RUTHFULLY YOURS

HAMPTON, Ill.–Democrat Hillary Clinton strongly suggested Monday that the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin are using cyberattacks to try to tilt the race for her opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Mrs. Clinton cited what she described as official assessments that Russian intelligence services are behind the recent hack of computers at the Democratic National Committee. Thousands of stolen emails were released publicly this summer on the eve of the Democratic Party convention, in some cases embarrassing Democratic officials. The Democratic nominee compared the hacks to an electronic version of Watergate, when Republican operatives sent burglars to break into the DNC offices in the early 1970s.

Mrs. Clinton also pointed to Mr. Trump’s comments in late July urging the Russians to find emails that her office deleted, remarks his campaign later said were misconstrued. And she cited his warm words for Mr. Putin, and noted places where his positions that line up with Russian interests, such as pulling back the U.S. commitment to NATO members.

“We’ve never had a foreign adversarial power be already involved in our electoral process with the DNC hacks,” she said. “We’ve never had the nominee of one of our major parties urging the Russians to hack more. So I am grateful that this is being taken seriously and I want everyone—Democrat, Republican, independent—to understand the real threat that this represents.”

Representatives for the Trump campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mrs. Clinton’s comments came during a 25-minute question-and-answer session aboard her new campaign plane, which for the first time this year accommodates both the candidate and her traveling press corps.

It has been months since Mrs. Clinton gave a full-fledged news conference, so there was considerable pressure on her to engage an extended back-and-forth like she did on the plane. She last took questions from reporters on July 31, but that was a more brief exchange that covered fewer serious topics. CONTINUE AT SITE

Thousands of pages of Hillary Clinton’s official records are set to be released in coming weeks, testing the Democratic presidential candidate as she looks to maintain her advantage in the final two months of the campaign.

On the heels of recently released Federal Bureau of Investigation documents on Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email account at the State Department, the coming disclosures are likely to provide fodder for Republican Donald Trump. While Mrs. Clinton has held a durable if narrower lead over her rival in polls, there are signs that recent records releases have raised issues of trust with voters.

Dozens of lawsuits, mostly brought by conservative groups and Republican operatives against the State Department, are being heard in federal courts. Many of the documents still to come are expected to involve correspondence between Mrs. Clinton, her aides and employees at her family’s charitable foundation.

Similar releases over the summer generated days of news coverage about the relationship between Mrs. Clinton and the foundation’s corporate, foreign and individual donors. In September alone, government agencies are expected to hand over thousands of pages of records from Mrs. Clinton’s time in office.

The two candidates, meanwhile, spent Labor Day hopscotching around the battleground of Ohio, as did both of their vice-presidential picks. Mrs. Clinton, speaking to reporters on her new campaign plane, strongly suggested that the Russian government was trying to tilt the race for Mr. Trump.

What makes us any different from Venezuela now?

It’s a matter or record. Americans now populate the largest, wealthiest and most powerful banana republic in the world. The differences between Obama’s America and Maduro’s Venezuela are defined only by degree.

The defining characteristics of banana republics are a matter of history. First, the law is not enforced against a chosen class in a banana republic, usually the allies of the autocrat in charge. Second, foreign policy is always performed in the autocrat’s interests and often in disregard of the nation’s actual interests. This describes how America functions in the era of President Obama.

The newly-released FBI documents on the investigation of Hillary Clinton make it clear beyond argument that the fix was in and that the FBI never had any intention of recommending that she should be prosecuted for her crimes.

That is very hard to write. I have had very good friends among the agents of the FBI, men of unshakeable dedication to the fair enforcement of the law. But that is no longer the FBI’s goal, as just a few references to the documents published last week reveal.

First, you had to notice that the FBI agreed that there would be no videotape of its interview of Clinton. Not only would there not be a videotape, but no court reporter would be present to record a transcript. That itself is highly unusual, but there is far more, and far worse.

Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, had to have participated in sending classified material to Clinton on her private and unsecured “clintonemail.com” email system. Yet when the FBI questioned Clinton, Mills was permitted to attend as one of Clinton’s lawyers. That is not only unethical under the Bar’s unenforced ethics standards, but obviously a huge violation of the most elementary of FBI procedures that requires witnesses — and possible suspects — to be questioned separately in isolation from one another.

Clinton told the FBI that she relied on others’ judgment in sending her sensitive information on the unsecured email system. She also claimed that as a result of a head injury she didn’t recall key events such as being trained by the State Department on handing classified information or retaining records in accordance with federal law.