“They are not just talking heads or book smart academics, they have decades of hands on experience and all three of them take the bubble talk with a pinch of salt.”

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Just months before the U.S. housing market started to crash, beginning the downward spiral that sent the globe on the road to the massive 2008 financial crisis, Donald Trump was advising Trump University students that he didn't think there was a bubble in the real estate market.

The comments from Trump in an October 2006 audiobook were one of numerous times Trump said through Trump University that he didn't think there was a housing bubble. In another Trump University audiobook released earlier that year, Trump said to take talk of real estate bubble talk with a "pinch of salt." And, in an September 2005 blog post Trump, said to dismiss predictions of a housing collapse as "doom and gloom."

CNN reported Thursday on one of the same audiobooks Trump expressed a wish the real estate market would crash because it would be profitable for him.

"There's been a lot of talk in recent months about a so-called real estate bubble, that kind of talk can scare you off real estate and cut you out of some great opportunities. So is it true? Is the real estate market about to crash," said Trump in the 2006 program Bubble-Proof Real Estate Investing: Wealth-Building Strategies for Uncertain Times.

"The fact is nobody knows the future, and for sure, all good things come to an end at some time or another. There can be wars, terrorist attacks, flu pandemics, government screw ups and we have plenty of them. Anything can send prices spiraling down. So if you're for 100% guarantee, you best stay out of real estate or any kind of investment for that matter."

Still, Trump said, he agreed with the Trump University presenters, who said said to talk talk of a bubble with a "pinch of salt."

"At the same time I agree with three presenters of this program — Dolf De Roos, Gary Eldred, and Curtis Oakes — I picked them to teach this course because they are all masterful investors," said Trump. "They are not just talking heads or book smart academics, they have decades of hands on experience and all three of them take the bubble talk with a pinch of salt. Of course, they know that prices can go down as well as up but they also know that real estate is one of the most resilient, profitable business arenas anywhere. What these three have to teach you can make the difference between wealth and poverty."

In another audiobook, How to Build a Fortune: Your Plan for Success From the World's Most Famous Businessman, released in October 2006, Trump said he again didn't believe there was a bubble.

"If there is a bubble burst, as they call it, you know, you can make a lot of money. At the same time I don't think that will happen," said Trump. "If interest rates stay fairly low, if the dollars stays pretty much where it is or even goes a little higher, but basically if you have a weak dollar, there is just tremendous amounts of money pouring in, so I don't think that is going to happen. I'm not a believer that the interest market, that the real estate market is going to take a big hit."

2015, Trump claimed in a National Geographic special The 2000s to have spotted the bubble.

"I actually spotted the property bubble, I would tell people don't buy a house now took expensive," said Trump. "It's going up too much."

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Robert Patton, then-director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

Sue Ogrocki / AP

A grand jury issued a scathing report Thursday on the “cavalier” way Oklahoma has attempted to carry out two recent executions. Although damning, the issues it raises are by no means unique to Oklahoma. Many are the same problems other death penalty states are facing.

The investigation, led by the attorney general’s office, began after the state was forced to reveal that it had used the wrong drug in the execution of Charles Warner, and nearly used it again in the scheduled execution of Richard Glossip. The 106-page report of the grand jury found carelessness and a dismissive attitude toward established procedures and the inmates’ rights.

The grand jury reached the conclusion that an underlying cause of the problems was the extreme, and sometimes arbitrary, level of secrecy in how the department carries out executions. In recent years, states have expanded the secrecy to encompass its drug suppliers, claiming threats and protests require it.

Finding it “surreptitious” and “questionable at best,” the grand jury said the secrecy “contributed greatly to the Department's receipt of the wrong execution drugs.” The report highlighted four problems that grew out of the secrecy surrounding the execution process.

Limiting the paper trail complicates the death penalty in Oklahoma, as well as other death penalty states.

“[T]his investigation revealed that the paranoia of identifying participants clouded the Department's judgment and caused administrators to blatantly violate their own policies,” the grand jurors wrote.

The department of corrections’ general counsel, David Cincotta, ordered the drugs from the pharmacist over the phone. It limited the paper trail, and perhaps the chance that someone would find out who was selling the drugs, but it also meant the pharmacist was never provided a written order, a prescription, or a copy of the execution protocol — all of which would have stated which drug should have been ordered.

Then Cincotta paid the pharmacist nearly $1,000 in cash in person for the drugs and kept scant receipts of the deal.

“The Department did not document its contract for the purchase of execution drugs… with either a written contract or a purchase order in conformity with” state law, the report said. ”Had the requirements of [state law] been followed, the Pharmacist should have had no question regarding which drugs to order for the Department.”

The grand jury also discovered the secrecy was arbitrary and sometimes made no sense. One corrections employee said he couldn’t include even the name of the drug on a form because of secrecy reasons — even though the same form included the signature of an executioner.

“[H]e scribbles on it,” was the agent’s excuse for why the signature would be okay to have written down.

The extreme secrecy is something nearly all death penalty states have moved toward. Both Arizona and Missouri pay its executioners in cash. A BuzzFeed News investigation found that a Missouri corrections employee had paid more than $250,000 in cash to executioners, likely violating federal income tax law, and that the fund’s account was being mismanaged.

In that state, the secrecy allowed it to purchase execution drugs from a pharmacy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that was not licensed in Missouri and had questionable pharmaceutical practices.

Other states have used the secrecy to purchase drugs illegally. Texas and Arizona are currently fighting with the FDA over drugs the states purchased from a supplier in India.

Georgia has a secret compounder mix up drugs for specific executions, but had to call one off because particles were floating in the syringe. The state argued it was due to temperature, and attempted to withhold evidence that disagreed with that theory. The state did not reveal who made the drug.

The secrecy leads to another issue: It severely limits oversight from the press, regulatory agencies, and even from itself.

“[W]hen you say completely hidden and state government in the same sentence, you’ve got a problem,” a corrections deputy general counsel told the grand jury.

In other death penalty states, few people within state government are allowed to know the identity of the supplier, and those individuals tend to be high-ranking or the department’s attorney, meaning there’s nobody above them who could provide oversight.

After Georgia obtained faulty lethal injection drugs, its attorney general promised to do a transparent investigation into his client. Part of the investigation involved having a department of corrections attorney conduct an experiment to see if temperature was the cause of particles floating in the syringe. If temperature was not a cause, that would hint the problem lied with the drug-maker.

Once the results did not fit with the theory that the drug was compromised because of the cold temperature it was stored in, the state attempted to withhold the results from the public, the media, and the court.

The Oklahoma grand jury report mocked the required “quality assurance reviews” that occurred after executions. The state employee conducting the review wasn’t allowed to know the identity of the supplier and couldn’t complete that portion of the review.

“The Quality Assurance Review lacked substance and amounted to little more than a cursory review in a process requiring greater oversight,” the report found. “As with most every other aspect of this process, the bare minimum was completed.”

Oklahoma was even more compromised when it came to oversight. The office of inspector general, which ordinarily could provide accountability, actively participates in executions — and was criticized in the report. The grand jury suggested an independent auditor be put in place to conduct reviews, and that an ombudsman be appointed during executions.

Before the execution attempts being investigated by the grand jury, the prior execution — of Clayton Lockett in 2014 — was also a botch, with the inmate writhing on the gurney and speaking. He didn’t die until 45 minutes after the execution began.

The investigation into that botch was conducted by Gov. Mary Fallin’s Department of Public Safety — which also plays a role in executions.

Lethal injection decisions are made not by medical experts, but by lawyers.

The report showed Fallin’s office was concerned most by optics. Her general counsel, Steve Mullins, vehemently pushed for using the wrong drug in the second execution so they wouldn’t have to disclose the problem — that the drug had been used in the prior execution — to the public.

“The Governor’s General Counsel was also concerned using the phrase ‘wrong drug’ would require having to inform people the wrong drug had been used in [Charles] Warner's execution,” the grand juror’s wrote.

In attempting to persuade Attorney General Scott Pruitt to allow them to use the wrong drug, Mullins made the case that the two drugs — potassium chloride and potassium acetate — were similar enough to be used interchangeably and told the attorneys to “Google it.”

Oklahoma, like other states, has their legal department craft the execution protocol. California attorneys recently crafted a new execution protocol, allowing drugs that have never been used in an execution to be tried out. In one email, attorney Kelly McClease called media attention to a 26-minute execution in Ohio “a big hoopla” that is “beyond ridiculous.”

Witnesses reported the inmate was gasping, fighting for breath, and clenching.

“What they witnessed was snoring,” McClease wrote in an email to colleagues. “It’s very common with Midazolam and seen quite often in surgery.”

Like in Oklahoma’s botched execution of Lockett, having lawyers write the procedures can lead to confusion on definitions of terms that aren’t necessarily used in the medical world.

After the Lockett execution, an attorney in the department of corrections said he used “Wiki leaks or whatever it is” to research which drugs to use.

In Thursday’s report, the grand jury noted, “In particular, the ‘Definitions’ section of the Execution Protocol was, and is, woefully inadequate. … The ‘Definitions’ section ... only provides definitions for two words used in the Protocol, ‘stay’ and ‘stop.’”

To compound the problem, the person conducting the post-execution assessments has no specialized medical training.

The public doesn’t see get to see problems until after a disaster has happened. And then the attention is focused on the specifics of that issue, not the full process.

The errors that occurred in Oklahoma are particularly disturbing because they happened immediately after its previous botch, causing a national uproar, an investigation and legal challenges that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In spite of the intense scrutiny, Thursday’s report found the employees still had little understanding of the procedures.

“This investigation has revealed that most Department employees profoundly misunderstood the Protocol,” the grand jury report noted. “Although some ... were able to intelligently testify regarding the Protocol, the majority simply could not.”

The investigation after Lockett’s botched execution found that botch was caused mostly by IV issues. The report and legal battles made it unlikely that the state would make the same mistake again.

Indeed, this time, the doctor told the grand jury that, for Warner’s execution, he was focused on making sure that didn’t happen again — to the detriment of everything else.

“I had several tasks, but my primary goal was getting those IVs started,” the doctor testified before the grand jury. “I knew that was where the landmines were . . . . that's what I was thinking about for hours and days leading up to this event. Again, I knew I had other roles.”

“I should have noticed it. I didn't notice it. And I feel terrible for that.”

LINK: Oklahoma Grand Jury Issues Critical Report After Execution Mistakes

Ruby Cramer / BuzzFeed News

FARGO, N.D. — At a campaign stop here in the red state of North Dakota, Bill Clinton warned against Republican efforts to “delegitimize” his wife, invoking the conspiracy theories that engulfed his administration following the suicide of White House aide Vince Foster in 1993.

“It’s what they do!” Clinton said late Friday afternoon from the stage at Rheault Farms, appearing at the campaign’s first public event in North Dakota, which holds its Democratic caucus on June 7.

“Now, I know the Republicans have been mean to her. They say terrible things. You gotta respect them. They’re good at this. They delegitimize the people they don’t like,” Clinton told the crowd.

In 1998, Hillary Clinton famously accused the Republican Party of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” amid questions about her husband’s fidelity. Last year, as she faced questions about her use of a private email server during her time at the State Department, both Clintons framed the controversy as partisan, linking it to the “the same kind of barrage” that engulfed the couple during the 1990s.

“They aren’t in the habit of attacking people they aren’t scared of. They try to sucker-punch the rest of us into nominating people they think they can really devour if they get a hold of them,” Clinton said, in an apparent reference to Bernie Sanders.

“You think the stuff they say about her is bad? They accused me of murder,” he said to laughter from the crowd.

Foster’s death in the summer of 1993 ultimately fueled the controversy surrounding the Clinton White House, becoming part of a string of scandals that led to the Monica Lewinsky investigation and the impeachment of the former president. Hillary Clinton, however, was more often linked to theories surrounding Foster.

“I mean, our memories are short,” Bill Clinton said Friday. “It’s what they do! I wish they’d quit. I wish they wouldn’t. It’s not good for America.”

Donald Trump has referenced Hillary Clinton’s email setup repeatedly on the trail, and has branded his likely Democratic opponent “Crooked Hillary” in speeches and tweets. Outside her events in red states, protesters have repeated the line back to the candidate, chanting “Hillary’s a Crook.” (On Friday, during a speech to the National Rifle Association, he tried out a new name, in reference to gun control proposals: “Heartless Hillary.”)

Last fall, as Trump held to the top of the primary polls, Bill Clinton attributed the businessman’s success in part to his skill as “a master brander.”

“They did the same thing for me,” he said, citing his 1992 presidential race. “I had a guy the other day send me a copy of the San Francisco Examiner on June 23, 1992 — so, four and a half weeks from today, right on the calendar — after I’d won the nomination. It said, ‘Bush and Perot in fight for the election. Clinton not a factor’ — showed a map showing me with nine electoral votes.”

“That estimate was about 370 electoral votes short of what happened and what the American people did,” he said.

Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / AFP / Getty Images

"It's so great to be with the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. We're gonna do a lot of things if I get elected president. We're gonna bring back jobs and that you understand. The world is taking our jobs and we've gotta stop it.

"We're gonna take care of minority unemployment. It's a huge problem, it's really unfair to minorities, and we're going to solve that problem and it's going to be solved once and for all. We're going to create good schools, and I mean, in some cases, hopefully, great schools. And really save communities because our communities in many cases are not safe, which is really unfair to Hispanics, and frankly, everybody else.

"We're gonna do massive tax cuts, especially for the middle class, and people that are poor are going to pay nothing. They're struggling, it's tough, and under my plan which is filed under DonaldJTrump.com you're going to see it's nothing. Absolutely nothing. You're going to get it, you're going to go out, we're going to bring back jobs. You're going to start paying taxes after you're making a lot of money and hopefully that's going to be soon.

"We're going to make great, great trade deals. So important. The world is laughing at us right now. We're losing our jobs, we're losing so much, whether it's China or whether it's Japan or whether it's so many other countries. Our trade deals are horrendous and that's where we're losing our jobs. That's going to end.

"We're going to stop drugs from pouring into our country. We're going to strengthen our borders. People are going to come into our country but they're going to come in through a process. They'll come in legally but we're going to stop the drugs and we are going to curb our debt. Our debt is a disaster, we owe right now $19 trillion, it's gotta stop. By the way, the $19 trillion is going up to $21 trillion very, very soon. So we have to curb our debt and we will do that.

"I just want to thank everybody, we're going to be working very hard. It's not going to be easy, but I'm going to win and we're going to take care of everybody. Our country is going to be unified for the first time in a long time. And again, I just want to thank the, the whole group, and all of the committees that asked me to do this.

"National. Hispanic. Christian. Three. Great. Words. We're going to take care of you, we're going to work with you, you're going to be very happy, you're going to like President Trump."

Here is video of Trump's remarks via Bloomberg Politics:

youtube.com

National Hispanic Conference Season Is Coming, But Will Trump Show Up?

Mike Blake / Reuters

Bernie Sanders may be focused on the road to June 7. But inside and outside his presidential campaign, some supporters, former aides, and current staffers are already moving on to the next big question: What happens to his “political revolution”?

Over the last month, Sanders backers have started jockeying for a say in, and piece of, the assets, influence, and energy that has driven the Vermont senator’s rise. A former Sanders adviser, Zack Exley, has co-founded an effort aimed at coordinating a nationwide slate of progressive House and Senate candidates. A volunteer and longtime organizer, Patrick DeTemple, has circulated a draft proposal urging the candidate to drop out after the June 7 contests and transfer his movement to a new entity. And overlapping groups of current and former aides are discussing who will retain Sanders’ massive email list, the campaign’s most precious asset, and for what kind of project.

For all the talk of the future, however, the Sanders legacy remains uncertain, even amid the chaos on display in Nevada last weekend. Those closest to Sanders insist that the senator himself remains focused on the final contests. The question of what’s next, they say, should and will be his alone to answer, how and when he wants to answer it.

“The only person who will decide what comes after voting ends is the senator,” said a senior Sanders campaign adviser. “Anyone who actually knows him knows that he is focused on winning the nomination and making sure as many people as possible get to hear his message.”

“There will be a lot of wannabes who think they have all the answers. It would be best if they let the senator decide that,” the senior Sanders adviser said.

The campaign dismissed the recent draft proposal, which received write-ups in the New York Times and Politico, as irrelevant to the senator’s focus, and provided an email showing that DeTemple, the Berkeley-based volunteer, wrote the three-page memo with feedback from Michael Ceraso, the state director in California who parted ways with the campaign. DeTemple, a 64-year-old organizer who worked for Barack Obama in 2008, said he solicited advice from around two dozen people in addition to Ceraso.

The memo is titled “After Winning on June 7th Bernie Sanders Should Suspend his Campaign and Launch an Independent Organization to Defeat Donald Trump.” In the document, DeTemple advises that Sanders form a large independent expenditure committee that would register young voters with an eye toward down-ballot races: “Call it Revolution 2016 or another name that best speaks to base and message and its focused task over the next five months might be to mobilize voters under 30.”

The point of the memo, DeTemple said on Saturday, was not to insert himself into Sanders’ next project, so much as start a conversation where there was none.

“I thought, if I can do something to prompt a discussion around this issue, then yeah let’s do it. If there had been anything else — a series of talking points, or a position put forward, or any kind of initiative along those lines from the campaign — I wouldn’t have done it,” DeTemple said. “But there is no evidence that I can see of that.”

Ceraso, the former state director who worked with DeTemple in California, described the “Revolution 2016” proposal as one of several informal ideas for the Sanders machine now under development from a tangle of people inside and around the campaign.

“If you ask any field organizer, they have an idea for what this should look like,” one former Sanders staffer said. “Folks have competing visions for it.”

“There are a lot of different factions in Bernieland with different opinions of how the thing should go,” said Ceraso.

In interviews this week, current and former Sanders aides said the yet unplanned “new thing,” as several supporters called it, revolves around the future of the campaign’s large email list. Aides have not divulged the size of the database, but Sanders claims 2.4 million donors alone, and his list of names and addresses is likely far larger.

“It all comes down to that list, and the power around the list and the money around the list, for the inner circle,” Ceraso said. The “grassroots side,” he added, is more interested in building on the progressive “movement” associated with Sanders’s candidacy.

Nearly everyone who’s touched the Sanders campaign seems to have an opinion on the matter, backers said. “If you ask any field organizer, they have an idea for what this should look like,” one former Sanders staffer said. “Folks have competing visions for it.”

According to senior campaign officials, though, what’s lost in all the outside prognosticating, is Bernie Sanders. Although the math indicates that his path to the nomination has virtually closed, the senator is described by his senior staffers as loathe to discuss much in the way of plans beyond the primaries and caucuses on June 7 in California, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Montana.

Still, supporters like DeTemple worry that without developing a well thought-out plan now, the energy and power surrounding the Sanders campaign could end up lost — or subsumed by the disorder that overwhelmed the Nevada Democratic Convention last weekend. “There’s no post-game plan,” as one former Sanders staffer put it.

Howard Dean, the former governor whose 2004 candidacy has been compared to this year’s unexpected progressive surge, warned that the Sanders legacy now depends on how well the senator steers his millions of supporters and shapes his next move.

“That will depend on what happens in the next few weeks,” he said in an interview, describing Sanders’ potential reach as “10 times bigger” than his own 12 years ago.

“If this ends up as a pitchfork fight, he’s basically going to have a relatively small group of deeply entrenched supporters who nobody will pay any attention to,” said Dean, an early endorser of Hillary Clinton. “He could become a major force in the Democratic Party. But you can’t do that by basically spitting at them. And I think he knows that.”

Sanders’ defiant response to the aftermath of the Nevada state convention, where the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party received death threats after dozens of the senator’s delegates were deemed ineligible, came as a signal that diplomatic maneuvering may not be his campaign’s top priority. “It goes without saying that I condemn any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals,” Sanders wrote in a press release, which went on to charge that the state party had prevented “a fair and transparent process from taking place.”

“Bernie is going to have to say something,” Dean said of the Nevada incident.

“I don’t think that’s going to be the Bernie Sanders legacy,” said one person familiar with conversations among Sanders aides, speaking of the return to sharp-elbowed campaigning after Nevada. “Of course this groundswell is good for the Democratic Party. Of course it’s a good thing. They just haven't figured out what to do with it yet.”

The tone set by Sanders after Nevada was divisive among his supporters, but more than a week after the state’s raucous state convention there were signs that sharp rhetorical attacks on the Democratic establishment could become a significant part of his post-campaign legacy. In a CNN interview broadcast Sunday, Sanders openly endorsed DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s primary opponent in her Florida congressional district. On Sunday, Sanders used his powerful email list to raise money against Wasserman Schultz in the race, telling his supporters ousting her would “send an unmistakable lesson about our political revolution.”

Sanders isn’t the first to try to turn a progressive insurgency into a lasting powerful liberal infrastructure. Some Sanders supporters also worry about repeating the mistakes of other groups that have also attempted to convert progressive energy into policy or political victories, including MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

"Those groups are respected but seen as largely ineffective — 'lame' was the word used by one person familiar with conversations within the Sanders organization."

Efforts launched by past insurgent candidates — Dean’s Democracy For America, formed from the remnants of his 2004 bid; and Obama’s Organizing For Action, built to be the president’s “permanent campaign” in 2008 and his policy arm in 2012 — are not seen by many Sanders supporters as appropriate models for after the primary.

Those groups are respected but seen as largely ineffective — “lame” was the word used by one person familiar with the conversations within the Sanders organization. The feeling among some supporters is that Sanders in particular can forge a new path that keeps the pressure on Democrats to pursue parts of his progressive revolution.

Dean, who founded DFA after his campaign, said Sanders’s perch in the Senate will be a good one. “This is tricky. It’s not the same as running a campaign,” he said.

In his view, experienced organizers who understand policy and grassroots politics make the difference. “But Bernie’s in a very good position to do this, if he wants to, because it’s just about broad-brush stuff,” he said. “It’s not about nitty gritty policy. That’s why OFA couldn’t work. It’s very hard to argue in favor of a president’s policy because his policy has to be incredibly nuanced. Bernie doesn’t have to worry about nuance.”

“He just has to have people who are on the ground running things,” Dean said. “This is complicated stuff.”

“Now, my first reaction was shock.”

View Video ›

Before author Robert Slater had even begun his biography of Donald Trump, he says the real estate mogul had threatened to sue him.

Slater, who wrote a 2005 biography of Trump, No Such Thing as Over-Exposure: Inside the Life and Celebrity of Donald Trump, revealed the tidbit in the lecture at the Library of Congress that same year.

"As soon as I got in touch with Donald Trump — this was in the spring of — and I told his people that I'm writing a book about him, well, in the immediate aftermath I heard nothing from him, which is not unusual," said the author. "It usually takes a few weeks for people to decide what to say to people like me. I'll never forget the moment I opened that email on a Friday morning."

Slater, who died in 2014, said Trump's lawyer said they would stop him from publishing his book through legal action if he continued to research it.

"'We are not cooperating with this book. Let's be very clear about that.' Then the letter went on, 'If you continue to do research on this book,' the exact wording was, 'we may try to enjoin you from publishing that book.'"

In 2006, Trump sued author Timothy O'Brien for libel when the author said his net worth was a mere $250 million. O'Brien eventually won the suit.

Slater said he was shocked at Trump's reaction.

"Now, my first reaction was shock," he said. "I mean, I said to myself, why is anybody threatening to sue me? I am such a nice person. I write decent books about people. I mean, what did I ever do to harm Donald Trump? My next reaction was, oh my God. This man who is worth $2.7 billion and uses litigation as the most lethal weapon in his armory to intimidate people has suddenly focused on Bob Slater as his latest project."

"Of course, I knew that Trump used threatening to sue people as a strategy, but you know, I couldn't guarantee that later on he would drop the lawsuit. As far as I was concerned, this was very serious business," he continued. "And I didn't understand why he was doing it. He didn't know who I was. I mean, that was clear."

Eventually, Slater said, his publisher stood behind him and he went ahead with the book. Trump would end up giving Slater full access to him for the book, even requesting, and Slater agreeing to, take out unflattering details about his divorce from Marla Maples.

The book is sold in Trump Tower today in the lobby.

Chris Geidner/BuzzFeed

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday held that prosecutors in Timothy Tyrone Foster's 1987 murder trial unconstitutionally kept black people off the jury, sending the case — which had sent Foster to death row — back to the Georgia courts for further review.

"Two peremptory strikes on the basis of race are two more than the Constitution
allows," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for six of the eight members of the court.

While such a finding ordinarily means the conviction and sentence are tossed out, requiring a new trial, one justice on Monday suggested Georgia officials could still argue that Foster's claim is barred under state rules.

The court applied a 1986 decision, Batson v. Kentucky, in holding that there was impermissible racial discrimination in jury selection in Foster's capital trial for the sexual assault and killing of Queen Madge White. Foster was sentenced to death by the all-white jury that heard his case. Several potential jurors who were black were rejected for the jury, a decision that recently released documents called into question and that led to Foster's challenge.

The state trial court denied Foster's request for a new trial, finding that his Batson claim was barred because it had been raised previously but also that it failed because it was "without merit." The Georgia Supreme Court denied his appeal, a decision that the U.S. Supreme Court held today was a decision, under state law, that there was no "arguable merit" to Foster's claim.

The U.S. Supreme Court considered the new evidence and the question of whether the potential jurors had been kept off the jury because of race. Stephen Bright from the Southern Center for Human Rights argued Foster's case before the court.

"The contents of the prosecution’s file, however, plainly belie the State’s claim that it exercised its strikes in a 'color-blind' manner," Roberts wrote for the court, reversing the order of the Georgia Supreme Court, which had denied Foster's appeal.

The remedy for a finding of a Batson violation is to toss out the conviction and sentence handed down by that jury and order a new trial, but Justice Samuel Alito, who joined the court's judgment, noted that there could still be an argument to be made by the state in support of Foster's conviction and sentence.

"On remand, the Georgia Supreme Court is bound to accept that evaluation of the federal question, but whether that conclusion justifies relief under state res judicata law is a matter for that court to decide," Alito wrote.

"Res judicata" is the legal term barring parties from relitigating issues previously argued by those parties. Here, Foster had unsuccessfully raised a Batson challenge before the new documents had been found.

It was not immediately clear whether prosecutors would attempt to argue that or whether they would deal with the U.S. Supreme Court's holding that race had been used unconstitutionally in the selection of Foster's jury.

Foster's lawyers maintain that, regardless of what Alito wrote, the conviction and sentence must now be tossed out. "I believe a Batson violation requires vacating the conviction and sentence," Bright told BuzzFeed News after the decision came down.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the court's decision, finding both that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case and disagreeing with the court's decision on the merits of the Batson challenge.

“No way this comes out, where he remains the leader, where the United States wins. In other words, we lose. Any scenario where he stays in power — he can negotiate some kind of a treaty — any scenario where he stays in power, we’re the losers.”

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Throughout his campaign Donald Trump has repeatedly panned the 2011 U.S. intervention in Libya — most recently in a tweet blasting Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.

But Trump supported the intervention, as BuzzFeed News has previously reported — including in a forceful interview just after the military action began.

In an interview on Fox and Friends Trump blasted President Obama for not intervening in the country earlier, saying he should have targeted longtime leader Muammar al-Qaddafi for assassination.

"Well, I think he's been very late," Trump said in March 2011, asked what he thought of U.S. airstrikes in the country. "I thought of it really as a humanitarian thing, let's save some of these people. And, two weeks later, thousands and thousands of people have been killed. If he would have done this two and a half weeks ago you might have stopped the whole thing."

Trump said the president's refusal to bomb sooner had left the rebels dissipated and unable to topple the Libyan dictator. He also said the Arab League should have paid the United States for the military action.

"If you're going to do it, you really should have done it earlier."

Later in the interview, Trump called for the assassination of Qaddafi saying any prospect of him remaining in power was a loss for the United States.

"It's a total mess he should have done it earlier," said Trump.

"They're shooting all the Tomahawks but please don't send one his way because you may hurt him, isn't it rather unbelievable," Trump continued. "No way this comes out, where he remains the leader where the United States wins. In other words, we lose. Any scenario where he stays in power – he can negotiate some kind of a treaty – any scenario where he stays in power we're the losers."

Trump has claimed that he would have opposed the Libyan intervention and painted that supposed opposition as an indication of his good judgment — for instance, he recently said on Morning Joe that he wouldn't have intervened in Libya. (Trump also claimed to have never even discussed the subject of Libya at the time during a debate.)

BuzzFeed News reported earlier this year that he had strongly urged for the intervention in a video blog.

Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The kindling has been laid for another flare-up over Israel policy at the Democratic National Convention with a deal on Monday between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton over the party's platform drafting committee.

Four years ago at the last Democratic convention, the party establishment was startled when progressive critics of U.S. policy toward Israel turned a routine floor vote into a televised moment, with a significant number of delegates loudly booing proposed party platform language that endorsed Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and referred to the “God-given potential” of the American people.

The moment burned short but hot in the collective history of the 2012 campaign. Republicans and conservatives seized on video of the boos, saying it showed a Democratic party far removed from the center.

President Obama, trying to win reelection, reportedly stepped in to get the Jerusalem and “God” language back into the platform, frustrating progressives at an event aimed at highlighting party unity. Obama, of course, went on to win reelection — with the support of Jewish voters, even as Republicans suggested they could peel them away from Democrats thanks to stiffening opposition to U.S. policy toward Israel among the organized left.

Four years later, a deal cut between Clinton, Sanders, and the Democratic National Committee, revealed Monday by the Washington Post, makes it more and more likely that the convention in Philadelphia this July could be déjà vu all over again for Democrats who, on all sides, would rather keep the Israel debate internal rather than splashed across cable.

In recent weeks, Sanders officials have said they see the DNC platform drafting committee as the best place to push Clinton to the left ahead of the general election. And on Monday, they announced that two of Sanders’ five committee representatives would be among the left’s most vociferous Israel critics: Arab American Institute President Jim Zogby and Princeton professor and famed civil rights intellectual Cornel West.

Still, as reports float an imminent debate, Sanders allies privately say that Israel is not a fight the senator himself wants to pick. More likely, perhaps, is the possibility that Zogby or West raise the issue.

Zogby has been sharply critical of the current Israeli government. “You need to find a way to meet the needs of both,” he told the Post Monday. “To say we will satisfy one without the other is a recipe for failure.”

West, one of Sanders’ signature surrogates, has historically been critical of the senator only around a handful of issues — Israel being one.

“We have a vicious Israeli occupation that needs to be highlighted, because occupations are wrong,” West told a progressive web show in June 2015. “I don’t hear my dear brother Bernie hitting that, and I’m not going to sell my precious Palestinian brothers and sisters down the river only because of U.S. politics.”

Sanders generally doesn’t spend much time on foreign policy on the campaign trail, but when he does talk about Israel, it’s usually to condemn Israeli actions in Palestinian territories and expansion into those territories, while also defending Israel’s right to be free of rocket and other terrorist attacks launched against the nation.

He succinctly stated his position on the debate stage this April. "As somebody who is 100% pro-Israel, in the long run, we are going to have to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity," Sanders said, appearing alongside Clinton in Brooklyn before the New York primary.

Statements like that one have made progressive critics of Israeli policy largely accept Sanders as their candidate of choice. Earlier this spring, Sanders hired and then quickly suspended his Jewish outreach coordinator, Simone Zimmerman, for using a vulgarity in a Facebook post to describe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Clinton, meanwhile, has steered away from criticizing the Israeli government’s policy toward attacks from Palestinian-controlled areas and has spoken of her “unwavering, unshakable commitment” to the longstanding alliance between Israel and the United States.

The divide between Clinton and Sanders on Israeli-American relations electrifies the corners of Democratic politics where the split between an increasingly Israel-skeptic left and foreign policy traditionalists is expanding. (A Pew Research poll on Monday showed a plurality of self-identified liberal Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians than the Israelis.) But aides to both candidates generally highlight other differences when talking about the Democratic primary.

Clinton hopes to use the Democratic convention to take as many of the Sanders-supporting liberals as she can into her general election coalition.

What Sanders forces do hope to accomplish in Philadelphia and beyond remains an open question among supporters, campaign aides, and former staffers — but Sanders’ singular focus on economic issues and campaign finance would likely make a high-profile fight on Israel a distraction.

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WASHINGTON — A day before disclosing $300,000 in debt and only $65,000 in the bank, a pro-Trump super PAC had an announcement: a "partial list" of its "rapidly expanding list of top-level supporters."

But at least some of those supporters have yet to give to Great America PAC or have given very little, BuzzFeed News has learned. Two California-based donors, Dale Dykema and Mark Chapin Johnson, said they have yet to contribute to the group. And North Carolina-based Dale Cline said he had given only $2,500. Several others did not respond immediately for comment.

Currently, there are two main outside groups backing Trump: Great America PAC and the Committee for American Sovereignty, which was recently created by former aides to Ben Carson. But many donors have been reluctant to give to either.

And the early stumbles seem to be fueling a larger, more confusing universe of outside groups trying to raise money on behalf of Trump, who until recently did not have any campaign or outside fundraising operation. As many as three new outside groups could soon be created by those close to Trump, BuzzFeed News has learned.

"Both of the Trump super PACs have significant issues," said a GOP operative who regularly talks to major donors deciding which outside groups to give to. "One has had top operatives convicted of felonies and is currently led by a 1980s-era figure with little to show for the last two decades. The other is led by a leader of the poorly run Ben Carson campaign and has a title that sounds weirdly nationalistic."

Great America has tried to position itself as the principal outside group supporting Trump, but has faced a variety of issues. Two top operatives left the PAC soon after it was formed. One of them, Jesse Benton, was recently convicted on federal charges of public corruption and another, Amy Kremer, left, saying she wasn't being looped in on the group's activities. An upcoming event — a scheduled fundraiser hosted by billionaire oil magnate T. Boone Pickens — had been giving the group some legitimacy in the eyes of major donors. But that has reportedly been canceled.

The group is now run by former Reagan adviser Ed Rollins and former Rand Paul finance chairman Eric Beach. In an interview, Beach argued that the group has been focused on bringing in more small-dollar donors — not just major donors — and that the list Great America released included “people supporting in many different ways.”

"What we set out to do was not to get all the big donors [Trump] would rail against, we started what was known as a hybrid PAC that goes after those small and large contributions," Beach said, noting that the most recent fundraising reports are from before the group added finance director Amy Pass and other strategists.

Asked whether he expects to receive financial backing from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has pledged to support Trump, Beach noted he had worked on Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign and said, “I think Mr. Adelson is a great patriot and we’d love to have his support.”

"That was our signal to the donors," Beach said of the hires. "By the end of May we will have raised 2 million additional dollars."

Great America didn’t exactly court some of the donors on its list either like most major super PACs do. For example, the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action has been wooing donors for more than a year and has more than $47 million in the bank.

Cline, a CPA from Hickory, N.C., who was one of the donors touted by Great America, said in an interview he had no idea the group had used his name in a release after his $2,500 contribution. (He is supportive of the group and fine with them using his name, he clarified.)

But Cline’s check didn't come after any meeting or conversations with the group's leaders. "I just saw Ed Rollins on TV," he said of one the group's operatives as his reasoning for giving. "I just want to see Trump elected."

Another donor listed, Dykema, said in an email he has been traveling and has not had a chance to contribute to the group, but plans to soon and will encourage others to give as well. "My involvement has been minimal so far — one conference call before I left on my trip," he said.

Johnson, another donor mentioned by Great America, said he knows one of the group's leaders, Beach, and has been communicating with him but has not given to the group. "I think it's a very robust, significant PAC," Johnson said, adding that he views his involvement as more policy focused.

"I don't know how deep my involvement will go," said Johnson, who is a foreign policy expert. "I'm not going to be a major bundler or fundraiser. I've become more of policy person."

As Great America continues to find its footing, other groups are expected to be in the works. California billionaire Tom Barrack, who is slated to host a fundraiser for Trump's campaign this week, is taking steps to create another super PAC, sources confirmed to BuzzFeed News.

Roger Stone, a major Trump ally, said in an interview he is also working on putting together a 527 group that like a super PAC, can raise and spend unlimited sums. Those groups report to the Internal Revenue Service instead of the Federal Election Commission.

And Wayne Allyn Root, a former Libertarian vice presidential nominee who knows Trump, said he too is considering starting a super PAC that would target small-business owners to contribute to the pro-Trump effort.

"I would reach a different demographic," Root responded, when asked if too many efforts would confuse donors and the overall message.

Root, who is set to appear on the Bill Maher show as a Trump defender on May 27, said he will make a decision on the super PAC in the next two weeks.

There's also a growing appetite among major Republican donors, who are still somewhat skeptical of Trump, to at least fund anti-Clinton efforts. Sources say the Karl Rove-founded Crossroads outfits are emerging as top contenders for those contributions.

Crossroads is still finalizing its 2016 plans, but a spokesman acknowledged that anti-Clinton efforts would help its main goal: ensuring Republicans keep the Senate.

"We know that Hillary Clinton's high unfavorability will make it extremely difficult for Democratic Senate candidates to take advantage of any top of the ticket headwinds," said Ian Prior, spokesman for Crossroads. "Keeping her numbers at those historic lows will certainly help Republicans across the board, including with Democrat voters that may hold their noses and vote for Hillary but will nonetheless split their tickets to provide a check on her power.”

“Our first priority has always been holding the Senate, which requires winning races in states that will also be key swing states in the presidential."

“Remember I said it — if he [Obama] wins, oil and gasoline through the roof like never before.”

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Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has shown a fondness for bad economic predictions and conspiracy theories in the past. In one 2012 blog video, Trump managed to combine them both in predicting that if President Obama won re-election, gas prices would go through the roof due to a deal the president had made with the Saudis.

Gas prices today are at the lowest they've been since the start of the Great Recession, with the national average near two dollars. Prices had a slight drop following President Obama's re-election. The plunge in prices since then has been attributed to a combination of factors, including the Saudis and other Middle Eastern producers increasing drilling in an attempt to undercut American companies after the shale boom significantly increased U.S. oil production.

"Even though gasoline and oil prices are going through the roof, I have no doubt in my mind that President Obama made a deal with the Saudis to flood the markets with oil before the election, so he can at least keep it down a little bit," said Trump in his April 2012 video blog.

"After the election it's going to be a mess," continued Trump. "You're going to see numbers like you've never seen if he wins. Let's hope he doesn't win. Remember I said it — if he [Obama] wins, oil and gasoline through the roof like never before. I believe a deal was made. It's a sinister deal, but let's see whether or not I was right."

That same year, Trump predicted that the price of a loaf of bread would soon soar to $25. It currently costs $2.32 on average nationally.

The three women recounted the allegations they’ve made previously in an interview with Sean Hannity’s radio show.

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Three women who have prominently in the past accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct gave a joint interview with conservative talk radio on Monday.

Speaking with the Sean Hannity show, Paula Jones, Kathleen Wiley, and Juanita Broaddrick recounted their past accusations against Bill Clinton, and what they allege was complicity from Hillary Clinton.

The interview is the first time all three had together discussed their accusations. During the interview, the women mentioned they had never met.

Earlier this year, NBC pursued a joint interview, according to a source. Broaddrick declined an interview then; a spokesperson for NBC News said an associate producer had spoke with her, but determined there wasn't anything new to the story, and stopped pursuing it.

In the Hannity interview, which lasted 30 minutes, all three discussed at length their allegations. Willey, the 1990s White House aide, said Bill Clinton assaulted her in 1993. Broaddrick discussed her claims Clinton sexually assaulted her in the 1970s in a local hotel. Paula Jones recounted the details of a case that, through a series of events, ultimately led to his impeachment as president of the United States.

Audio of Broaddrick from her first 1999 Dateline interview was used in a 20-second ad by Donald Trump targeting Bill Clinton on Monday. Trump mentioned Broaddrick's rape accusation against Clinton in a Fox News Hannity interview last week.

Broaddrick said discussing the claims was "too painful," and expressed gratitude from Trump for bringing up the accusations.

Jones, Wiley, and Broaddrick have recently begun giving numerous separate interviews as well in recent days.

The Clinton campaign has stated Trump is running a "campaign from the gutter" in response to Trump's statements.

Trump’s campaign said he will. Ryan’s people say nope.

Once again, it's time to ask ourselves that elusive question: Is Paul Ryan endorsing Donald Trump?

Cliff Owen / AP

"Senior-level" Trump campaign sources told ABC News Wednesday that the House Speaker will soon be endorsing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

GREAT!

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

But then, a spokesperson for Ryan said, "There's no update and we've not told the Trump campaign to expect an endorsement."

Speaking to reporters, Ryan later said, "I have not made a decision. Nothing has changed from that perspective and we're still having production conversations."

When pressed on timing of the endorsement, he said: "I've got nothing more to add."

Ryan said that his staff talked to Trump's virtually everyday. Asked what Trump should apologize for, Ryan said, "I'm not going to litigate this stuff."

Responding to speculation that the Trump campaign was trying to pressure him to endorse, Ryan said, "I don't worry about that stuff. I've been around for a long time — none of that stuff really gets to me."

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“It is painful to hear, it’s painful to hear my voice, say those words again, but I think it’s important,” she said in a radio interview. She had not been contacted by Trump.

Ho New / Reuters

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Juanita Broaddrick – the Arkansas woman who in 1999 accused then-President Bill Clinton of raping her two decades prior – said Wednesday she's didn't know she'd be in Donald Trump's latest presidential ad, but that's she not unhappy about it.

"I take interviews as they come, when people ask I try assist as best I can to explain about Hillary," Broaddrick told WRKO on Wednesday when asked if she was okay with how she would be brought up in the coming months. "But I've had no contact with Donald Trump's organization or Donald Trump. I just really don't know at this moment."

On Tuesday, Donald Trump released a 20-second ad featuring voices of women who had accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. Broaddrick is featured in the ad with audio of her in a 1999 interview that aired on NBC's Dateline describing what she said was how then-Arkansas Attorney Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her in a local hotel. Broaddrick said she first learned about it through a friend, World Net Daily reporter Aaron Klein.

"No, in fact, I was extremely surprised about it," said Broaddrick. "I was surprised but I have to say, I'm not unhappy about it. It is painful to hear, it's painful to hear my voice, say those words again, but I think it's important."

Later, Broaddrick said she was voting for Donald Trump mainly because he was not Hillary Clinton, but said she hoped to learn more about it. Still, she said she didn't know if she'd want to get involved with his campaign.

"I'm very appreciated to him for bringing out this about Clinton," she said.

"I don't have any plans towards that at this moment," she added of campaigning for Trump. "It was like, yesterday when that ad came out, I wasn't aware it was coming out, but yet, it's OK."

“It wasn’t that there were some great names on that list, that was the best, most conservative Supreme Court list I have ever seen from any president and I was thrilled by that.” (Lee’s brother is also on the list.)

Leigh Vogel / Getty Images

Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a prominent Tea Party member of Congress who has thus far has remained cold to Donald Trump, praised the presumptive nominee's list of potential Supreme Court justices.

"I have acknowledged in the past that I have got some concerns and a lot of people share those concerns and those things are still there," the Utah senator, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said of Trump on Kilmeade and Friends on Wednesday.

"I will say that I really liked last week the list that he put out with regard to people he might appoint to the Supreme Court of the United States," he continued. "There were some very good people on that list."

The senator's brother, Associate Chief Justice Thomas Lee of the Utah Supreme Court, was on Trump's list. Something the senator praised.

"Including my brother," said Lee. "Speaking completely objectively here, stands above the rest. It wasn't that there were some great names on that list, that was the best, most conservative Supreme Court list I have ever seen from any president and I was thrilled by that."

Sounds fishy.

Lucas Jackson / Reuters

Donald Trump immortalized his larger-than-life legacy as a real estate mogul in his autobiography The Art of the Deal. As he tells it, his story epitomized the wealth, excess, and decadence of the 1980s.

Then came the economic slowdown of the early 1990s.

Trump saw his net worth tank, finding himself deeply in debt, personally on the hook for $1 billion. Trump immortalized his turnaround in his books, The Art of the Comeback and Surviving at the Top.

The real story of how Trump escaped his debt — through restructuring, in which he gave banks and lenders larger interest in his holdings for easier debt payments — doesn't make for as good of story as a dramatic tale Trump has told in his books, numerous motivational speeches, and interviews reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

In these stories, Trump claims that a personal connection — starting with a chance meeting with one of the most hard-nosed bankers in New York — was crucial to his staving off financial ruin.

It's the Parable of the Mysterious Mean Banker.

But on different occasions, key details of the story have changed. In one version of the story, Trump met the banker on a golf course. In another telling, it was over a dinner he decided to attend at the last minute at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.

At dinner, the moral of the story is that it is possible for people to make their own luck. On the golf course, the moral is about the importance of golf.

Various takes on the former version of the story appear in his 2009 book Think Like A Champion, and in 2011 and 2012 speeches to the National Achievers Congress. In the story, Trump claims he initially resisted attending the dinner, until his secretary prevailed upon him to go.

"I said, 'Bankers, ugh, shit.'" Trump said in the 2011 speech. "I owe them $9.2 billion, okay? Have no intention of paying it. And I have to go to a bankers' dinner. It's true. So I say, 'I don't want to go. I'm not going.' She [the secretary] said, 'No, you gotta go.' And you know, on top of it, it's black tie. So now, on top of everything, I also have to put on a tuxedo to get abused."

At the Waldorf dinner, Trump says he found himself sitting between a nice banker and a mean banker. The mean banker, Trump says, has bankrupted dozens of debtors before him (in one telling it's 39; in another it's 32). The mean banker will barely acknowledge Trump's presence.

"He was a bad guy," Trump said. "He was bankrupting everybody instead of working it out. So I'm sitting next to him. I figured out it was him. Because I said, 'What's your name?' He looks at me. He didn't want to even give it. He was insulted, but I never met him. Think about it. I owe him $179 million bucks. I never met the banker. So the evening goes by and I started working on him hard."

By the end of the night, the banker has grown to like Trump and asks him to meet at his office on the following Monday.

"I went to his office and in five minutes, we worked out a deal for a lot of money," Trump said, adding that, without making that deal, he might not have been able to make deals with his numerous other creditors.

"Did I make my own luck?" Trump concludes in the 2012 NAC speech. "I went, I didn't want to go, I really fought it, I put on the tuxedo, I sat next to a guy, in a way I was lucky I sat next to him. But the end result was, I made my own luck. If I didn't go, it's not gonna happens. So that's — I think it's an important story."

Asked if he knew which banker Trump might have been talking about, reporter Wayne Barrett, whose 1991 biography of the tycoon investigated the mogul's business dealings, said the story didn't ring true. "No banker was more important to Donald than Conrad Stephenson" of Chase, Barrett said. Trump, however, did not meet Stephenson by chance at dinner in the early '90s. According to Barrett's book, they met through Trump's father, Fred, and Stephenson worked on many of Trump's early real estate deals.

In May 1990, Barrett reported, Stephenson even held a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria where Trump was the honoree. Trump was seated next to Stephenson at the dinner, sponsored by the Realty Foundation. (In one speech, Trump claimed the encounter occurred at an event held by the "American Bankers Associations," though the organization says they have no record of having hosted a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria in the early 1990s.)

Barrett further reports that, in 1987, Trump sold Stephenson an apartment in the building Trump Parc at a discount.

"So his inducements to bankers might include a bit more than a golf tip," Barrett quips, referring to the version of the story where Trump claims he got in the good graces of the mean banker using his golf expertise.

This was the version of the tale Trump told NBC's Golf Channel earlier this year.

"One story that I relate to people about golf, there was one banker who was really looking to do bad numbers on me," Trump said. "And as I playing this day and they said we need another person and this guy was at the course. It was the weirdest thing, I mean, not a member. And they said, 'Would you like to join the group?' And when he saw I was in the group he wanted to get it out, but then he decided to join. He was a terrible golfer. A villainous banker. He was not a friend of mine."

Then, Trump says, he taught the banker how to do a proper swing. After this the banker hit the ball well. The banker then decided to work with Trump on his debts.

"And he sees me the next day and he goes, 'Could we work it all out? Come on.' We had lunch, I worked it out with him in about ten minutes. Without golf that wouldn't have happened and who knows? Maybe I wouldn't be sitting here. Who knows?"

Trump recounted the same story to NewsMax in 2012.

"Afterward, this banker said to me, 'Donald, let's meet next week and straighten out this business problem,'" said Trump to NewsMax. "And I made a fantastic deal with him and made my comeback. I was no longer on a $400,000-a-month living allowance from the banks. Without golf, I might not be sitting here with you and discussing the state of our country and presidential politics."

Meanwhile in Trump's 1997 book, The Art of the Comeback, the story is re-told with slightly varying details. Trump concludes the tale by marveling at the ease with which he solved his problems.

"We signed the next day, and hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of problems went away," Trump wrote. "Just like that. Pfff!"

The Trump campaign didn't respond to a request for comment.

Including two hearings on days when he had fundraisers.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, who faces what is expected to be a close race for reelection against Democrat Katie McGinty, has missed over 80% of Senate Budget Committee hearings since 2013, a BuzzFeed News review of hearing transcripts and videos has found.

Toomey, who was appointed to the Senate Committee on the Budget after his election to the Senate in 2010, has touted his spot on the committee as having helped in his efforts to control federal spending. "Pat has used his platform on the Senate Budget Committee to offer several proposals that would balance the federal government's budget," his campaign website reads.

From the start of the 113th Congress in 2013 through last month, Toomey missed 46 out of 57 committee hearings. He missed at least two hearings, in June 2013 and July 2014, when he had fundraisers on the same day. According to the invitations, the fundraisers were both thrown at the Washington, D.C., Indian restaurant Rasika by the National Republican Senate Committee for $500-a-head and up.

On Feb. 3 of this year, Toomey missed a 10 a.m. hearing on "Spending on Unauthorized Programs," but that afternoon appeared on "The Lead" with Jake Tapper to endorse Marco Rubio in the presidential race.

Reached for comment, a spokeswoman for Toomey wrote in an email message that the senator has a 96% voting attendance record and provided a link to an article from the conservative news outlet, NewsMax citing him as number 10 in a list of the "10 Hardest Working Senators in America."

Here's are all the hearings Toomey did and didn't attend since 2013:

Fox Business Channel

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Ed Rollins, a co-chairman of a super PAC backing Donald Trump, rebuked Trump for criticizing New Mexico’s Republican governor, Susana Martinez, at a Tuesday rally in Albuquerque.

At the rally, Trump lambasted Martinez for the growing number of New Mexicans on food stamps, as well as for allowing Syrian refugees into the state. “She’s not doing her job,” Trump said, and joked about running for governor of New Mexico to fix the problems in the state.

"Obviously, I'd have done it differently,” Rollins said, “New Mexico is going to be a key state, it's a swing state. I think the governor is one of our stars.”

Martinez has criticized Trump in the past for his stance on immigration and hasn’t endorsed him.

Rollins clarified that, as an employee of a super PAC, he couldn’t advise Trump, and was just giving his own opinion, but that Trump shouldn’t be picking fights with members of his own party.

“I'd try and be making friends, particularly among people that have a big play in a state like she has.”

Ruby Cramer / BuzzFeed News

SANTA FE, N.M. — Five different times, aides tried to drag him away from the booth where Josh Brody, a 24-year-old supporter of Bernie Sanders, was holding forth about all that had gone wrong in the 1990s: welfare, NAFTA, Wall Street.

"Other people are waiting," one staffer said, stepping forward.

"I think we're gonna agree to disagree here, guys," he tried again.

“All right, Mr. President. These folks are waiting,” a second aide said.

But for more than 30 minutes, Bill Clinton stayed to argue every point, turning a routine retail stop at Tia Sophia's, a Mexican restaurant here in Santa Fe, into a one-on-one debate with Brody, a recent graduate of New York's New School, who said he supported Hillary Clinton's Democratic challenger. "For the next few weeks —then I’ll be a Stein supporter,” he added of Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

The encounter on Wednesday was emblematic of a presidential election driven by questions about the politics of the 1990s — and the legacy of the Clinton years. On the campaign trail, when confronted with a voter on the rope line or a heckler in the crowd, Clinton is often unwilling to let his record go undefended.

But the protracted back-and-forth was also a testament to Clinton's view — one he repeats often on the trail — that politicians and their opponents don't spend enough time listening to one another anymore. This spring, after an encounter with activists from the Black Lives Matter movement, Clinton vowed to try to close that gap. “I realized finally I was talking past [the protester] the way she was talking past me,” he said. “We gotta stop that in this country. We gotta listen to each other.”

The conversation here began when Clinton approached Brody's booth. The young Sanders supporter, a Santa Fe native, appeared to decline a handshake with the former president, instead posing a question about “aid to families with dependent children."

It didn't take long for Clinton and Brody to dive deep into the 1990s, sparring about welfare reform and education spending, New Democrats and New Deal Democrats, and the former president’s Wall Street legislation, which Brody likened to “a golden parachute straight from the Treasury Department.”

“It’s a nice little narrative," Clinton shot back.

Beside Brody, three friends ate their egg dishes in silence.

The Sanders voter told Clinton that his administration had drawn down investments in “basically" every agency, naming the Department of Education in particular.

"I doubled education," Clinton replied.

“If you go from the beginning to the end of your term, each of these departments have shrunk,” Brody said.

"That’s just wrong. I doubled education," Clinton said. (Reached by email later on Wednesday, a spokesman said Clinton had been referring to federal spending and dollars allocated to college aid.)

“You have cherry-picked facts, which contradict the truth,” he added.

Clinton stood over the booth, looking directly at Brody. Aides hovered nearby, still hoping to nudge the former president on to other voters in the restaurant.

“If you never have to make a decision, then you can go back to the past and cherry-pick everything [for a] narrative that is blatantly false," Clinton continued. "What you’re saying is false."

"Seems like your narrative," Brody responded, his voice louder than Clinton's, "is that you did the best job that you could have possibly done from the most progressive standpoint that you possibly could have had."

"No," said Clinton.

"When the reality is you campaigned as a New Democrat," Brody said, referencing the former Arkansas governor's centrist platform in 1992. "And you said, we’re gonna basically move away from away from the old Democrats, the New Deal–style Democrat. So that’s what a lot of us want. So this is a philosophical difference."

"No," said Clinton. "It’s a rhetorical difference, too."

He seemed to make one last attempt to win over Brody.

"If you really want what you say you want, the one thing you gotta do — and I’m pulling for you — the one thing you've got to do is to get everybody who votes for president to vote in the midterms," Clinton said, going on to praise the Dodd-Frank finance bill and remind Brody that Donald Trump "wants to repeal it."

"I'm on your side," Clinton said.

"You have a limited number of choices, and you do what you can to help the largest number of people. It is very hard," he added, starting to step away from the table. “If the best thing to do is just say no and lob bombs, you don’t get anything done."

Brody wasn't satisfied. “That's like Margaret Thatcher. There’s no alternative. I mean, you make choices, you have no other options…”

Clinton was almost to the next booth. “You always have a choice,” he said, turning back to get in one last point — this one about Brody’s candidate, Bernie Sanders.

The 2007 immigration bill, he said. "Hillary said yes. Her opponent said no... You always have a choice."

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

The Republican National Committee was flying high in early 2015.

Amid a Republican wave, two candidates had done something that operatives believed was critical for the future: Sen. Cory Gardner in Colorado and Gov. Rick Scott in Florida won significant victories in states with sizable Hispanic populations. It wasn’t a general election year, but they’d put real effort into courting Latinos — Scott held regular breakfasts with Hispanic pastors, Gardner went to Fiestas Patrias, where 92,000 people descended to celebrate Mexican independence.

It was exactly the kind of voter-focused campaigning that Republicans hoped to continue in 2016. RNC operatives were busy putting together ambitious plans for staff, infrastructure, and data all with Latinos in mind. The RNC already had 40 staffers working on the project. Operatives said they would expand to 80 people in 10 key states. And they were already working on targeted data projects, like surveying Miami residents about Uber on iPads at a Hispanic business expo to get their contact information.

They trumpeted the midterm victories and a new, steady commitment to reaching Hispanics last spring. The RNC was building a true program for the next presidential candidate to appeal to Latinos.

“It’s important that you have a candidate who’s willing to make the Hispanic community a priority,” Jennifer Sevilla Korn, the RNC’s deputy political director, told BuzzFeed News in April 2015.

Two months later, Donald Trump announced he was running for president.

As Republicans get ready to hand over the keys to their Hispanic operation to Trump’s campaign, many are wondering if the entire thing will be a waste, a project that died with the nominee.

The party faces a public challenge: how to draw attention to the infrastructure the party has built to appeal to minorities, while supporting a candidate who’s done nearly everything possible to alienate them.

Korn now says Trump will fight for every vote and pointed to a low-production video he sent to a Hispanic evangelical group as evidence that he will seek to engage Latinos.

But real outreach requires real time, money, and people.

The RNC has not met its stated goal of doubling staffers for its strategic initiative, aimed at Hispanic, black and Asian voters, with the primary focus being Latinos. An official said the party will ramp up hiring to meet its staffing goals by the time of the Republican convention. The official also contended that as a result of hiring people a year out from the 2014 elections — a first for the RNC — and keeping them on through 2016, Hispanic staff that began as field organizers are now serving as deputy state directors.

One former RNC staffer said that if Trump is serious, he’ll need his own Hispanic staffers who understand the differences in each state — it can’t just be the committee. (Trump currently has 70 paid staff, compared to the more than 700 people employed by the Clinton campaign.)

Another Republican operative joked that Trump's life is not that different from a telenovela on Telemundo. ("The ladies are scantily clad, the guy is old and has a lot of hair.") But said more worrying for Republicans is not his aversion to Univision, but his aversion to data.

Targeting Hispanic voters is hard, the operative said, recalling a time a campaign's Hispanic voter file in Virginia held the phone numbers not of Latino voters, but of Filipinos. In Colorado, the former RNC staffer said, there has to be an understanding that the first name is a bigger indicator than the last name of the profile of the Latino voter being called. “Ryan Hernandez” would more likely be a second or third generation Hispanic, but “Luz Hernandez” would be more likely to be an immigrant and speak Spanish. These are the kinds of things real operatives know about outreach.

And Trump will likely struggle to hire those staffers, too. Three Republicans with ties to the RNC said they have heard from operatives who are looking to leave the RNC to work on key congressional races. People who are described as "committed to the Republican Party, just not committed to Trump." Other conservatives say most party operatives will fulfill their commitment and that it's not odd that some to want to leave because they might be layered by the Trump campaign or asked to do a job they're not passionate about.

One party operative, a lifelong Republican, told BuzzFeed News they plan to leave to go work on down-ballot races. "I've always supported conservative principles, but when I look at the things I align with, they do not align with Trump."

"We put a lot of time and hard work when it comes to this business," the operative said. "Early mornings, late nights, tough deadlines, stress, we sacrifice a lot — to do this for a person, for a cause I don't believe in, I can't do it."

But if Trump really plans to do this, Latino evangelicals and their aversion to some Democratic stances on social issues would be a good place to start.

Even here their support is anything but assured. In 2012, Hispanic evangelicals made up 16% of all Latino registered voters; Pew found they supported Obama 50% to Romney's 39% weeks before the election, compared to the 71% of Hispanics overall that voted for Obama. And, while self-identified evangelicals have supported Trump this year, regular church attendance was one of the leading factors in polls where Trump’s support was softest.

To that end, Trump in May met with Pastor Bramnick, a leading Cuban-American evangelical leader with the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC). While Hispanic faith leaders oppose the kinds of immigration policies that Trump espouses, Bramnick left convinced that Trump could be trusted on immigration, telling TIME that the bombastic billionaire possessed "tremendous understanding and concern for the undocumented immigrants."

A source who spoke with Bramnick told BuzzFeed News that confidence is because Trump conveyed that he knows there is more to immigration than just building a wall. While the pastor wasn't told Trump would be offering new policies, the source said, this was enough to make him believe that further conversations could yield softer edges from the candidate on immigration as the general election barrels closer.

Trump's tone on immigration is crucial. NHCLC founder Rev. Samuel Rodriguez said that even if the presumptive Republican nominee says "wonderful" things about entrepreneurship, religious liberty, ending Christian persecution, and helping educate Latinos, he needs to rein himself in on immigration.

"To step into that promised land, he has to cross the Jordan," Rodriguez said. "If he continues to say I’m going to deport 11 million people, they're going to shut him out. He needs to say, I misspoke. I can’t make America great again without God-fearing, hard-working, family-loving Latino-Americans."

For Trump to change that broadly, he needs to not just pivot and soften his stances in private meetings or with English-language media, but he has to complement that with actually going on Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo. MRC Latino executive director, Ken Oliver-Mendez, who monitors those networks, said they have subtly begun including the viewpoints of Hispanic Trump supporters, but the major shift would come with the candidate doing a high-profile interview.

"This is the one segment of the national media where he’s not calling, where he’s not doing the interviews," Oliver-Mendez said.

Many Latino conservatives meanwhile say they won't serve as surrogates on Spanish-language networks, crucial validators who could tell Hispanic viewers that the Trump they've been told is a villain for the last year is actually misunderstood.

"The problem here is the RNC is like a distribution company," said Alfonso Aguilar, a former Bush administration official and one of those Spanish-language surrogates who would support the nominee in any other year. "You have a great distribution deal, but if the product is bad, the people are not going to like it."

It’s not, he said, the fault of Reince Priebus, the RNC’s Hispanic media director, or Korn. "The problem is Trump. Unless a miracle happens and he says 'I didn’t mean to say the majority of Mexicans are rapists or criminals,' he goes to the community, stops insulting Univision, and becomes consistent, then perhaps he’s sellable. But at this point I haven’t seen any effort."

(There may be some consolidation without any effort, however. In Nevada, support is already shifting toward Trump, said Jesus Marquez, a radio host and Republican operative. Marquez, who supported Jeb Bush and then Marco Rubio is waiting to see if Trump moves more to the center. "Three to four months ago, most of the callers were against Trump," Marquez continued. "But now if I get 25 to 30 calls, half of those calls are in support.”)

For its part the RNC says it has people willing to speak for Trump nationally and locally on Spanish-language networks. "Everyone has to make their own decisions on who they can support and can't support but our surrogate list is strong," Korn said.

And meanwhile, the committee has begun to focus on down-ballot races, telling BuzzFeed News it is set to pump $4 million into 15-second and 30-second cross-platform video ad buys on Univision, targeting Republicans and independents at the state level.

Besides having Spanish-language pro-Trump surrogates, the bread and butter of the RNC message appears to be an anti-Hillary Clinton one. Officials pointed to a May surrogate call where Republicans asked for talking points, wanting to know "every single thing about Hillary Clinton, her immigration stance, and all her flip flops."

Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi called comparing the favorability of Trump and Clinton among Latinos, a "false equivalency."

"The Hispanic community has long had an appreciation for the Clintons," he said, noting that she did well with Latinos both in 2008 and again this cycle. "But there is no more unpopular figure in the United States today with the Hispanic electorate than Donald Trump."

The likelihood that Trump will do badly, and perhaps historically so, with Latinos, means conservatives are coming up with creative suggestions for Hispanic voters. Aguilar says they should leave the presidential ballot empty and instead take care of those further down the ballot.

Rene Plasencia is one of those down ballot Republicans. A feather in the cap of the RNC, the Orlando native won his race to become a Florida state representative in 2014, but now must contend with being on the ballot along with Trump. He personally thinks he will do fine because he is from the community and because he's Hispanic (Cuban and Puerto Rican, in heavily Puerto Rican Orlando). But in his community, he knows many have strong feelings about Trump.

"Walking among Hispanic homes, Trump is not very popular," he said. It’s "the culture around him. It seems like it’s a non-inclusive, divisive culture. People here are trying to build communities, have strong schools, and safe streets. He doesn't seem helpful to that."

Most frustratingly for many Latino Republicans is that this is not a new development. The 2013 Growth and Opportunity Project stated that “If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence."

It is these concerns that lead to fears of a down ballot blowout, among some GOP Latinos.

"If Cory Gardner was running on the ballot now," Aguilar said of the lauded Colorado senator, "he would fair the same."