New Email Shows Brazile May Have Had Exact Wording Of Proposed Town Hall Question Before CNN
By HADAS GOLD FOR POLITICO

A new email obtained by POLITICO is shedding more light on the mystery of whether and how interim DNC chair Donna Brazile might have obtained the text of a proposed question from a town hall between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in advance, and possibly shared it with the Clinton campaign.

And now CNN, which co-hosted the town hall with cable network TV One, is pointing the finger at its media partner for what appears to be a breach of the traditional secrecy surrounding the questions for such events.

The email obtained by POLITICO was written by town hall co-moderator Roland Martin on the day of the town hall to CNN producers. But it shows him using word for word the language of a question that Brazile appeared to have sent to the Clinton campaign a day earlier. That email, from Brazile to the campaign, was included in yesterday’s release of hacked emails by Wikileaks of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.

Here’s what the record shows: On March 12, Brazile, then vice chair of the DNC and a CNN and ABC contributor, allegedly wrote an email with the subject line “From time to time I get the questions in advance.” It continues:

Here’s one that worries me about HRC.
DEATH PENALTY

19 states and the District of Columbia have banned the death penalty. 31 states, including Ohio, still have the death penalty. According to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, since 1973, 156 people have been on death row and later set free. Since 1976, 1,414 people have been executed in the U.S. That’s 11% of Americans who were sentenced to die, but later exonerated and freed. Should Ohio and the 30 other states join the current list and abolish the death penalty?

Jennifer Palmieri, director of communications for the Clinton campaign, wrote back within three hours, seemingly not as worried:

Hi. Yes, it is one she gets asked about. Not everyone likes her answer but can share it.

She then instructs a copied employee to share the campaign’s standard answer to the question to Brazile.
The next day, Roland Martin, a host on the TV One cable network who was co-hosting the town hall with CNN’s Jake Tapper, sent an email to CNN producers with three questions, the third of which dealt with the death penalty. POLITICO obtained that email, and here’s the text of the third question:

DEATH PENALTY

19 states and the District of Columbia have banned the death penalty. 31 states, including Ohio, still have the death penalty. According to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, since 1973, 156 people have been on death row and later set free. Since 1976, 1,414 people have been executed in the U.S. That’s 11% of Americans who were sentenced to die, but later exonerated and freed. Should Ohio and the 30 other states join the current list and abolish the death penalty?

The wording, spacing, capitalization are identical.

At the town hall later on the same day Martin sent the question to CNN producers, Martin introduced an audience member who asked Clinton about the death penalty with similar language.

“Secretary Clinton, since 1976, we have executed 1,414 people in this country. Since 1973, 156 who were convicted have been exonerated from the death row. This gentleman here is one of them. This is Ricky Jackson, wrongfully convicted of murder in 1975, he spent 39 years in prison. He is undecided. Ricky, what is your question?”

Martin said before introducing questioner Ricky Jackson.  Martin initially said in an interview on Tuesday that he did not “share my questions with anybody. Literally. My executive producer wasn’t even aware of what I was going to ask.”

In a follow up interview on Tuesday, Martin said that he did send his questions to CNN via his producer and his TV One team.

In a follow up email on Wednesday, upon being informed of the email POLITICO had obtained, Martin said he did not believe had had consulted with Brazile ahead of the town hall.

“As far as consultation, I don’t believe I did. I know I asked all of my social media followers for their input on what they wanted me to ask. I did the same for the Hillary Clinton town hall we did in South Carolina in 2014. And I know that I called Rep. Clyburn to lock down language on his 10-20-30 amendment. That is an issue I’ve pushed for several years. I also know I called other members of Congress to ask them specific questions about their various bills and their status. All of that informed my questions. That’s called research,” Martin wrote.

But he did not explain how Brazile could have had the same exact language of a proposed question a day before he submitted them to CNN producers. CNN, in turn, is pointing the finger at TV One.

 “As we have said since news of this broke, CNN did not share any questions with Donna Brazile, or anyone else for that matter, prior to the town hall,” a CNN spokesperson said in an email to POLITICO. “Given that our broadcast partners for the town hall at TV One sent this question to us the day AFTER it appeared in Donna’s email, we have every reason to believe it came from them.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Brazile, whose contracts with CNN and ABC were suspended when she became interim DNC chair in July, denied receiving questions in advance or sharing them with the campaign, writing, in part, “As a longtime political activist with deep ties to our party, I supported all of our candidates for president. I often shared my thoughts with each and every campaign, and any suggestions that indicate otherwise are simply untrue. As it pertains to the CNN Debates, I never had access to questions and would never have shared them with the candidates if I did.”

Brazile also cautioned that the intelligence community has made it clear the Russian government is responsible for cyberattacks “aimed at interfering with our election, and that WIkiLeaks is part of that effort.” The argument seems to suggest that some of the emails may be fakes, but no specific effort to authenticate or deny the authenticity of this email or any others in the most recent Wikileaks release has been made.

A Democratic party official suggested Brazile was simply preparing for a panel. She did appear on ABC’s “This Week” the same day as the town hall. But the death penalty was not discussed during that show.

Asked about the new email on Wednesday, a DNC spokesman referred POLITICO to Brazile’s previous statement.

UPDATE 6:20p.m.:  In a tweet sent on Wednesday afternoon, Brazile defended Martin, saying he “is a solid professional, good, tough no nonsense journalist. I’m sorry that he’s being accused of such non sense. Apologies.”

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VIDEO PUTS DEMOCRATS ON DEFENSIVE ABOUT DIRTY TRICKS
By STEVE EDER and JONATHAN MARTIN

A Democratic operative, wearing a checkered blue shirt and a tie, spoke calmly, explaining exactly how agents could infiltrate the rallies of Donald J. Trump and cause mayhem among the Republican’s nominee team, his security staff and supporters.

Creating an explosive reaction, said the operative, Scott Foval, was “the whole point of it.”

Mr. Foval and Robert Creamer, another operative working for the Democratic National Committee, were the unwitting stars of an undercover video released this week in which they and others were captured discussing unseemly tactics like instigating violence at Mr. Trump’s rallies and arranging for fraudulent voting.

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the party committee moved to distance themselves from the behavior described in the videos, and the committee said the two men were no longer assisting it. The party also cast doubt on the veracity of the released video, which was produced by Project Veritas, a conservative group led by the activist James O’Keefe that has been heavily criticized as using deceptive editing.

Still, the videos were an embarrassment for Mrs. Clinton at a moment when she is trying to frame Mr. Trump’s claims of a rigged election as nothing more than the fevered dreams of a conspiracy theorist. During Wednesday’s debate Mr. Trump referred to the videos, which together have been viewed more than eight million times on YouTube, as proof of unfair play.

And just months after the Democratic chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was forced out of her post after hacked emails revealed party officials discussing how to damage Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid, the Clinton campaign was again forced on the defensive because of the actions of the party.

Campaign finance records show that the Democratic committee made two payments, one in July and another in August, totaling about $64,000 to Mobilize Inc., a Chicago-based firm connected to Mr. Creamer, for “communications consulting.”

The committee said that Mr. Creamer was brought on for something relatively tame: “bracketing,” the industry term for when one party holds a dueling event, like a news conference, to draw attention from an opposition event.

But in the Project Veritas videos, the tactics described went far beyond mere distraction.

Mr. Creamer is not seen on the Project Veritas videos approving or endorsing plans to instigate fights at Trump rallies, but his underling, Mr. Foval, is shown boasting about using unseemly methods, like planting people at the gatherings to agitate the crowd.

“Sometimes the crazies bite,” Mr. Foval said. “Sometimes the crazies don’t bite.”

Both men and others in the video are seen discussing — or at least nodding along when their undercover interviewers broach the idea — how people could illegally vote. Among the practices described are moving voters across state lines by using cars with the destination state’s plates, and using pay stubs to make illegal immigrants appear to be citizens for voter registration purposes.

While the 2016 race has been remarkable for its ugly tone, there is a rich political history of campaigns pushing ethical and legal boundaries to undermine the opposition. In 1972, supporters of Richard M. Nixon, who was even better positioned to win than Mrs. Clinton, unleashed an organized campaign of sabotage: forging letters, disrupting rallies and even flying an airplane over the Democratic National Convention that year with a banner that read “Peace Pot Promiscuity — Vote McGovern.”

And during the Florida presidential recount in 2000, George W. Bush’s backers, including the longtime Trump confidant Roger J. Stone, staged the “Brooks Brothers Riot,” when young Republicans were flown into South Florida to disrupt the recount.

But it was unclear from the Project Veritas videos whether any of the elaborate plans had been carried out.

“We do not believe, or have any evidence to suggest, that the activities articulated in the video actually occurred,” said Donna Brazile, the interim Democratic chairwoman. The Clinton campaign similarly denounced the tactics, while chiding Project Veritas, saying it has “been known to offering misleading video out of context.”

Mr. Creamer said in a statement on Wednesday that the “unprofessional and careless hypothetical conversations” caught on hidden camera were regrettable, and he denied that any of the “schemes described” had ever taken place.

He told The Chicago Sun-Times that one interviewer had posed as a potential donor and another as a niece of the donor, raising the possibility that people captured in the videos were merely engaging in puffery to pry some money loose.

Mr. Foval did not respond to a message seeking comment on Thursday.

Mr. Creamer is a longtime Democratic strategist from Chicago, and was a consultant during President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. According to White House guest logs, he has been a frequent visitor, usually as part of groups of Democratic activists or while accompanying his wife, Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic congresswoman from Illinois, to social events.

The hacked emails of the party committee and of John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, have shown an occasional lack of coordination between the party and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. They also give a glimpse of Mr. Creamer’s role in party strategy.

During the final days of the 2012 campaign, Mr. Creamer co-hosted a call with the Democratic committee’s communications director at the time, Brad Woodhouse, for supporters about the “state of play” in battleground states, according to Mr. Podesta’s emails made public by WikiLeaks.

In the late spring of this year, Mr. Creamer was included and referred to on a series of internal Democratic committee emails also published by WikiLeaks. In one email, the party officials discussed having a presence with signs outside the Republican National Committee when Mr. Trump met there with Speaker Paul D. Ryan in May.

“Discussed with Creamer, et. al today,” wrote Eric Walker, a communications staff member.

Trump rallies were a particularly ripe target, gatherings that have sometimes been marked by violence, as Mr. Trump revved up his supporters with tough talk and protesters tried to disrupt the events.

A seasoned field operative who had worked with People for the American Way and Americans United for Change, Mr. Foval and others in the videos claimed credit for orchestrating some high-profile incidents, including when protesters heckled Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, then a presidential candidate, at the 2015 Iowa State Fair.

Mr. Foval appeared to claim that his group had trained a 68-year-old woman who breathes with the help of an oxygen tank and was knocked to the ground during a confrontation at a Trump rally in North Carolina last month.

But in a phone interview Thursday, the woman, Shirley Teter, said she attended the rally, which was near her home, on her own accord and had not received any protest training.

“The last thing in the world I want to see is Trump getting elected to be our president,” Ms. Teter said. “It is the first time in years that my heart actually ached, and I felt I had to do it.”

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St. Mary’s Is First In Region To Offer First-Of-Its-Kind Dissolving Heart Stent

(Evansville, IN) St. Mary’s Health, part of Ascension, the nation’s largest Catholic and non-profit health system, has become the first health system in Southwest Indiana and one of four in the entire state to offer patients with coronary artery disease a new treatment option – the world’s first FDA-approved dissolving heart stent.

The use of stents has been shown to be important during the first three months after a blocked artery has been opened. After that, the artery can typically remain open on its own, making dissolving stents a natural next step in stent innovation.

The Absorb stent works similarly to a metal stent: It is placed into the artery and expanded so that it pushes plaque against the artery wall and enables better blood flow. Eventually, new tissue grows over the old tissue and the stent is no longer needed. However, unlike metal stents, which are permanent, Absorb is made of naturally dissolving material, similar to dissolving sutures. The stent gradually disappears over approximately three years, after it has kept the clogged artery open and promoted healing of the treated artery segment.

“When you break a bone and get a cast, the cast comes off once the bone has healed, providing you a full range of motion. This is what we can now offer many patients through the Absorb stent,” said Dr. Philip Casino, interventional cardiologist. St. Mary’s is the first in the region to use the dissolvable stent.

While the Absorb stent is an exciting new development, it’s not quite ready to be used for each patient. The dissolvable stent is currently only available in a relatively limited number of sizes when compared to traditional metallic stents. Additionally, there are certain places in the heart where metallic stents might still be preferred.

But for patients who are eligible for the Absorb stent, there’s no question the magical device makes a difference.

“With Absorb, we’re able to leave a patient’s options open should they need future intervention,” Dr. Casino notes. “It allows us to more effectively treat those patients who may not be ideal for a metallic stent.”

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women around the world and coronary artery disease is the most common type of heart disease. It affects 15 million people in the U.S., but can be prevented with assistance from your doctor and living a healthier lifestyle.