“I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”, Trump said.
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Stealing the spotlight from the Democratic Convention, it’s fitting their theme tonight- that Trump is unsafe.
The Clinton campaign said the Trump request is the “first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against a political opponent”. “The only reason this is being discussed is because Hillary Clinton jeopardized national security with her illicit private email server _ a scandal Ross has repeatedly refused to address despite campaigning by Clinton’s side in North Carolina”.
Attacking Clinton as she prepares to accept her party’s formal nomination, Trump turned his guns on a previous email scandal dating back to her time as secretary of state and more than 30,000 emails deleted on grounds of being personal and not related to her job.
William Inboden, who worked for the NSC under President George W. Bush, said Trump’s joke was “tantamount to treason”.
Trump meanwhile said the Russian leader has no respect for Clinton or Obama.
The criticism of Trump’s comments reverberated at the Democratic National Convention where speakers brought up the episode to try to intensify Democratic support for Clinton, who is running neck and neck with Trump in the polls.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation probe of the issue found no basis for criminal charges, but FBI Director James Comey said this month there was evidence Clinton was “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, US, July 27, 2016. “I never met Putin”. “I don’t know anything about him”.
Those emails leaked by WikiLeaks showed the extent to which party leaders sought to undermine Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders, even questioning his religious faith, and forced the Democratic National Committee chair to resign.
Cyber security experts and USA officials have said there was evidence that Russian Federation engineered the release of the sensitive party emails in order to influence the presidential election. Burr campaigned with Trump this week in North Carolina, along with Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and other GOP lawmakers from the state. “I don’t want to use four-letter words”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on Tuesday.
Not a single politician or scholar has deemed Trump’s comments as thoughtful.
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Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have exchanged compliments and suggested their two countries could become closer allies if Trump is elected. And he’s asked a foreign government, a murderous, repressive regime, to attack not just one of our citizens but the Democratic presidential candidate. The U.S. government considers it still part of Ukraine.
