is. He's not a politician. He'll make America great again."
Late Show host Stephen Colbert joined in the pile-on of FBI Director James's Comey's interference in the presidential election with his ill-advised letter to Congress on Monday night.
Recapping what transpired since last Friday, when Comey's letter to Congress about Weiner's laptop became public, Colbert said, "So this is it. E-mails could tip the election in favor of a sexually ravenous, shambling, orange baby-man."
Colbert then posed the big question about the suspect emails.
"What do they say?" he asked. "These emails must be explosive to defy the longstanding policy of the justice department that discussing investigations could taint the results of an election, now a mere eight days away. They must be packed with damning revelations, incontrovertible evidence of malfeasance, abuse of office, and unprecedented levels of corruption. so what does the letter say?"
According to the letter: "The FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant."
"Sooooooo nothing," Colbert said, before sarcastically adding, "Or everything! That's like a captain yelling 'All hands on deck! Head to the lifeboats at some point, maybe. I have no further information!'"
Monday evening, Full Frontal host Samantha Bee took a long look at how GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump bigoted base and wondered, "How exactly did America's wall-building, Muslim-banning, birther-in-chief become the darling of the racist fringe?"
Showing clips of Trump repeating, "I'm the least racist person you have ever met," Bee shared another clip of a black Trump fan being escorted from a rally, before adding, "Is that your black friend there? The one you called a thug and threw out of your rally this weekend because you assumed he was a protester?"
"They must be escorting him to a private blacks-only meeting with Trump about how not racist he is," Bee suggested.
According to the TBS host, Trump has been catering to the so-called alt-right due to the influence of Breitbart.com CEO Steve Bannon, calling him, "Trump's current campaign commandant, the guy who feeds them and makes sure they can spread out enough so as not to drown in their own shit."
Bee then took a stab at identifying what exactly the alt-right is.
"Basically alt-right is a big tent, or a big rock, under which which creeps a diverse assortment of paleo-conservatives, men's rights misogynists, right-wing populists, anti-p.c. crusaders, Jew-baiters, white-ethno nationalists, southern secessionists, Islamaphobes, Holocaust deniers, self-described satirists, trolls, doctors, cyberbullies and good old-fashioned neo-Nazis," she ticked off.
"Today's American white nationalist isn't just gathering with other local dickheads for backyard cross burnings and barbeques," she continued. "He's on the internet, networking with other dickheads throughout the world -- or at least the white parts of the world."
On Monday night, the Little Rock Police Department reported a shooting at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to KATV.
The officers who showed up at the scene were initially unable to find a victim on-site but "were later able to locate a victim at a local hospital."
Early reports suggested that the shooting had nothing to do with the 2016 Presidential election, however. According to CBS News, the motive appears to be related to a robbery.
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The victim, 19, was reportedly selling jeans to another person in the library parking lot when they were both robbed at gun point by three men, THV 11 reports. The victim was shot in the leg and is not in critical condition.
See below for an update directly from the Little Rock Police Department.
Republican nominee Donald Trump had called on Russia in July for help finding Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's missing emails.
During a news conference in July, Trump said, "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."
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However, US officials are now casting doubt on liberal fears over Trump's Kremlin ties. The New York Times' report notes the following:
Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.
However, some top officials made clear that their investigation wasn't about the election necessarily, but about American democracy generally.
Former Merrill Lynch banker and an early Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page gave a speech over the summer criticizing the US government's Russian witch hunt.
Page was referred to — though not by name — in a letter to FBI director James Comey as an employee of the Trump campaign "with significant and disturbing ties to the Russia and the Kremlin."
Calling it irresponsible, Page said it was "hypocritical [to] focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change" in Russia.
He added, "These people really seem to be grasping at straws."
