Trump, Cruz Trade Shots on Eve of Iowa Caucus

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By Fox News. Leading Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz traded shots Sunday on the eve of the Iowa Caucus, hoping to persuade the remaining undecided voters in the first-in-the-nation voting.

Both candidates hammered on familiar points, with Trump again questioning Cruz’s citizenship and financial records. Cruz, meanwhile, asked whether Trump is indeed a conservative and suggested that his bluster covers his weakness on issues.

“He’s the height of chutzpah,” Cruz told “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s astonishing. He’s not honest.”

The Texas senator trails the front-running Trump by 5 percentage points, 28-to-23, with the caucus on Monday, according to a Des Moines (Iowa) Register poll released Saturday . . .

With Cruz and Trump essentially battling for the social conservative vote to win Iowa, Cruz told Fox News that he’s “thrilled” to be in second place, despite having led Trump in Iowa just a few weeks earlier. (Read more from “Trump, Cruz Trade Shots on Eve of Iowa Caucus” HERE)

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Cruz: ‘A Vote for Marco Rubio Is a Vote for Amnesty’

By Curt Mills. Republican presidential candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ratcheted up his rhetoric Sunday against Sen. Marco Rubio, claiming a vote for his primary rival is tantamount to support for amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

“A vote for Marco is a vote for amnesty,” Cruz said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Cruz in a tight race with the Florida senator and frontrunner Donald Trump for the conservative vote and ultimately the party nomination also said “This race is a simple choice. A vote for Marco Rubio is a vote for amnesty. And a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for ObamaCare.The reason conservatives are uniting behind our campaign is because I am the only candidate in the race who has been a consistent conservative.”

Cruz has hit Rubio for months on the issue, saying he sided with Senate Democrats on comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

Rubio originally supported the bill, then essentially distanced himself from the measure when conservatives did not support it. (Read more from “Cruz: ‘A Vote for Marco Rubio Is a Vote for Amnesty'” HERE)

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Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Marco Rubio Are Money Race Winners

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For all the complaints from Democrats about the amount of big money in politics, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have raised a staggering amount of cash.

Clinton’s campaign raised $112 million in 2015, and top Democratic billionaire donor George Soros recently gave $6 million to her super PAC, according to new figures filed with the Federal Election Commission Sunday night. Sanders, for his part, raised roughly $73 million last year, but as his insurgent candidacy gains momentum, he continues to bring in cash. The Vermont senator raised more than $20 million in January, his campaign said Sunday.

On the Republican side, front-runner Donald Trump has lent his campaign more than $12 million through the end of 2015. Yet while he consistently states he is not raising money, his campaign recorded donations worth over $2 million in the fourth quarter, according to the filing. Trump boasted at the end of the year he would begin spending $2 million per week — that spending is not included in Sunday’s report.

Trump can easily self-fund his campaign, but GOP contenders Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz still must hit the donor circuit. Rubio did well in the fourth quarter, raising $14 million — twice that of his Florida rival, Jeb Bush. His super PAC also won major donations from conservative hedge fund billionaires Paul Singer and Ken Griffin. And Cruz ended the year in a strong position. He raised $20.5 million in the last three months of 2015, ending with $18.7 million. (Read more from “Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Marco Rubio Are Money Race Winners” HERE)

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‘Eyewash’: How the CIA Deceives Its Own Workforce About Operations

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Senior CIA officials have for years intentionally deceived parts of the agency workforce by transmitting internal memos that contain false information about operations and sources overseas, according to current and former U.S. officials who said the practice is known by the term “eyewash.”

Agency veterans described the tactic as an infrequent but important security measure, a means of protecting vital secrets by inserting fake communications into routine cable traffic while using separate channels to convey accurate information to cleared recipients.

But others cited a significant potential for abuse. Beyond the internal distrust implied by the practice, officials said there is no clear mechanism for labeling eyewash cables or distinguishing them from legitimate records being examined by the CIA’s inspector general, turned over to Congress or declassified for historians.

Senate investigators uncovered apparent cases of eyewashing as part of a multi-year probe of the CIA’s interrogation program, according to officials who said that the Senate Intelligence Committee found glaring inconsistencies in CIA communications about classified operations, including drone strikes.

At least two eyewashing cases are cited in the classified version of the committee’s final report, according to officials who have reviewed the document. In one instance, leaders at CIA headquarters sent a cable to the agency’s station in Pakistan saying operators there were not authorized to pursue a potentially lethal operation against the alleged al-Qaeda operative known as Abu Zubaida . But a second set of instructions sent to a smaller circle of recipients told them to disregard the other message and that the mission could proceed. (Read more from “‘Eyewash’: How the CIA Deceives Its Own Workforce About Operations” HERE)

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Secret Fed Docs Show Obama Misled Congress, Public During Debt Limit Crises

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Federal Reserve Bank of New York officials secretly conducted real-time exercises during the 2011 and 2013 debt-limit crisis that demonstrated the federal government could function during a temporary shutdown by prioritizing spending, even as Treasury Secretary Jack Lew publicly claimed many times that such efforts were “unworkable,” according to a new report by the House Financial Services Committee obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The staff report, to be released Tuesday, charges that Lew and other Obama administration officials deliberately misled Congress and the public during the federal budget and debt limit showdowns in both years. The committee will convene a public hearing on the report Feb. 2.

The report also states that the Obama administration crafted actual contingency plans to pay for Social Security and veterans benefits, as well as principal and interest on the national debt if the government was temporarily unable to borrow more money. The Committee concludes that over the last two years the Treasury Department has “obstructed” congressional efforts to get to the bottom of the administration’s real-time policy during the two showdowns.

The Constitution stipulates that only Congress can determine how much money the federal government can borrow. Presidents thus cannot unilaterally spend beyond congressional debt ceiling limits set. The committee — chaired by Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas — charged that during both confrontations, the Obama administration held the country’s creditworthiness “hostage” by claiming default was the only possibility if the debit ceiling was not raised. (Read more from “Secret Fed Docs Show Obama Misled Congress, Public During Debt Limit Crises” HERE)

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A Poll Just Revealed How America Really Feels About Trump – He’s Not Going to Like This

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Most political and media commentators have at this point installed Donald Trump as the GOP front-runner on the eve of the first actual voting set to begin on Monday in Iowa. But this narrative tends to obscure the fact that Trump is the most unpopular candidate of either party when the entire U.S. population is taken into account — and that he has a higher unfavorable rating than any nominated candidate from either of the two major parties going back to the 1992 election when we began to track favorability using the current format.

At this point (two-week average through Jan. 27), 33% of Americans view Trump favorably and 60% unfavorably. It’s that 60% unfavorable figure that I can focus on here.

Hillary Clinton currently has a 52% unfavorable rating among all Americans, while Jeb Bush is at 45%, Chris Christie 38%, Ted Cruz 37%, Marco Rubio 33%, Bernie Sanders 31% and Ben Carson 30%. Trump’s 60% is clearly well above all of these. Putting his favorable and unfavorable ratings together yields a net favorable of -27 for Trump, far above the -10 for Clinton and for Bush, the next lowest among the major candidates.

I wanted to see how Trump’s unfavorable played out in the context of previous elections, so I went back to look at the unfavorable ratings of the major-party candidates from 1992 through the current election. The bottom line is that Trump now has a higher unfavorable rating than any candidate at any time during all of these previous election cycles, and that conclusion takes into account the fact that unfavorable ratings tend to rise in the heat of a general election campaign as the barbs, negative ads and heightened partisanship are taken to their highest levels. Gallup routinely reports favorable ratings based on national adults, but some of the favorable ratings in the final months of an election year that I discuss below are based on registered voters. (Read more from “A Poll Just Revealed How America Really Feels About Trump – He’s Not Going to Like This” HERE)

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The GOP’s Condemnation of ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Is Surprisingly Awkward in Iowa

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By Robert Samuels. Illegal immigration makes Bill Hartzell seethe. The memories are fresh from the afternoon in October 2013 when he saw his wife’s 93-year-old grandmother bloodied and unconscious, after being beaten and raped in her house by a 19-year-old Mexican who crossed the border and never left.

His outrage is driving Hartzell to vote in Monday’s Iowa presidential caucuses for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who has vowed to battle the “sanctuary cities” that refuse to help the feds deport illegal immigrants. Cruz has said that he would block these localities from receiving federal funds for law enforcement — an idea that makes perfect sense to Hartzell.

Except for when it applies to the place where he lives.

Pottawattamie County’s sheriff adopted a sanctuary policy in 2014. Hartzell knows the sheriff. He trusts the sheriff. And he is uncomfortable with how his county, which includes Council Bluffs, would lose at least a million dollars should a President Cruz carry out his threat . . .

With illegal immigration roiling the GOP electorate, the party’s presidential candidates have spent months blasting sanctuary cities as bastions of liberal naiv­ete and bleeding-heartedness gone awry. No place symbolized this mind-set better, they have said, than San Francisco, where last year, 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle was allegedly murdered by an illegal Mexican migrant. (Read more from “The GOP’s Condemnation of ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Is Surprisingly Awkward in Iowa” HERE)

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Iowa Town Embodies Immigrant Divide

By Thomas Fitzgerald. At the 3 p.m. shift change Friday, compact cars rimmed with road salt and dirt rolled up to the JBS Swift meatpacking plant, ranchera and salsa music trickling from a few rolled-down windows.

Hundreds of mostly brown-skinned men walked double-time into the plant, part of the wave of Latino immigrants who, over the last two decades, have transformed this city from a traditional farming community to what could be the most diverse municipality in overwhelmingly white Iowa . . .

In the week leading to Iowa’s presidential caucuses, seven candidates from both parties descended on Marshalltown, about an hour northeast of Des Moines. After services at New Hope Christian Church last Sunday, the pastor and his wife handed out tip sheets listing each event and urged congregants to go.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a Republican, held a town hall in the church auditorium that day. Later in the afternoon, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, briefly the front-runner in the Iowa GOP race, spoke at the Best Western Regency Inn. In quick succession last week came Republicans: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and former high-tech CEO Carly Fiorina. (Read more from “Iowa Town Embodies Immigrant Divide” HERE)

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Michigan City Shuts Down Police Force Amid Turmoil

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The city’s police department has temporarily folded as it searches for its fourth police chief in 18 months, according to city officials.

“The police department currently is not open,” Deputy Clerk Jennifer Baranowski said Friday.

The decision was made at a Thursday evening city council meeting, Mayor Eric Schneider said. He requested the move after he and the council lost confidence in the department.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we’re not sure what’s going on over there,” Schneider said. “We didn’t have a second in command. We demoted our previous chief (last year) and we were kind of in turmoil, then our new chief died (in January) . . .

(Memphis) city’s six part-time officers are on paid administrative leave, Schneider said. They have been asked to turn in all department-issued equipment, including their weapons, radios, badges and identifications. The locks also have been changed at the department, he said. (Read more from “Michigan City Shuts Down Police Force Amid Turmoil” HERE)

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Something Terrifying Was Just Revealed About Hillary Clinton’s Guard on Her Tour of Libya

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By Laura Collins. A known Islamic terror suspect was placed in charge of Hillary Clinton’s local security detail during a trip by the US Secretary of State to Libya, Daily Mail Online can reveal.

The shocking security blunder occurred in October 2011 when Clinton made an unannounced visit to Libya following the toppling of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Ironically the Secretary of State’s trip was shrouded in secrecy due to security concerns.

The trip was intended as a triumphant tour to show Mrs Clinton’s support for the Libyan people and build diplomatic ties at a torrid time. During her visit fierce fighting erupted in Sirte – the last stronghold of the country’s former leader.

Unwittingly flanked by a man known to British security forces as a member of the banned Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and considered a threat to British and US national security Mrs Clinton held talks with top officials from the National Transitional Council (NTC) and spoke of her ‘pride’ at standing ‘on the soil of a free Tripoli.’ (Read more from “Something Terrifying Was Just Revealed About Hillary Clinton’s Guard on Her Tour of Libya” HERE)

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Official: Some Clinton Emails ‘Too Damaging’ to Release

By Catherine Herridge and Pamela K. Browne. The intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging” to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.

The determination was first reported by Fox News, hours before the State Department formally announced Friday that seven email chains, found in 22 documents, will be withheld “in full” because they, in fact, contain “Top Secret” information.

The State Department, when first contacted by Fox News about withholding such emails Friday morning, did not dispute the reporting – but did not comment in detail. After a version of this report was first published, the Obama administration confirmed to the Associated Press that the seven email chains would be withheld. The department has since confirmed those details publicly. (Read more from “Official: Some Clinton Emails ‘Too Damaging’ to Release” HERE)

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LaVoy Finicum’s Family Questions Shooting Despite FBI Video

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By Jason Sickles. The FBI’s aggressive move to release video evidence which they say shows anti-government protester LaVoy Finicum reaching for a gun before being shot and killed by police apparently did little to persuade the dead man’s family.

“LaVoy was not ‘charging’ anyone,’” his survivors said Friday afternoon in a statement released through their attorney. “He appears to have been shot in the back, with his hands in the air.”

Their comments, first reported by Reuters, come a day after the FBI took the unusual step of making a 26-minute surveillance video public two days after Finicum was killed. The aerial video, which the bureau published to its YouTube page, had more than 1.5 million views in less than 24 hours.

A state trooper shot Finicum, 54, Tuesday when a team of law enforcement officers set up a traffic stop to arrest several leaders of the month-long protest over federal control of ranch lands. (Read more from “LaVoy Finicum’s Family Questions Shooting Despite FBI Video” HERE)

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FBI Releases Video Footage of LaVoy Finicum Shooting

By Kelly House. As state troopers trained their guns on Robert “LaVoy” Finicum along a secluded eastern Oregon highway, he reached twice for a pocket that police say contained a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.

That’s when they fatally shot Finicum, a video released Thursday by the FBI appears to show.

(Editor’s note: As you watch the video, keep in mind that LaVoy Finicum wore his pistol on his right hip, as depicted here)

The federal agency played the video in an attempt to dispel rumors about the circumstances of Finicum’s death two days earlier as he and other leaders of the armed standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge were driving to a meeting.

Conflicting accounts of his shooting fueled outrage among supporters of the refuge occupiers and prompted the leader of a Northwest militia group to issue a call for members to report to Burns.

Greg Bretzing, a special agent with the FBI, said the footage provides an “honest and unfiltered view” of what happened. (Read more from “FBI Releases Video Footage of LaVoy Finicum Shooting” HERE)

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According to Trump, This Is the Only Way He’ll Debate Cruz

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Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski announced that Trump would be happy to debate Senator Ted Cruz — once Cruz is determined to be eligible for the presidency by a federal judge.

“Once you’ve gotten that ruling from the federal judge and you’re the last man standing in this presidential contest next to Donald Trump, we’ll be happy to have a debate with you one-on-one, anywhere you want, because that’s the way the system works,” Lewandowski said. “But, as it stands right now, we don’t even know if Ted Cruz is legally eligible to run for president of the United States” . . .

Cruz had challenged Trump to a one-on-one debate after Trump refused to participate in the Fox News debate on Thursday night. Trump wanted the network to remove host Megyn Kelly as a moderator for the event. (Read more from “According to Trump, This Is the Only Way He’ll Debate Cruz” HERE)

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