No Matter What Happens, We Won’t Know Who The Next President Will Be Until December 19th

what-public-domainMost Americans assume that their votes decide who the next president will be, but that is actually not the case.  It is the Electoral College that will elect the next president, and they don’t meet until December 19th.  And the truth is that all of the members of the Electoral College never meet in one place.  Rather, electors gather together in all 50 state capitals on the second Wednesday in December, and it is at that time that the next president and vice president are officially elected.  Of course members of the Electoral College have voted according to the will of the people about 99 percent of the time throughout our history, but with how crazy this election has turned out to be you never know what might happen.  For example, later on in this article you will see that one elector in Washington state has already publicly stated that he will not cast his vote for Hillary Clinton.  If other “faithless electors” emerge, that could potentially change the entire outcome of the election.

If you are not familiar with the basics of how the Electoral College works, here is a pretty good summary from Wikipedia

Even though the aggregate national popular vote is calculated by state officials, media organizations, and the Federal Election Commission, the people only indirectly elect the president, as the national popular vote is not the basis for electing the president or vice president. The President and Vice President of the United States are elected by the Electoral College, which consists of 538 presidential electors from the fifty states and Washington, D.C.. Presidential electors are selected on a state-by-state basis, as determined by the laws of each state. Since the election of 1824,[35] most states have appointed their electors on a winner-take-all basis, based on the statewide popular vote on Election Day. Maine and Nebraska are the only two current exceptions, as both states use the congressional district method. Although ballots list the names of the presidential and vice presidential candidates (who run on a ticket), voters actually choose electors when they vote for president and vice president. These presidential electors in turn cast electoral votes for those two offices. Electors usually pledge to vote for their party’s nominee, but some “faithless electors” have voted for other candidates.

A candidate must receive an absolute majority of electoral votes (currently 270) to win the presidency or the vice presidency. If no candidate receives a majority in the election for president or vice president, that election is determined via a contingency procedure established by the Twelfth Amendment. In such a situation, the House chooses one of the top three presidential electoral vote-winners as the president, while the Senate chooses one of the top two vice presidential electoral vote-winners as vice president.

In an attempt to make sure that their electors vote according to the will of the people, 29 states have passed laws that impose penalties on “faithless electors”.  In many cases the punishment consists of a fine, but that may not be enough to keep some electors in line this time around.  According to ABC News, one elector that was supposed to be committed to Hillary Clinton has already announced that he is refusing to vote for her despite the fact that he will get hit by a $1,000 fine…

One elector has already said he won’t vote for Clinton, despite a fine. Robert Satiacum, a member of Washington’s Puyallup Tribe, says he believes Clinton is a “criminal” who doesn’t care enough about American Indians and “she’s done nothing but flip back and forth.”

Satiacum faces a $1,000 fine in Washington if he doesn’t vote for Clinton, but he said he doesn’t care.

“She will not get my vote, period,” he told The Associated Press.

And there are 21 states that do not impose penalties on “faithless electors” at all.

So while it is true that over 99 percent of all Electors throughout our history have voted the way that they were supposed to, that may not happen in 2016.

There is also the possibility that the winning candidate could die or become incapacitated between Election Day and December 19th.  If that happens, the electors that are supposed to be committed to the winning candidate would be free to vote for someone else.  The following comes from archives.gov

If a candidate dies or becomes incapacitated between the general election and the meeting of electors, under federal law, the electors pledged to the deceased candidate may vote for the candidate of their choice at the meeting of electors. Individual states may pass laws on the subject, but no federal law proscribes how electors must vote when a candidate dies or becomes incapacitated. In 1872, when Horace Greeley passed away between election day and the meeting of electors, the electors who were slated to vote for Greeley voted for various candidates, including Greeley. The votes cast for Greeley were not counted due to a House resolution passed regarding the matter. See the full Electoral College vote counts for President and Vice President in the 1872 election.

As to a candidate who dies or becomes incapacitated between the meeting of electors and the counting of electoral votes in Congress, the Constitution is silent on whether this candidate meets the definition of “President elect” or “Vice President elect.” If the candidate with a majority of the electoral votes is considered “President elect,” even before the counting of electoral votes in Congress, Section 3 of the 20th Amendment applies. Section 3 of the 20th Amendment states that the Vice President elect will become President if the President elect dies or becomes incapacitated.

If a winning Presidential candidate dies or becomes incapacitated between the counting of electoral votes in Congress and the inauguration, the Vice President elect will become President, according to Section 3 of the 20th Amendment.

Our Constitution really should be amended to deal with a situation where a winning candidate dies between Election Day and the Electoral College vote, but up until now that has not happened.

So the cold, hard reality of the matter is that we will enter a period of great uncertainty between November 8th and December 19th.  Even though the American people will have spoken, we will not have a “President-elect” yet, and if something happens to the winning candidate that could throw us into an unprecedented constitutional crisis.

And of course if the election results are very tight and a few “faithless electors” throw the election in the opposite direction on December 19th, that could create an enormous constitutional crisis as well.

Following the vote of the Electoral College on December 19th, a joint session of Congress takes place on January 6th of the following year to formally declare the winner

The Twelfth Amendment mandates that the Congress assemble in joint session to count the electoral votes and declare the winners of the election.[53] The session is ordinarily required to take place on January 6 in the calendar year immediately following the meetings of the presidential electors.[54] Since the Twentieth Amendment, the newly elected House declares the winner of the election; all elections before 1936 were determined by the outgoing House.

Two weeks later, the winning candidate will be inaugurated on January 20th, and at that point the next president will begin to serve.

It would be a whole lot simpler and more rational to just allow the American people to directly elect the president, and it would probably take a major crisis in order to get the kind of constitutional amendment that is needed to do that.

But for now the system is what it is, and that means that the election is not over until it is over.

So November 8th is definitely not the end of the story, and the craziest chapters of this election season may still be yet to come.

Early Voting Results In Key Battleground States Appear To Favor Donald Trump

vote-button-public-domainIf you want Donald Trump to win the election, then you have got to be encouraged by what you are seeing so far.  Early voting has already been going on in a number of the most important battleground states, and up to this point the numbers seem to support the theory that Donald Trump is doing significantly better in key swing states than Mitt Romney did in 2012.  As you will see below, the latest numbers released by Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Arizona all have good news for the Trump campaign.  Without a doubt, I still have an ominous feeling about what is going to happen tomorrow night, but so far at least there are some encouraging signs.

Florida

Early voting has become extremely popular in Florida, and at this point close to half of all voters in the state have already cast their ballots.

Donald Trump cannot win the election without Florida’s 29 electoral votes, and so to say that this is a “must win” for the Trump campaign would be a massive understatement.

Fortunately, the Trump campaign appears to be doing much better in Florida than the Romney campaign did in 2012.  The following comes from Politico

Florida Democrats increased their lead over Republicans in casting pre-Election Day ballots to nearly 33,000 as of Sunday morning, but the sheer number of new voters and independents makes it tougher than ever for experts to say whether Hillary Clinton has a clear advantage over Donald Trump in the nation’s biggest battleground state.

Of the record 6.1 million in-person early votes and absentee ballots cast, Democrats have an advantage over Republicans of only 0.5 percentage points, with each party casting roughly 39 percent of the ballots. Though it’s a lead for Democrats, they’re not going to match their 3.7-percentage-point lead in early votes by Election Day they enjoyed in 2012. And Republicans tend to outvote Democrats on Election Day in Florida.

On Monday, updated numbers for Florida were released, and we found out that the Democrats had increased their lead to about 87,000 votes.  But Trump is still doing much better than Romney was at this stage.

And the Trump campaign also has to be happy about the fact that first-time voters account for 25 percent of all the votes cast so far.  Throughout this election cycle Trump has shown that he can bring out people that have never voted before, and so officials in the Trump campaign have to be smiling about this.

However, one sign of trouble for the Trump campaign is the fact that there has been a 100 percent increase in early voting by Hispanics in Florida compared to 2012, and this appears to be fueled by dislike for Trump.  The following comes from the Miami Herald

Through Saturday, 565,000 Hispanics had completed early in-person voting in Florida, a 100 percent increase over 2012, according to an analysis by Dan Smith, a University of Florida political science professor who tracks voting data.

Including absentee ballots, 911,000 Hispanics have voted — more than a third of whom did not vote in 2012. “We’re witnessing explosive early voting turnout of Hispanics — both those newly registered to vote as well as those who sat on the sidelines in 2012,” Smith said.

As discussed above, Republicans tend to outvote Democrats on Election Day in Florida, so the key for the Trump campaign will be to have the same kind of Election Day turnout that the Romney campaign had in 2012.

If Trump wins Florida, he will have a legitimate shot at winning the election, but if he loses the state it will be virtually impossible for him to make up those 29 electoral votes elsewhere on the map.

North Carolina

Another state that the Trump campaign desperately needs is North Carolina.  Mitt Romney won this state back in 2012, and according to the Drudge Report the Trump campaign is doing even better than the Romney campaign did during early voting…

Another dramatic turn of events is being reported out of North Carolina this afternoon: Donald Trump has jumped past all expectations in early voting!

In 2012, Romney hit Election Day down 447,000 votes, based on early ballots. He went on to win the state by 97,000 votes.

Now, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal, Trump opens Election Day down 305,000!

North Carolina is another of the key battleground states that is going to help decide the election.  While not as important as Florida, the truth is that Donald Trump pretty much has to have it to have a legitimate shot.

Colorado

All along, most of the pundits have pretty much assumed that Hillary Clinton was going to win Colorado.

Unfortunately for her, the Denver Post is reporting that the number of Republicans that have voted so far exceeds the number of Democrats that have voted…

Republicans took the lead in early voting in Colorado at the end of the day Friday and held the advantage through the weekend despite robust Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts.

The latest early voting numbers released Monday morning show registered Republicans cast 652,380 ballots compared to 645,020 registered Democrats — a 7,360 vote GOP advantage. The breakdown looks like this: 35.2 percent Republican, 34.8 percent Democrat and 28.5 percent unaffiliated.

If Donald Trump could find a way to actually win Colorado, that would definitely lessen the pressure of having to win Nevada where he is not doing nearly as well so far.

Arizona

The state of Arizona used to be considered “deep red” territory, but during this election cycle it has been considered a battleground state.

Fortunately for Trump the poll numbers in Arizona have shifted in his direction in recent days, and the early numbers coming out of the state look very good for him

The Republican lead in absentee ballots returned is 95,000. Bill Dunn, the party’s director of early and absentee voting, said Republicans lead with 36.5 percent of absentee ballots requested but have an even greater advantage in absentee ballots returned, at 40 percent of the total.

In the waning days of the campaign Donald Trump has been criss-crossing the country, and he continues to draw absolutely enormous crowds.  Conservative voters are far more enthusiastic about Trump than they were about Romney, but will it be enough?

Some Republican strategists are convinced that it will not be enough.  In fact, one of them told CNN that he believes that Hillary Clinton is going to win by “an electoral landslide”…

Hillary Clinton will win in an electoral landslide on Tuesday, but the political baggage she has accumulated over the past year-and-a-half will dissuade congressional Republicans from working with her administration, says longtime Republican political strategist John Weaver.

“I believe she’s going to win in an electoral landslide and be the most unpopular president in electoral history, which is quite the paradox,” Weaver told David Axelrod on “The Axe Files” podcast, produced by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.

And ultimately it could be the establishment Republicans and the “never-Trumpers” that make the difference and deliver the election to Hillary Clinton.  If you can believe it, some establishment Republicans are actually publicly announcing that they have voted for Hillary Clinton and are encouraging others to do the same.

If they can get just five percent of Republicans to follow them, they could completely alter the outcome of the election.  So let us hope that does not happen.

On a positive note, on Monday we learned that Hillary Clinton has canceled her celebratory fireworks for Tuesday night.  No reason was given for why the fireworks were canceled, but many are taking this as a sign that the Clinton campaign may not be as optimistic as they were previously.

In any event, we don’t have long to wait now until we find out who wins and who loses.

If you want Donald Trump to win, please go vote, because America may never be faced with this kind of a choice again.

I am absolutely convinced that this is a pivotal moment in American history, and on Tuesday night we find out what happens.

May God have mercy on the late, great United States of America.

If Donald Trump Wins, He Will Be 70 Years, 7 Months And 7 Days Old On His First Full Day In Office

donald-trump-accepts-the-nomination-public-domainA couple of weeks ago, it looked like Hillary Clinton was all set to cruise to victory, but now the FBI has delivered an election miracle in the nick of time.  A few of my readers had criticized me for suggesting that Trump might lose, but I don’t know who is going to win the election, and so all I had to go on was the cold, hard numbers.  And a couple of weeks ago the cold, hard numbers were telling me that Hillary Clinton was going to win.  Of course it is entirely possible that the national polls might have been seriously wrong, but even the state polls in the most important battleground states consistently had bad news for Trump.  So things didn’t look good for Trump at the time, but now that the FBI has renewed their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails the poll numbers have shifted dramatically in Trump’s favor.

As I write this article, the national polls have really tightened up.  In fact, the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll puts Trump 1 point ahead of Clinton.  Trump has all of the momentum at the moment, but that does not mean that he is going to win.  As we have seen already in this race, one day can literally change everything.

And as I noted yesterday, more than 23 million Americans have already voted, and most of that voting was done during a period of time when Hillary Clinton was doing very well in the polls.

So we shall see what happens.  But if Trump does win on November 8th, there is a fact about his birthday which will start to get a lot of attention.

Donald Trump was born on June 14th, 1946.  If you move ahead 70 years from that date, that brings you to June 14th, 2016.  Moving forward another 7 months brings you to January 14th, 2017, and moving forward another 7 days brings you to January 21st, 2017.

And if Donald Trump wins the election, January 21st will be his first full day in office.

Of course Trump would be inaugurated on January 20th, but he would only be president for part of that day.

So that means that Donald Trump would be 70 years, 7 months and 7 days old on his first full day as president of the United States.

And this would happen during year 5777 on the Hebrew calendar.

These amazing “coincidences” were first pointed out on Facebook by a user named Alyson Kelly.  Some may take these numbers as a sign that Donald Trump is supposed to become the next president, but I want to make it exceedingly clear that I do not know what is going to happen, nor am I making any sort of prediction about what is going to happen.

I just thought that this information was “interesting” and so I thought that I would share it.

Someone that does believe that Trump is going to win is Glenn Beck.  He was been virulently anti-Trump throughout this campaign, but now he is convinced that Clinton will be unable to overcome this new email scandal, and he is calling this renewed investigation by the FBI “the greatest gift given to any candidate of all time in the history of America.”

Beck also says that if Clinton wins now it will be evidence that “magic exists”, and he is currently projecting that Trump should win the national vote by 5 points

“Let’s just say he was 8 points, that was fair to say, 8 points behind last week,” Beck said, according to a transcript posted on his website. “He should win by 5 points.”

Beck later added: “How can the next president face a possible collapsing economy, possible war with Russia, and a current war with ISIS? Oh, and also, be under FBI investigation and indictment? Can’t. Can’t.”

The conservative personality called the latest FBI revelation “the greatest gift given to any candidate of all time in the history of America” and added that if Clinton still managed to win, it would be akin to proof “magic exists.”

Hopefully Glenn Beck is right, because none of us should want to see Hillary Clinton in the White House.

She is the most evil, corrupt and scandal-ridden politician of this generation, and I can’t understand how any American in their right mind could possibly vote for her.

And the hits just keep on coming.  Wikileaks has just released an email in which John Podesta told Clinton “fixer” Cheryl Mills that they were “going to have to dump all those emails so better to do so sooner than later”

wikileaks-podesta-wikileaks

It was not entirely clear what Podesta meant by that phrase, but it could potentially be smoking gun evidence of obstruction of justice.

Back in 2008, Barack Obama was new, intriguing and mysterious.  We didn’t know a lot about him, and so one can almost understand how the American people could have been fooled by him.

But in 2016, Americans know more about Hillary Clinton than they have ever known about any candidate in modern American history.

The Clintons have a history of crimes and scandals that goes all the way back to the 1980s, but about half the country is choosing to ignore all of that history and vote for her anyway.

I believe that this election is America’s final exam.  Originally there were 17 Republicans and 5 Democrats running for the presidency.  When you throw in the major third party candidates, that brings us to a total of approximately 25 people that the American public could have chosen from.

If the American people willingly choose the most wicked candidate out of all of them after everything that has been revealed, I don’t think that anyone will be able to say that we don’t deserve the bitter consequences that follow that decision.

The time for talking is almost over, and shortly we shall find out which path the American people have chosen.

If that choice turns out to be Hillary Clinton after everything that we have seen during this election cycle, I truly believe that we will have reached the point of no return as a nation.

Thank You FBI: The Clinton Email Investigation Has Shifted The Poll Numbers Significantly In Trump’s Favor

donald-trump-rally-photo-by-michael-candeloriDonald Trump has all the momentum now.  Will it be enough to propel him to victory on election day?  Trump’s poll numbers were improving even before we learned that the FBI had renewed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the new survey results that came out over the weekend and on Monday make it clear that Clinton’s “certain victory” is not so certain after all.  Unless something changes, Americans are going to go to the polls on November 8th with an FBI criminal investigation hanging over the Clinton campaign like an ominous cloud, and that is very good news for Trump.

The Clinton campaign was hoping that this renewed investigation would not “move the needle”, but unfortunately for them that appears not to be the case.  Hillary’s unfavorable rating just hit an all-time high, a whopping 45 percent of all Americans believe that this scandal is “worse than Watergate”, and a Rasmussen survey has found that 40 percent of all undecided voters that are leaning toward voting for Hillary Clinton are still open to changing their minds before election day.

And even before this story broke on Friday, Clinton was having a difficult time getting her voters to the polls.  According to the New York Times, early voting among young adults and African-American voters is significantly down compared to 2012, and those are demographic groups that Clinton desperately needs to turn out in large numbers.

But of course the key to winning the election is getting to 270 electoral votes, and poll numbers appear to be shifting in the key swing states that Trump and Clinton both desperately need.  For a moment, I would like to examine what the numbers currently look like in some of the most important states…

Florida

Without Florida, Donald Trump has absolutely no chance of winning.  This is something that even the Trump campaign has admitted.  That is why it was so alarming that most of the polls in October had Hillary Clinton leading in the state.

Fortunately for Trump, a new survey that was conducted on Sunday shows him leading in Florida by four points.

Georgia

Georgia wasn’t supposed to be a problem.  Georgia has traditionally been a deep red state, but polling throughout this election season had shown a very tight race.  This had Republicans deeply concerned and the Clinton camp very happy.

But now the momentum has seemingly shifted and the latest poll has Trump up by seven points.

North Carolina

Mitt Romney won North Carolina in 2012, and Donald Trump very much needs to win it if he hopes to be triumphant on November 8th.  Hillary Clinton was shown to be leading in the eight most recent polls before the email story broke, but in the first major survey conducted afterwards she is now down by two points.

Ohio

No Republican has ever won the presidency without Ohio, and Trump knows how important it is to his chances.  The three most recent polls conducted before the FBI renewed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails all showed a tie, but now the very first survey conducted afterwards shows Trump up by five points.

Colorado

Hillary Clinton has consistently been in the lead in Colorado throughout this campaign, and most experts didn’t give Trump much of a chance in the state, but the latest survey shows that Clinton’s lead has been whittled down to just one point.

Arizona

A survey that was conducted in mid-October showed Clinton having a five point lead in John McCain’s home state, but now the latest major poll has Trump up by two points.

Nevada

One of the most important swing states out west is Nevada, and most surveys showed Hillary Clinton with a strong lead throughout the month of October.  Unfortunately for her, a poll that was conducted on Sunday shows Donald Trump with a four point lead.

Clearly Trump has the momentum at this point, and it will be very interesting to see how the numbers change over the next few days.

And as we learn more about what is in these newly discovered emails, will her fellow Democrats stick with her?  Already, some are publicly wavering.  The following example comes from WND

Longtime Clinton confidante and former Democratic pollster Doug Schoen told Fox News the newly renewed FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server is forcing him to “reassess” his support for the Democratic nominee for president.

Schoen, a Fox News contributor, made the comments to host Harris Faulkner during a live television appearance Sunday night on “Fox Report Weekend.”

Public opinion is shifting quickly, but the bad news for Trump is that more than 23 million Americans have already voted.  So millions upon millions of Americans cast their votes before they even learned of this new FBI investigation.  If the race is very close, that could end up making the difference.

And of course the race could dramatically change once again if the FBI comes to some sort of resolution about these new emails prior to November 8th.  On Monday, CNN reported that a resolution before election day did not appear to be likely…

FBI officials are unlikely to finish their review of new emails potentially related to its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server before the November 8 election.

The initial work of cataloging top Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s emails found on her estranged husband Anthony Weiner’s laptop could be done in the next few days, US law enforcement officials told CNN.

But the investigators are expected to spend more time doing other work, including likely working with other federal agencies to determine what — if any — classified materials are in the emails. This makes it unlikely there will be a resolution prior to the election.

However, late on Monday evening the Drudge Report reported that the L.A. Times has learned that investigators may have a “preliminary assessment” completed “in coming days”…

LA TIMES TUESDAY: FBI Investigators had planned to conduct new email review over several weeks. It now hopes to complete ‘preliminary assessment’ in coming days, but agency officials have not decided how, or whether, they will disclose results publicly… Developing…

Whether good or bad, I do believe that the American people deserve to hear something conclusive about these emails before November 8th.

If nothing is found to implicate Clinton, the American people should be told that.

And if evidence of very serious crimes is discovered, there is no way in the world that should be held back until after the election.

Even if it throws the election into complete and utter chaos, the American people deserve to know the truth.

But will we get it?

Stay tuned, because I think that this is going to be a crazy week.

If Hillary Clinton Is Charged With Obstruction Of Justice She Could Go To Prison For 20 Years

prison-photo-by-sean-munsonIn the world of politics, the cover-up is often worse than the original crime.  It was his role in the Watergate cover-up that took down Richard Nixon, and now Hillary Clinton’s cover-up of her email scandal could send her to prison for a very, very long time.  When news broke that the FBI has renewed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, it sent shockwaves throughout the political world.  But this time around, we aren’t just talking about an investigation into the mishandling of classified documents.  I haven’t heard anyone talking about this, but if the FBI discovers that Hillary Clinton altered, destroyed or concealed any emails that should have been turned over to the FBI during the original investigation, she could be charged with obstruction of justice.  That would immediately end her political career, and if she was found guilty it could send her to prison for the rest of her life.

I have not seen a single news report mention the phrase “obstruction of justice” yet, but I am convinced that there is a very good chance that this is where this scandal is heading.  The following is the relevant part of the federal statute that deals with obstruction of justice

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsified, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under Title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

If Hillary Clinton is sent to prison for 20 years, that would essentially be for the rest of her life.

I have a feeling that the FBI is going to find a great deal of evidence of obstruction of justice in Huma Abedin’s emails.  But unfortunately there is not likely to be a resolution to this matter before November 8th, because according to the Wall Street Journal there are approximately 650,000 emails to search through…

As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, the surprise disclosure that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare building tensions inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate the Democratic presidential nominee.

Metadata found on the laptop used by former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide, suggests there may be thousands of emails sent to or from the private server that Mrs. Clinton used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. It will take weeks, at a minimum, to determine whether those messages are work-related from the time Ms. Abedin served with Mrs. Clinton at the State Department; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe.

Of those 650,000 emails, an inside source told Fox News that “at least 10,000” would be of interest to the investigation.

At this point, FBI officials have not even begun searching through the emails, because a search warrant has not been secured yet.  The following comes from CNN

Government lawyers haven’t yet approached Abedin’s lawyers to seek an agreement to conduct the search. Sources earlier told CNN that those discussions had begun, but the law enforcement officials now say they have not.

Either way, government lawyers plan to seek a search warrant from a judge to conduct the search of the computer, the law enforcement officials said.

But the FBI is reportedly already searching a laptop that was co-owned by Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin, and no warrant was necessary for that search because Weiner is cooperating with the FBI.

Many have been wondering why FBI Director James Comey would choose to make such a bold move just over a week until election day.  Surely he had to know that this would have a dramatic impact on the election, and it is unlikely that he would have done so unless someone had already found something really big.  In addition, Comey was reportedly eager to find an opportunity to redeem himself in the eyes of his peers at the FBI.  The following is an excerpt from a Daily Mail article that was written by Ed Klein, the author of a recently released New York Times bestseller about the Clintons entitled “Guilty As Sin“…

‘The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,’ said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades, shares family outings with him, and accompanies him to Catholic mass every week.

‘Some people, including department heads, stopped talking to Jim, and even ignored his greetings when they passed him in the hall,’ said the source. ‘They felt that he betrayed them and brought disgrace on the bureau by letting Hillary off with a slap on the wrist.’

According to the source, Comey fretted over the problem for months and discussed it at great length with his wife, Patrice.

He told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.

So what happens next?

In the most likely scenario, the FBI will not have time to complete the investigation and decide whether or not to charge Hillary Clinton before the election.  This means that we would go into November 8th with this scandal hanging over the Clinton campaign, and that would seem to be very good news for Donald Trump.

However, it is possible that once the FBI starts searching through these emails that they could come to the conclusion very rapidly that charges against Clinton are warranted, and if that happens we could still see some sort of announcement before election day.

In the unlikely event that does happen, we could actually see Hillary Clinton forced out of the race before November 8th.

Once again, this appears to be very unlikely at this point, but it is still possible.

If Clinton was forced to step aside, the Democrats would need to come up with a new nominee, and that process would take time.  In an article later today on The Most Important News I will reveal who I believe that nominee would be.

In such a scenario, the Democrats would desperately need time to get their act together, and so we could actually see Barack Obama attempt to delay or suspend the election.  The legality of such a move is highly questionable, but Barack Obama has not allowed a little thing like the U.S. Constitution to stop him in the past.

This week is going to be exceedingly interesting – that is for sure.

The craziest election in modern American history just keeps getting crazier, and I have a feeling that even more twists and turns are ahead.

It sure seems ironic that Anthony Weiner is playing such a central role this late in the story, and I can’t wait to see what is in store for the season finale.

Will Barack Obama Delay Or Suspend The Election If Hillary Is Forced Out By The New FBI Email Investigation?

barack-obama-and-hillary-clinton-in-the-white-house-public-domainJust when it looked like Hillary Clinton was poised to win the 2016 election, the FBI has thrown a gamechanger into the mix. On Friday, FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency has discovered new emails related to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information that they had not previously seen. According to the Associated Press, the newly discovered emails “did not come from her private server”, but instead were found when the FBI started going through electronic devices that belonged to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner.  The FBI has been looking into messages of a sexual nature that Weiner had exchanged with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, and that is why they originally seized those electronic devices.  According to the Washington Post, the “emails were found on a computer used jointly by both Weiner and his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, according to a person with knowledge of the inquiry”, and according to some reports there may be “potentially thousands” of emails on the computer that the FBI did not have access to previously.  Even though there are less than two weeks to go until election day, this scandal has the potential to possibly force Clinton out of the race, and if that happens could Barack Obama delay or suspend the election until a replacement candidate can be found?

Let’s take this one step at a time.  On Friday, financial markets tanked when reports of these new Clinton emails hit the wires.  The following comes from CNN

After recommending earlier this year that the Department of Justice not press charges against the former secretary of state, Comey said in a letter to eight congressional committee chairmen that investigators are examining newly discovered emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the email probe.

“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote the chairmen. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”

At this point, we do not know what is contained in these emails.  But without a doubt Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton’s closest confidant, and I have always felt that she was Clinton’s Achilles heel.  Journalist Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame) is fully convinced that the FBI would have never made this move unless something significant had already been discovered

We don’t know what this means yet except that it’s a real bombshell. And it is unthinkable that the Director of the FBI would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is more information out there about classified e-mails and call it to the attention of congress unless it was something requiring serious investigation. So that’s where we are…

Is it a certainty that we won’t learn before the election? I’m not sure it’s a certainty we won’t learn before the election.

One thing is, it’s possible that Hillary Clinton might want to on her own initiative talk to the FBI and find out what she can, and if she chooses to let the American people know what she thinks or knows is going on. People need to hear from her…

If the FBI has indeed found something explosive, would they actually charge her with a crime right before the election?

It is possible, but we also have to remember that government agencies (including the FBI) tend to move very, very slowly.  If there are thousands of emails, it is going to take quite a while to sift through them all.  And of course Barack Obama has lots of ways that he could influence, delay or even shut down the investigation.

So those that are counting on this to be the miracle that Donald Trump needs should not count their chickens before they hatch.

But if Hillary Clinton were to be forced out of the race by this FBI investigation, the Democrats would have to decide on a new candidate, and that would take time.  The following is from a U.S. News & World Report article that examined what would happen if one of the candidates was forced out of the race for some reason…

If Clinton were to fall off the ticket, Democratic National Committee members would gather to vote on a replacement. DNC members acted as superdelegates during this year’s primary and overwhelmingly backed Clinton over boat-rocking socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

DNC spokesman Mark Paustenbach says there currently are 445 committee members – a number that changes over time and is guided by the group’s bylaws, which give membership to specific officeholders and party leaders and hold 200 spots for selection by states, along with an optional 75 slots DNC members can choose to fill.

But the party rules for replacing a presidential nominee merely specify that a majority of members must be present at a special meeting called by the committee chairman. The meeting would follow procedures set by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee and proxy voting would not be allowed.

It would be extremely challenging to get a majority of the members of the Democratic National Committee together on such short notice.  If Clinton were to drop out next week, it would be almost impossible for this to happen before election day.

In such a scenario, Barack Obama may attempt to invoke his emergency powers.  Since the election would not be “fair” until the Democrats have a new candidate, he could try to delay or suspend the election.  There would be a lot of controversy as to whether this is legal or not, but Barack Obama has not let the U.S. Constitution stop him in the past.

Meanwhile, new poll numbers show that the Trump campaign was already gaining momentum even before this story about the new emails broke.  According to a brand new ABC News/Washington Post survey, Donald Trump is now only trailing Hillary Clinton by 4 points after trailing her by as much as 12 points last weekend.

And CNBC is reporting on a highly advanced artificial intelligence system that accurately predicted the outcomes of the presidential primaries and which is now indicating that Trump will be the winner in November…

An artificial intelligence system that correctly predicted the last three U.S. presidential elections puts Republican nominee Donald Trump ahead of Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House.

MogIA was developed by Sanjiv Rai, founder of Indian start-up Genic.ai. It takes in 20 million data points from public platforms including Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in the U.S. and then analyzes the information to create predictions.

The AI system was created in 2004, so it has been getting smarter all the time. It had already correctly predicted the results of the Democratic and Republican Primaries.

Without Hillary at the top of the ticket, the odds of a Trump victory would go way, way up.

So if Hillary is forced out of the race by this investigation, Barack Obama and the Democrats will want to delay or suspend the election for as long as possible if they can.

At this point there is probably not a high probability that such a scenario will play out, but in this crazy election year we have already seen that just about anything can happen.

Apostate Evangelicals Are Poised To Become The Deciding Factor In A Hillary Clinton Election Victory

crowd-concert-music-public-domainIf you look at the numbers, there is no way that Hillary Clinton could possibly win the election without the support of a substantial percentage of evangelical Christian voters.  In fact, if evangelical Christians stuck together they could pretty much elect whoever they want as president.  According to the Pew Research Center, 35 percent of all adults in the United States identify themselves as “evangelical” or “born again”, and it has been estimated that there are  94 million evangelical Christian adults in this country.  If evangelical Christians acted as a single voting block they could determine the outcome of every single presidential election.  Unfortunately, that simply is not going to happen.

A survey that was recently conducted by LifeWay Research found that only 45 percent of Christian evangelicals plan to vote for Donald Trump and 31 percent of Christian evangelicals plan to vote for Hillary Clinton.

That same survey discovered that moral issues are becoming increasingly unimportant to evangelical voters…

Overall, the economy is the top concern for Americans regardless of religious affiliation (30%). National security (17%) and personal character (17%) also are significant issues. Supreme Court nominees (10%), immigration (5%), religious freedom (2%), and abortion (1%) are less important.

“For churchgoers and those with evangelical beliefs, their pocketbook and personal safety are paramount,” said McConnell. “Moral issues aren’t a priority for many of them.”

I don’t know how in the world abortion could come in at only 1 percent.  Even if you add “Supreme Court nominees” and abortion together, you still only get a total of 11 percent.

This just shows that evangelicals in America have their priorities way out of order.

And unfortunately for Donald Trump, he is getting a lot less support from evangelicals than other recent presidential candidates received.  According to the New York Times, previous candidates have generally received about 80 percent support from white evangelical voters, but Donald Trump is only getting about 65 to 70 percent support, and his numbers among non-white evangelicals are absolutely dismal.

If you are an evangelical Christian and you have reservations about Donald Trump, I can respect that.  But there will be other names on the ballot and you do not have to vote for Hillary Clinton.  As I have said before, a vote for Hillary Clinton is an act of unmitigated wickedness.

Hillary Clinton has made support for abortion one of the central pillars of her long political career.  In fact, I don’t know if there is any politician in America that is more associated with abortion than Hillary Clinton.  Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, more than 58 million babies have been murdered in the United States, and Hillary Clinton’s hands are drenched with their blood.

If you vote for Hillary Clinton, your hands will be drenched with their blood too.

Needless to say, I am absolutely horrified that so many prominent evangelical leaders have come out in support of Hillary Clinton during this election season.  For example, a group that represents over 6,000 Latino evangelical churches has just announced that they are endorsing Hillary Clinton

An organization representing more than 6,000 Latino evangelical churches in the U.S. is endorsing Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.

In a statement Thursday, the group OPEN USA says Clinton has proven her willingness to engage in difficult conversations, listen to contrasting opinions and engage faith leaders.

Meanwhile, 75 evangelical leaders recently signed a petition on Change.org that strongly denounces Donald Trump…

We, undersigned evangelicals, simply will not tolerate the racial, religious, and gender bigotry that Donald Trump has consistently and deliberately fueled, no matter how else we choose to vote or not to vote.

One of the truly alarming trends that we have been seeing this election season is the number of prominent women in the evangelical movement that are openly rejecting Donald Trump and embracing Hillary Clinton.  The following is a short excerpt from a recent Washington Post article that examined this phenomenon…

When Jen Hatmaker speaks to stadiums full of Christian women, she regales them with stories about her five children and her garden back in Austin, Tex. — and stays away from politics. But recently she took to Facebook and Instagram to blast Donald J. Trump as a “national disgrace,” and remind her legions of followers that there are other names on the ballot in November.

And Christianity Today recently published an editorial from one of the top female evangelical leaders in the entire country in which she publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton.  According to Christianity Today, Deborah Fikes is “the former Permanent Representative to the United Nations for World Evangelical Alliance, which represents a constituency of 650 million with alliance offices in 129 countries.”  Fikes says that she stepped down from some of her leadership positions so that she could openly advocate for Clinton

My recent resignations from evangelical leadership positions to endorse Hillary Clinton speaks volumes of how important I believe it is that she is elected in November. The toxic tone and atmosphere that surrounds Mr. Trump and is fueled among his supporters has done irreparable damage to not only our country and the future of the GOP but also to the public witness of evangelicals in America who are seen as some of his biggest supporters.

There is no question in my mind or spirit that with the overwhelming challenges the next American president will face, Hillary Clinton is the most qualified person who has ever run for the Oval Office. On the issues of our national security, economic stability, seeing that healthcare reform continues to move forward, and tackling domestic challenges of poverty, inequality, and racism, we need her to be the person occupying this office.

A lot of these women seem to think that abortion shouldn’t be a major issue in this election, but that is like saying that the Holocaust shouldn’t have been a major issue in Nazi Germany.

Look, you don’t have to vote for Donald Trump or anyone else to be a good Christian.

But if you cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, you are casting a vote for the most evil, wicked and corrupt politician that this nation has possibly ever seen, and you are publicly endorsing the sinful positions that she is proud to stand for.

I know that I have been writing about the election a lot lately, but I feel that it is very important that I do so.  Most of the media coverage has focused on Donald Trump, but I feel that this election is far more about Hillary Clinton.  The things that her and her husband have done have been well documented, and if the American people willingly choose her they will know exactly what they are doing.

Unfortunately, not even Christians are standing united against the Clintons.  The political divide in the evangelical Christian world has grown so deep that it has even reached Liberty University.  The following comes from the Atlantic

That’s why it was such a big deal when, two weeks ago, a group of Liberty students put out a letter explaining why they’re standing against the Republican presidential nominee. Jerry Falwell Jr., who has run the school since his father died in 2007, announced his support for Donald Trump back in January, and he has since spoken on the candidate’s behalf in interviews and at events. “We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell’s endorsement and are tired of being associated with one of the worst presidential candidates in American history,” the students wrote. “Donald Trump does not represent our values and we want nothing to do with him.”

Thousands of people signed onto the letter, including, the students said, roughly 2,000 students or alumni with liberty.edu email addresses. Dustin Wahl and Alex Forbes, two of the letter’s authors, were featured on MSNBC and CNN. They said they received supportive emails and tweets from Russell Moore, the head of the political arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Erick Erickson, the conservative radio-show host.

And the support for Clinton is particularly strong among young adult evangelicals.  When I read the following paragraph on the website of the New York Times, I was absolutely astounded…

Kate Shellnutt, 30, the online editor of Christianity Today and editor of the CT Women section, said she had observed that “the millennial generation has a lot less patience for Trump.” Of the 33 influential millennial evangelicals she profiled for a cover story two years ago, she says she can now find only one, Lila Rose, who is pro-Trump, and even she has been publicly critical of him. Several have been using the hashtag #NeverTrump, Ms. Shellnutt said.

The frightening thing is that this election might be the last chance for evangelical Christians to shape the political direction of this nation, because the truth is that demographics are rapidly shifting, and this includes the demographics of the evangelical community

As Robert Jones has expertly documented in his recent book The End of White Christian America, the number of older, conservative, white male evangelicals is shrinking each year. Meanwhile, the number of younger evangelicals of all ethnic backgrounds — whose moral and political views extend far beyond positions on gay marriage and abortion — is on the rise.

If you follow my work regularly, then you already know that I have very little hope for the future of America.

But if Hillary Clinton is elected, there will be exactly zero hope.

If evangelical Christians stood united, they could stop her, but at this point it appears that is not going to happen.

Are The Polls Rigged Against Trump? All Of These Wildly Divergent Surveys Cannot Possibly Be Correct

donald-trump-photograph-by-michael-vadonSome of these polls are going to turn out to be dead wrong.  With just over two weeks to go until election day, some surveys are showing a very tight race, while others say that Hillary Clinton has a massive lead.  For example, the tracking polls put out by Rasmussen, the L.A. Times and IBD/TIPP have all consistently shown that the race is either tied or Donald Trump is winning by a small margin.  But Fox News has Hillary Clinton ahead by six points, Bloomberg has Clinton ahead by nine points, and the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll has Clinton ahead by twelve points.  So what in the world is going on here?  If the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll is correct, we are likely to see a landslide of historic proportions for Clinton, and this is what many of the experts are now projecting.  But if Rasmussen and the L.A. Times are correct, the race could easily go either way.  So who are we supposed to believe?  Could it be possible that some of the polls are rigged against Trump?

Well, when you take a closer look at the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, it does appear that it is not as accurate as it could be.  It turns out that those that conducted the survey purposely included 9 percent more Democrats than Republicans

“METHODOLOGY – This ABC News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 20-22, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 874 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 36-27-31 percent, Democrats – Republicans – Independents.”

But as Zero Hedge has pointed out, registered Democrats have never outnumbered registered Republicans by 9 percent at any point over the last several decades.

So how in the world can ABC News and the Washington Post possibly justify their methodology?

Other major surveys have also purposely oversampled Democrats.  The following comes from Gateway Pundit

With all the liberal distortions and dishonesty we decided to have a small team of actuarial and statistics professionals take a look at a couple of the recent polls to get their take on the reliability of these polls. They selected the recent FOX poll from October 14 showing Hillary up by 7 and the WSJ/NBC poll from October 16 showing Hillary with an 11 point lead.

The first observation is that both polls are heavily skewed towards Democrats. At a high level, the FOX poll consists of 43 Dems to 36 Reps to 21 Other while the NBC poll shows 44 Dems to 37 Reps to 19 Other.

By selecting more Dems the polls are designed to provide a Dem result.

Our experts next analyzed the data and calculated results using the same data from the two surveys on a split of 40 Dems, 40 Reps and 20 Other. The results show that using either sets of data Trump comes out ahead with a larger margin of victory using the FOX data.

Why would these major news organizations purposely try to give us distorted results?

One reason to do this would be to try to discourage Trump voters.  If they believe that Donald Trump is going to lose big, that might discourage some of them from going out to vote.

At this moment, the Real Clear Politics average of national polls has Trump down by 5.6 percent.  But some polls actually have him winning.  Here are the nine latest surveys that Real Clear Politics has compiled…

ABC News Tracking: Clinton +12

IBD/TIPP Tracking: Trump +2

Rasmussen Reports: Trump +2

Quinnipiac: Clinton +7

Economist/YouGov: Clinton +4

FOX News: Clinton +6

Bloomberg: Clinton +9

Reuters/Ipsos: Clinton +4

Monmouth: Clinton +12

There is a 14 point swing between the polls that show Trump up by 2 points and the polls that show Clinton up by 12 points.

This should not be happening.  There is no way in the world that there should be a 14 point difference between scientific polls at this stage in the game.  On November 8th the polling organizations that were way off are going to be exposed, and it will be exceedingly difficult for them to regain their credibility afterwards.

At this point, some of the largest news organizations in the country are openly projecting a Clinton landslide.  For example, Reuters says that Clinton now has a 95 percent chance of winning

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is on a definite path to the White House, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation poll.

The survey, released Saturday, found that Clinton is on track to win more than 300 votes in the Electoral College, which would solidly secure her the presidency. If the election were held this week, Clinton would win 326 Electoral College votes while Trump would win only 212, the poll said.

According to Reuters, Clinton currently has a 95 percent chance of winning the White House.

If Reuters isn’t right about this they are going to end up looking awfully foolish.

An analysis by the Associated Press also has Clinton as the overwhelming favorite.  And it is true that the poll results coming out of individual states seem to show Clinton with a seemingly insurmountable lead on the electoral map.

But once again, can we trust those polls?

Trump has regularly dismissed the national polls, but on Sunday his campaign manager did admit on national television that they are losing.  The following comes from the New York Post

Donald Trump’s campaign manager on Sunday acknowledged something her boss hates to do — losing.

“We are behind,” Kellyanne Conway admitted on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The GOP nominee routinely brushes off negative polling as untrustworthy but Conway said Democrat Hillary Clinton does have an edge.

However, it is important to remember that the big national polls have been very wrong in the past.  Back in 1980, a Gallup survey that was released on October 26th showed Ronald Reagan trailing Jimmy Carter by 8 points, but of course Reagan went on to win the election by a landslide

“For weeks before the presidential election, the gurus of public opinion polling were nearly unanimous in their findings,” wrote John F. Stacks for TIME in April 1980. “In survey after survey, they agreed that the coming choice between President Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan was ‘too close to call.’ A few points at most, they said, separated the two major contenders.

“But when the votes were counted, the former California Governor had defeated Carter by a margin of 51% to 41% in the popular vote — a rout for a U.S. presidential race. In the electoral college, the Reagan victory was a 10-to-1 avalanche that left the President holding only six states and the District of Columbia.”

Could a similar thing happen on November 8th?

Without a doubt, Trump supporters are far more enthusiastic than Clinton supporters are, and that matters.  The key on election day is to get your voters to turn out in large numbers, and the fact that Donald Trump is drawing record crowds to his rallies is a very good sign.

But even if Donald Trump legitimately wins the election, it could still be stolen from him via election fraud.

In recent days Democrats have been playing down the idea that this could possibly happen, but the truth is that even Barack Obama has admitted that election fraud is a major problem in the past.  For instance, just consider what he said about this back in 2008

“Well, I tell you what it helps in Ohio, that we got Democrats in charge of the machines,” Obama said regarding the threat of election-rigging.

He continued, “Whenever people are in power, they have this tendency to try to tilt things in their direction. That’s why we’ve got to have, I believe, a voting rights division in the Justice Department that is nonpartisan, and that is serious about investigating cases of voter fraud.”

“That’s why we need paper trails on these new electronic machines so that you actually have something that you can hang on to after you’ve punched that letter—make sure it hasn’t been hacked into,” he added, admitting that even Democrats have “monkeyed around” with election results:

“I want to be honest, it’s not as if it’s just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in the past. Sometimes, Democrats have, too.”

I know that these comments almost sound too good to be true, but you can actually watch video of Obama making these comments right here.  And it is odd that he specifically mentioned Democrats having control of the voting machines in Ohio, because I documented extreme voting irregularities in Ohio in the last election during a recent visit to Morningside.

And an increasing number of Americans are starting to become concerned about election fraud.  In fact, a brand new Reuters survey found that 70 percent of Republicans believe that if Hillary Clinton wins the election it will be “because of illegal voting or vote rigging”.

So even if Hillary Clinton gets into the White House, she may find that she has an exceedingly difficult time trying to govern the nation.

A lot of people have made a lot of predictions about the outcome of this election, and we don’t have very long until we find out who was right and who was wrong.

At this point, voting has already begun in many states, and the early results in Nevada don’t look encouraging for the Trump campaign

According to the estimable Nevada journalist Jon Ralston, Democrats have a 20-percentage-point turnout edge so far based on early and absentee voting in Clark County (home to Las Vegas), Nevada. And they have a 10-point edge in Washoe County (home to Reno).

But in the key swing state of Florida, so far 498,153 Republicans have voted compared to just 478,175 Democrats.  So that would seem to be some very good news for the Trump campaign, because Trump cannot win without carrying the state of Florida.

To me it seems as though Americans are more emotionally invested in this campaign than they have been in any presidential campaign in decades.

The stakes are incredibly high, and in just over two weeks we will find out what happens.

Let us just hope and pray that America makes the right choice.