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Presidential News
The Obama-Hating Koch Brothers Don’t Like Donald Trump Either
According to Politico.com, The Obama-hating, billionaire Koch brothers are freezing out Donald Trump from their influential political operation — denying him access to their state-of-the-art data and re- fusing to let him speak to their gatherings of grass-roots ac- tivists or major donors.
Despite a long and cordial relationship between Trump and David Koch, as well as an army of former Koch oper- atives who are now running Trump’s presidential cam- paign, the Koch political op- eration appears to have concluded that Trump is the wrong standard-bearer for the GOP.
According to Politico, the network of Koch-backed pol- icy and political outfits is using behind-the-scenes influence to challenge Trump more force- fully than the Republican Party establishment — by lim- iting his access to the support and data that would help him translate his lead in the polls into a sustainable White House campaign.
The Koch operation has spurned entreaties from the Trump campaign to purchase state-of-the-art data and ana- lytics services from a Koch- backed political tech firm called i360, and also turned down a request to allow Trump to speak at an annual grass-roots summit next month in Columbus, Ohio, sponsored by the Koch- backed group Americans for Prosperity, POLITICO has learned.
In addition, Trump was not invited to the annual summer
2016 Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump.
gathering of the network of hundreds of conservative mega-donors and operatives.
The three-day meeting in Orange County, California, will feature appearances from a handful of candidates whose politics reflect more closely to the Kochs’ fiscally conserva- tive world view — including Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker — and even long-shot Carly Fiorina.
Continued stiff-arming by the powerful Koch network could limit Trump’s ability to build a professional campaign operation to mobilize support- ers ahead of primaries and caucuses.
Trump’s surprising trac- tion has prompted head scratching by the Republican Party elite, who fear that his rhetoric could damage the GOP’s prospects in the general election.
The Koch network — a coali- tion of individual donors and independent groups and com- panies — intends to spend a whopping $889 million in the run-up to 2016, and is not obliged to stay neutral.
Federal Judge Adds Fuel To Fire In Hillary Clinton Email Issue
A federal judge put the Hillary Clinton email scan- dal into stark terms, grilling the State Department on a pattern of delayed document releases that has turned a bu- reaucratic norm into a so- called problem for the leading Democratic presidential con- tender.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, known for his blunt manner, said he sim- ply did not understand why the State Department has dragged its feet on responses for emails in requests to the Freedom of Information Act.
2016 Democratic Presiden- tial Candidate Hillary Clinton.
“Now, any person should be
able to review that in one day — one day,” the judge said, ex- amining a request for just over 60 emails. “Even the least am- bitious bureaucrat could do this.”
Judge Leon re-enforced what State Department critics say, ‘that the agency is drag- ging out responses to FOIA re- quests to protect Clinton.‘ She served as Secretary of State during President Obama’s first term, the position John Kerry now holds.
More Clinton emails are ex- pected to be released Friday (today) under a court-order.
GOP Ad Spending Hits
$8 Million Before 1st Debate
Republican presidential campaigns and outside groups supporting them have spent nearly $8 million in TV adver- tisements so far ahead of next week's first GOP debate — which is restricted to the can- didates in the Top 10 of the na- tional polls.
The biggest spenders, ac- cording to the ad-buying data from SMG Delta: 1) A non- profit backing Marco Rubio called Conservative Solutions
Project (which doesn't have to disclose its donors); and 2) A group supporting John Ka- sich.
By comparison, only about $1 million was spent at this point in the GOP presidential contest, per SMG Delta. The only Democratic entity that has been spending money on a presidential candidate is the Super PAC supporting Mar- tin O'Malley — and it's just $25,000.
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