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U.S. NEWSSaturday 2 April 2016
Trump touts loyalty for his campaign manager State Dept. review
into ‘secret’ Clinton
JILL COLVIN Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump smiles during Lewandowski was charged emails suspended
Associated Press a CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper in the historic Riverside with simple battery after
APPLETON, Wisconsin (AP) Theatre in Milwaukee. being accused of grab- MATTHEW LEE
— Donald Trump says his bing a Breitbart News re- AP Diplomatic Writer
decision to stand behind (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) porter’s arm after a press WASHINGTON (AP) — The
his campaign manager, conference, an encounter State Department has sus-
who has been charged in phone interview with The this week, Trump replied, that was captured on sur- pended its internal review
an altercation with a fe- Associated Press on Thurs- “Well I’d rather not say, veillance footage. into whether former Sec-
male reporter, is a sign of day whether Lewandowski but it wouldn’t have mat- The incident prompted retary of State Hillary Clin-
loyalty — a trait that Trump had offered his resignation tered.” new concerns about ton or her top aides mis-
has displayed, for better or Trump’s ability to appeal to handled emails containing
worse, through much of his female voters in the gen- information now deemed
career. eral election in November. “top secret.”
The Republican presiden- Then on Wednesday, Spokeswoman Elizabeth
tial candidate said in an Trump was asked whether Trudeau said Friday the de-
interview that he wouldn’t abortions should be ille- partment had paused the
have accepted Corey Le- gal and whether women review to avoid interfering
wandowski’s resignation should be punished for with an ongoing FBI investi-
even if it had been of- having them if they are. gation into Clinton’s use of
fered. But he also seemed His answer that “there has a private server while she
to acknowledge that he’s to be some form of punish- was America’s top dip-
had a difficult week lead- ment” drew quick criticism lomat. She said the deci-
ing into what could be a and then an unprecedent- sion was made after the
crucial primary in Wiscon- ed written reversal from department sought the
sin on Tuesday. the typically unapologetic FBI’s advice on how to
When asked in a brief candidate. proceed with the review
and received word that it
should follow its standard
practice. Trudeau said the
department’s standard
practice is to place inter-
nal reviews “on hold while
there is an ongoing law
enforcement investigation
under way.”
An FBI spokeswoman de-
clined to comment.
“Of course, we do not
want our internal review
to complicate or impede
the progress of their ongo-
ing law enforcement in-
vestigation,” Trudeau told
reporters. “Therefore, the
State Department at this
time is not moving forward
with our internal review.”
Trudeau said the depart-
ment would “reassess next
steps” in the internal review
process once the FBI com-
pletes its probe.
The department began
the internal review in Janu-
ary when it announced
that it had classified 22
emails that Clinton sent or
received as “top secret”
and would not be releas-
ing them.
