REPORT-WI-01
Oppositional Research; Sunshine State Primary; Senate Primary in Arizona;
Courting a Presidential Legacy; Trump vs. Obama on Immigration; Mass Graves
Found Near ISIS Controlled Territory; Controversy Regarding Hillary
Clinton's Emails While Secretary of State Continues; Donald Trump to
Deliver Speech on Immigration Policy - Part 2>
Emanuel, Phil Keating, Jonathan Hunt, Shannon Bream, Kevin Corke, John
Huddy >
Politics; Government; Immigration; Middle East; Elections; Justice>
Now to immigration -- as Carl Cameron mentioned, Donald Trump is set to give a major speech tomorrow clarifying a policy that was a foundation of his primary victory. So how does Trump compare to President Obama on the issue of immigration reform? You might be surprised.
Tonight, correspondent Kevin Corke takes a look from the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TRUMP: On day one, I'm going to begin swiftly removing criminal illegal immigrants from this country.
KEVIN CORKE, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: If his previous statements are a guide at all, Donald Trump's major speech on immigration Wednesday could turn ought to be surprisingly similar to President Obama's position on the topic.
TRUMP: We have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country. We're going to get them out.
CORKE: That was Trump last week. This was the President in 2014.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That's why we're going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security -- felons, not families.
CORKE: Both men say ridding the country of criminal illegal immigrants is a top priority and both propose spending more on border security. And though Trump's constant call for a massive wall along the U.S./Mexico border is not supported by the President, both men have been proponents of adding so-called virtual border security.
White House officials today brushed back the notion that the approaches have much in common.
Is that really far afield from what Donald Trump is basically saying, if they're a criminal they're going to be out of here?
EARNEST: I guess it depends on the day you ask.
CORKE: Indeed Trump's statements on illegal immigration have run the gamut. He once supported deportation forces but has since softened his tone favoring a more nuanced handling of those here illegally. Even the President's had a tough time finding his footing on the issue -- assailed by some advocacy groups for being the deporter-in-chief.
The Obama administration has deported more than the sum of all the U.S. Presidents of the 20th century -- 2.5 million and counting including last year when 91 percent were said to have had criminal records.
Conservatives have long accused the administration of cooking the books, inflating the number of deportees and analysts say there's a good reason for that.
MARK KIRKORIAN, CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES: Nobody believes that the political class, from the President on down, will actually enforce the immigration laws in the future any better than they've been enforced in the past.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CORKE: And that really is the rub in this issue. Now Bret, you may be interested what's Hillary Clinton's policy on fighting illegal immigration? Well her policy essentially mirrors that of the President which is to say she would like to keep the focus on deporting dangerous criminals and terrorists -- Bret.
BAIER: Although may issue more executive orders to keep others here.
CORKE: That's right.
BAIER: Kevin, late this afternoon, the president continued to offer prison commutations to scores of convicted felons. What can you tell us about that.
CORKE: Boy, big numbers, too, my friend -- 110 commutations by the president. That's on top of the 214 he granted earlier this month. And all told, Bret, that's 673 commutations. That's more than the 10 previous U.S. presidents combined. Bret?
BAIER: Kevin Corke live on the north lawn. Kevin, thank you.
Secretary of State John Kerry is blaming the media for covering terrorism. Kerry made the statement during a speech in Bangladesh yesterday, saying, quote, "If you decide one day you're going to be a terrorist and you're willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill sop people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn't cover it quite as much. People wouldn't know what's going on." More on this quote with the panel.
The Middle East Media Research Network is citing ISIS reports stating that the terror group's spokesman, Abu Mohammed al Adnani, was killed on the ground in Aleppo, Syria. The news is expected to generate a ripple of reactions including threats for retaliation from ISIS and its supporters. No definitive word from the Defense Department if that in fact is true.
Now to the human toll, though, of the ISIS reign of terror. Tonight we're getting a glimpse, a shocking glimpse, actually, of this ongoing atrocity. Correspondent John Huddy reports from our Middle East newsroom.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN HUDDY, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: The stories and images are haunting -- skulls, bones, decomposed bodies. ISIS executed thousands of people, bulldozing their bodies into ravines, ditches, wherever else they could dump them. An Associated Press investigation documented 72 mass graves in Iraq and Syria with the bodies of anywhere from 5,200 to 15,000 people. Six burial sites are on Sinjar Mountain outside ISIS' de facto capital of Mosul in Iraq. It's where more than 100 bodies were found. This man was one of the few survivors. He saw relatives, neighbors and friends lined up and gunned down, some shot in the head while begging for their lives.
ARXAN DASSEM, IRAQI YAZIDI (via translator): They kept the men here. Many of them were handcuffed. After that, they started taking them over there in group and executed them. They shot them. I could see this from my house.
HUDDY: ISIS captured Sinjar in early August, 2014, and immediately started the genocide of the Yazidis. Last year from help from U.S. special force, Kurdish Peshmergea fighters recaptured Sinjar. That's when they started finding the bodies stacked up in long ravines and bulldozed over. Stephen Wood, CEO of AllSource Analysis, described the size and scope of the graves.
STEPHEN WOOD, ALLSOURCE ANALYSIS CEO: This image was taken about a month after the alleged event occurred with the massacre itself. Same ravine. Again, this is now about 190 meters here, about 15 meters wide where we can see earth that has been pushed up.
HUDDY: That's more than 600 feet long and 50 feet wide. While the massacres continued, many young women were taken as sex slaves according to survivor accounts and various human rights groups, the fate of many still unknown.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HUDDY: Officials say that 16 other mass graves have been located but are in areas too dangerous to go into and excavate because of the ongoing violence and the threat of ISIS. Bret?
BAIER: John Huddy in our Middle East newsroom. John, thank you.
The European Union want to take a big bite out of Apple. It has ordered Ireland to collect $14.5 billion in back taxes from the company. Both Apple and the Irish government are appealing. The EU says Apple they received illegal state aid. The Obama administration says the ruling could undermine foreign investment.
Stocks were down today. The DOW lost 49, the S&P gave back four, the NASDAQ fell nine.
A company in Luxembourg will be the first to use a recycled rocket from SpaceX to send up one of its own satellites. It's the same satellite operator that was the first to use SpaceX in 2013. SpaceX says it can save considerable time and money by reusing the 15 story booster rockets which are now designed to land back on earth instead of falling into the ocean.
Scientists operating a radio telescope in Russia say they detected a strong signal in the direction of a star 95 light years from earth. The astronomy website CentauriDreams.org reports researchers are calling for a permanent monitoring of this target. The star is known to have at least one planet. The website states, "While no one is claiming the signal is from an alien civilization, it does merit, quote, further study."
Donald Trump prepares to tell us what he really thinks about immigration. There's a lot at stake, of course. We'll talk about all of it, as well as the Clinton revelations on the e-mail scandal when we come back with the panel.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We turned over everything that was work related, every single thing. Personal stuff, we did not. I had no obligation to do so and did not.
All I can tell you is that I turned over every work-related e-mail in my possession.
What we turned over were more than 30,000 e-mails that I assumed were already in the government system, Bret, because they were sent to state.gov addresses.
BAIER: Sure, but there were some that were just recently discovered and turned over.
CLINTON: No, that was in the State Department not in me. I turned over everything.
My e-mails are so boring.
JIMMY KIMMEL, LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW HOST: Yes. My aren't.
CLINTON: I'm embarrassed about that. They're so boring.
(LAUGHTER)
CLINTON: So we've already released, I don't know, 30,000 plus. So what's a few more?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: What's a few more? Well, there are many more, thousands more. And they are dealing -- excuse me -- they are dealing with things that are clearly not personal, including Benghazi and the Clinton foundation. And we are finding this out day after day. This, as "The New York Times," usually a clear supporter of the Democrat candidate, especially in this case, writes this editorial from the editorial board about the ties to the Clinton Foundation. "When Mrs. Clinton became secretary of state, the Obama administration tried to draw a line between the foundation particularly, its foreign government sponsors and her role. The new e- mails underscore that this effort was, at best, partly successful. The Clinton Foundation has become a symbol of the Clinton's laudable ambitions but also of their tangled alliances and operational opacity. If Mrs. Clinton wins it could prove a target for her political adversaries. Achieving true distance from the foundation is not only necessary to ensure its effectiveness, it's an ethical imperative for Mrs. Clinton."
So with that, we'll bring in the panel, Jonah Goldberg, senior editor of "National Review," A.B. Stoddard, associate editor at "Real Clear Politics," and Sharyl Attkisson, anchor of "Sinclair's Full Measure." Jonah, OK, so you listen to that tape and one after another, "I turned everything over."
JONAH GOLDBERG, SENIOR EDITOR, "NATIONAL REVIEW": If you go back and go to her initial press conference at the U.N., she had this granite facade of a cover story. And the facts that have come out since then have not only pounded it to rubble but ground it into a fine paste. There is literally not a single factual assertion she has made since back then that hasn't proven to be a demonstrable lie.
And the amazing thing, at some point you would think she would want to fire her lawyers because they are the ones who said that they've gone through with a fine-tooth comb. They've read every individual email. It turns out all of that wasn't true either.
The one thing they haven't been able to find are any e-mails about yoga. You would think if there were all these tens of thousands of e-mails that were deleted that were about yoga, some of those might have surfaced. But no. It's only the ones about Benghazi, the foundation, and all these things. If she wins, this will haunt her administration far worse than Whitewater ever did her husband's.
BAIER: And people overlook the fact that there was testimony here under oath to Congress in which she said some of these very things that have demonstrably proven to be false.
A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, REAL CLEAR POLITICS: Right. Jonah is right, so many things she said a year ago. But even that day, that Benghazi testimony in the 11 hours last October, she said I remember that day. She said something, the State Department captured between 90 and 95 percent of her e-mails. And the State Department came out the next week and said they don't know where that number came from, that that wasn't true.
She has, obviously, brought this on herself. I think what she probably thought was legalese that would protect her were a bunch of lies that have all been proven wrong. Now it's not just another shoe drop, it's raining shoes. And Democrats are terrified about what is going to be coming out this week and the end of September in the days and weeks before the election.
BAIER: It seems like the Benghazi e-mails are especially egregious because they're so -- after all this investigation into Benghazi, to hear that there are at least 30, maybe more Benghazi e-mails.
SHARYL ATTKISSON, HOST, "FULL MEASURE": I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for those in 2012, still haven't been filled. It's been, what, four years? Those should be coming to me, but they're not. So that's yet another example of violation of Freedom of Information law at the very least.
I also think that when she's talking about separating herself from the Clinton Foundation just to bridge over to there for just a moment, if "The New York Times" is right and there really are these troubled entanglements, how does separation now really solve that problem if she were to become president? The question is that's water under the bridge. She's already taken money through the foundation from domestic and foreign interests that she will be making decisions about if she's president of the United States. And I'm not sure how logical it is to say separation now would even solve that.
BAIER: Is it significant, Jonah, that "The New York Times" editorial board is out of this you have to break free of this thing because you're going to screw this whole thing up?
GOLDBERG: I think it is significant, and that's one of the things that made me think of Whitewater. People forget, "New York Times" sort of led on Whitewater in the early part of the first Clinton administration. This is the kind of issue that the "New York Times" is sort of genetically incapable of ignoring, this pay for play, behind-the-scenes access selling.
And I think what they're warning her is, look, you know, we think you're going to win but if you don't drop this, we're going to hound you to death on this. It's a sign of how everybody, every Democrat I talk to says they're just terrified of what more is going to come out because Hillary clearly seemed to think that these e-mails wouldn't be coming out.
BAIER: And Chelsea still staying at the head almost rubs it in some people's faces.
STODDARD: It was unbelievable. Democrats are on the record along with all these editorial boards across the country saying you absolutely have to shutter it or merge it into another foundation so the donations can be collected somewhere else, the work can be done somewhere else detached from the Clinton family at least for four, eight years. And then they announced right after that even though they're going to stop taking foreign and corporate donations when she's president, but Chelsea is going to stay and the Clinton Health Access Initiative, their biggest project, will still be taking foreign money.
ATTKISSON: There's a question of what a separation really would mean. You could say you're separated, but what does that mean? But I think they're counting on the public to have this tired, weary feeling, drip, drip about the e-mails and Clinton Foundation. Who is paying that close attention besides us and people watching this show? But I would say the vast majority of people aren't in that deep and they just hear it and they sort of tune it out. And I think they're counting on that.
BAIER: I want to turn quickly to the Trump campaign and the speech coming up tomorrow on immigration. Here is Jason Miller, spokesperson for Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JASON MILLER, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: What you've seen with Mr. Trump is he has been remarkably consistent in his pledge to end illegal immigration. We're going to build a wall, we're going to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws. We're going to end sanctuary cities. We're going to pass e-verify. We're going to uphold the constitution. That's going to make a big difference in this country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: I guess there's just a lot of people, Jonah, who have seen an evolution, and the Trump campaign itself says wait until the speech.
GOLDBERG: Yes. We should. Let's wait till the speech. Earlier this week, we've heard some trial balloons that it may not actually be a real wall. It may be a digital or virtual wall, which seems even more Jeb Bush like. Maybe the Mexicans will pay for this hologram. Who knows?
I think that the problem -- the gamble they're making is that the base isn't going to leave them for anything and he needs a lot more than his base. And this is essentially what my colleague calls a ricochet pander where he's trying to say nicer on things like immigration and minorities in order to attract essentially more college-educated whites, particularly college-educated women.
BAIER: Sharyl, Monmouth Pennsylvania poll out today, Clinton with 48 percent to 40 percent in the four-way race. Other state polls seem to be tightening a bit, some national polls tightening as well. But the trend is that Clinton has a bit of a lead but it may be softer than it once was after the convention.
ATTKISSON: And I agree with Jonah. Obviously, the Trump campaign is looking to see where it can pick up some new voters with appeal to minorities, with discussion maybe softening the immigration stance. And I agree with you when you said even if he softens on immigration, the people that want him to be tighter aren't going to go vote for Hillary Clinton. So the question is whether they lose their enthusiasm and don't come out and vote at all because that's where he stands to really surprise the projections and confound all the polls even if there's a huge turnout of nonvoters, and by that I mean people that haven't voted in a long time, normally don't vote but are so enthused that they might come out to vote, and that this wouldn't show up in the polls ahead of time. Will those people be discouraged?
BAIER: Next up, Russian hacking and Iran provoking.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES COMEY, FBI DIRECTOR: We take very seriously any effort by any actor, including nation states, maybe especially nation states, that moves beyond the collection of information about our country and that offers the prospect of an effort to influence the conduct of affairs in our country, whether that's an election or something else.
GEN. JOSEPH VOTEL, CENTCOM COMMANDER: What I see is this is principally the regime leadership trying to exert their influence and authority in the region. And they are trying to do it in provocative ways that are unsafe, unprofessional, and really, I think, work against their objectives in the long term here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: The FBI director talking there about hackers, Russian hackers believed to be trying to get in somehow to the election system here in the U.S. And General Votel talking about Iran and its provocations in recent days.
We're back with the panel. Sharyl, in days after the nuclear deal Secretary Kerry said that the Middle East that is on fire is going to be more manageable after the nuclear deal because of the nuclear deal than before, and it opens up more opportunity to deal with a tough region. It doesn't seem that that's happened at all. In fact, it seems almost opposite.
ATTKISSON: I would say it seems as though they are more powerful and more aggressive and we helped, and that it was both predictable and predicted by experts who said this would be the case. Now, the Obama administration says, of course, in the long run we are going to be much safer because of the deal. But a lot of the people thought that wasn't the case, and all these provocations I think if you ask the ordinary American, they would say makes them feel, if anything, less safe, certainly not more safe.
BAIER: A.B., the red flares you are hearing from the FBI director from inside the administration about the election and Russia. I mean, it seems real.
STODDARD: It is so frightening, and Director Comey has repeated assertion that it's very, very, taken very seriously. It's no comfort for us that the -- either the federal government or the state governments have any ability to protect against this and to handle it and to fix it or mitigate the threat by Election Day. He just kept telling us in those remarks that it was just very, very concerning and they take these things very seriously.
This is truly a frightening prospect. It's obviously would make sense that would be a goal. And experts say that hackers have the ability, it's just whether or not the will use the ability to do that on Election Day.
BAIER: Jonah?
GOLDBERG: It almost doesn't matter whether they actually hack the elections. All the need to do is sow doubt. That is something that Vladimir Putin learned a long time ago from the KGB. He wants to create an image that NATO is weakening and divided. It doesn't actually have to divide NATO, just create the image. Same thing with elections. Remember from with Bush in 2000, all the conspiracy theories about the Diebold machines and all that. We have Donald Trump saying if he loses in certain states that it's proof it is rigged. Harry Reid basically playing the same game, saying it's proof Russians have hacked. The Russians don't have to do anything. They are laughing their butts off. They have already succeeded in undermining the central institution of our country.
BAIER: You point to the Reid letter. He sends a letter to the FBI director and says "I have recently become concerned that the threat of the Russian government tampering in our presidential election is more extensive than widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results." Senator Reid going on, "The evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign continues to mount. It's critical for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to use every resource available to investigate this matter thoroughly in a timely fashion. The American people have the deserve have full understanding," he goes on to say, "of a complete investigation by November." Tying the campaign directly to Russia and these efforts.
ATTKISSON: I'm a little suspicious when public officials come out and talk about secrets because it means they want us to know what can we really do about that? Why did they make this announcement? I wonder if there is a move to cast that kind of doubt so that on either side, you know, they have done the same thing, so that no matter what the results are, people wonder if the result are legitimate. I worry just as much about internal tampering. There are domestic hackers and people with access to the data that could also tamper it, and that's been a concern of experts as well. So I think that, too, is a concern.
BAIER: More with the panel, one quick topic after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BAIER: We want to get in this with the panel. Secretary of State John Kerry and Bangladesh speaking about terrorism, saying this, quote, "No country is immune from terrorism. It's easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 day a year. But if you decide one day you're going to be a taste and you're willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people can. You make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn't cover it quite as much. People wouldn't know what's going on."
We're back with the panel. Quickly, Sharyl?
ATTKISSON: I think he meant they would do us all a service, meaning us in the administration that have to answer all those questions.
BAIER: A.B.?
STODDARD: I think he needs to watch the jet lag. I know he is working very hard. He needs some rest. That final sentence was really --
BAIER: Do you think that's really the thought, like the media shouldn't cover these things as much as they do?
STODDARD: What I think is they do get frustrated.
BAIER: I have heard President Obama say we do give too much time and credence and threat --
STODDARD: They tell us we can die in car wrecks at a faster rate and that type of thing and they want context and perspective given, but he literally says "then they wouldn't know" in the final sentence. And it's embarrassing.
GOLDBERG: I think Sharyl's interpretation was exactly right. It's a bit of a Freudian slip, saying, yes, help us a lot. Evidence of that is we have these confrontations in the Straits of Hormuz. We have the stuff about the Russians hacking our election, possibly hacking our elections, and President Obama announcing announced today that he is going to be the guest editor of "Wired" magazine because some priorities you just can't put off. You can't make it up.
BAIER: All right, panel, thank you. Sharyl, thanks for being here.
Thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. That is it for this SPECIAL REPORT, fair, balanced, and unafraid. Tune in about one hour and 30 seconds. I'm hosting for Bill O'Reilly on "The O'Reilly Factor." We have Kellyanne, Trump campaign manager on. You want to check that out. Greta goes ON THE RECORD right now.
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