Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images

In a filing at the Supreme Court on Thursday, the Obama administration urged the Supreme Court to keep in place a federal appeals court ruling that struck down a series of voting restrictions, including a voter ID law, passed in North Carolina.

As it stands, the law — which contains five voting restrictions struck down by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals — cannot be enforced for this election.

Among the provisions in the law that the appeals court has ordered the state not to enforce are limits on the type of photo ID required for voting; reductions to the amount of early voting in the state; and elimination of same-day registration, out-of-precinct provisional voting, and preregistration that allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to indicate an intent to register when they turned 18.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuits also urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to keep the ruling in effect for this election.

This past week, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory filed a request at the Supreme Court, asking that the 4th Circuit's ruling be put on hold pending its request for the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the ruling — and so the law can be enforced during this election.

The governor's lawyers argued that there is a "reasonable probability" the justices would hear the appeal of the case and reverse the 4th Circuit's decision. This is so, the state argued, because it is an "extraordinary decision" that happened "[m]ere months" before the presidential election.

Specifically, McCrory argued that the court of appeals "invalidated several provisions of North Carolina election law as intentionally discriminatory" despite the district court's finding that "those provisions will not actually have a discriminatory impact on minority voters."

The Obama administration countered on Thursday that "once an electoral law has been found to be racially discriminatory, and injunctive relief has been found to be necessary to remedy that discrimination, the normal rule is that the operation of the law must be suspended. Failing to follow that general rule here would inflict irreparable injury on minority voters."

Highlighting the "[s]eventeen days" it took for McCrory to file the request at the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs, in their brief, adding, "But in the nearly four weeks that have now passed since the Fourth Circuit’s decision, the State has already taken a number of critical remedial steps to implement the Fourth Circuit’s decision."

The request, directed to Chief Justice John Roberts as the circuit justice for the 4th Circuit, likely will now be considered by the full court. The court gives no timeline as to when it will issue a ruling on the request.

[Update, 5:20 p.m.: Later on Thursday, Judicial Watch, along with the Allied Educational Foundation, requested to file an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, brief supporting McCrory's request before the Supreme Court.]

Read Gov. McCrory's filing:

Read the United States' filing:

Read the plaintiffs' filing:

Read the Judicial Watch brief:

Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images

w.soundcloud.com

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said on Thursday that there should be legalization for some undocumented immigrants.

"We never said a pathway to citizenship, and I tend to believe that legalization or some kind of legalization is the proper route, not necessarily citizenship," Priebus said on Kilmeade and Friends.

"That's not what the autopsy said, the autopsy said that we needed comprehensive immigration reform," said Priebus. "Well, you and I and everyone listening know that your version of comprehensive immigration reform, my version, Rand Paul's version, Ted Cruz's version, you know, and someone else's version, is a different version."

Priebus said there needs to be a way to weed out "bad elements" of undocumented immigration. "Somehow or another that's got to get resolved and I think that's what all these folks are trying to work through," said Pribeus.

Trump has signaled a shift on his hardline immigration stance in recent days, telling radio host Sean Hannity that, “there could certainly be a softening” of his position because “because we’re not looking to hurt people.” Over the weekend, Trump told Hispanic Republican activists he was open to a humane way to deal with undocumented immigrants in the country. He also signaled that he supported legalization for some undocumented immigrants.

"I'll wait and see what Donald Trump ultimately decides, I'm not convinced he's comfortable with the idea of trying to deport 12 million people," Priebus said. "It's not a practical place to be and I don't necessarily think he was there."

Aaron Bernstein / Reuters

RENO, Nev. — In a speech tying Donald Trump to the white ethno-nationalist movement known as the "alt-right," Hillary Clinton came closer than ever in this election to a subject she's been reticent to broach: his character.

For 30 minutes on Thursday afternoon, Clinton unleashed a dark and blistering assessment of Trump as "a man with a long history of racial discrimination," a man who believes every word he's said and every policy he's proposed, who knows exactly what he's doing when he peddles conspiracy theories, treats the National Enquirer "like Gospel," elevates white supremacists and anti-Semitic slurs, reinforces "harmful stereotypes" and offers "a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters."

For months, she has described her opponent's statements as racist or bigoted. But Clinton has always shied from making judgements on what those comments say about Trump himself, telling reporters she would "let others comment on his character and his motivation and his behavior.”

Thursday's speech didn’t contain the name-calling Trump has engaged in — "Hillary Clinton is a bigot," he told voters Wednesday — but it offered a sweeping evaluation of Trump as no better than the racist ideology and fringe supporters he's elevated with his campaign.

"There’s an old Mexican proverb that says, 'Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are,'" Clinton told a crowd of 1,100 here in an atrium at Truckee Meadows Community College, where "USA" posters lined the walls. "Well, we know who Trump is."

"He says he wants to 'make America great again,' but more and more it seems as though his real message seems to be 'make America hate again.'"

Look at the people he's allied his campaign with, Clinton said, citing the conspiracy-theory friendly radio host, Alex Jones, whom Trump has praised, and the executive at Breitbart, Stephen Bannon, whom Trump recently brought in as campaign CEO.

"This is someone who retweets white supremacists online," she said, voice rising, "like the user who goes by the name 'WhiteGenocideTM.' Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people."

What he's doing, Clinton said, is "sinister."

Clinton argued that Trump has "a long history of racial discrimination" — a case she had never made directly until Thursday — drawing a line from his 2016 campaign to the birther movement he helped fuel four years ago, to the fine he received at his casinos for "repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor" and the Justice Department suit he was served for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants.

"Throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who he is. And I think we should believe him," she said. "There’s been a steady stream of bigotry coming from him."

The speech here in Reno, billed as a major address by Clinton's campaign aides, was the candidate's most aggressive use of a tactic she's employed before: using Trump's own words against him. Perhaps not since her speech in San Diego two months ago — a brutal critique of Trump's foreign policy credentials that drove cable news coverage for days and had an immediate resonance on the campaign trail — has Clinton's team invested so much in a speech.

The setup here did not resemble a campaign rally: Voters in the audience remained seated, and the sound of a formal band replaced the campaign's usual stable of Katy Perry and Sara Bareilles songs.

Withholding the attacks she used to lob across the aisle, Clinton instead mourned what she described as the effective fall of the Republican Party to the white nationalist movement known as the alt-right, an informal but sprawling network of activists who have gained particular notoriety for their online harassment of Jewish and minority writers across both parties.

(Bannon, the new CEO of Trump's campaign, has described his news site Breitbart as a “platform for the alt right.”)

Clinton conceded that there’s a history of “fringe” politics in the United States, but argued that Trump represents something different — “a major party stoking it, encouraging it, and giving it a national megaphone.” She addressed and dismissed conspiracy theories about her health, and the outlets that have promoted the rumors. She cited former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke’s elation with the turn of events, and charged that while the label may change, the core philosophy remains the same: “Racists now call themselves ‘racialists.’ White supremacists now call themselves ‘white nationalists.’ The paranoid fringe now calls itself ‘alt-right,’” she said, “But the hate burns just as bright.”

As she frequently now does, Clinton made a pitch to disaffected Republicans alienated by Trump. The speech on Thursday — praising earlier actions by politicians from Bob Dole to George W. Bush — seemed more explicitly that than previously. “Every day, more Americans are standing up and saying ‘enough is enough’ — including a lot of Republicans,” she said. “And I am honored to have their support in this campaign. And I promise you this: with your help, I will be a president for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.”

And, as her campaign has done in recent days as Trump has signaled that he might attempt to modify long-held positions, she made the case that her campaign has hammered again and again. “Now, I know some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself — that there’s a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere. After all, it’s hard to believe anyone — let alone a nominee for President of the United States — could really believe all the things he says.”

“Here's the hard truth is: There’s no other Donald Trump,” she said. “This is it.”

LINK: How 2015 Fueled The Rise Of The Freewheeling, White Nationalist Alt Right Movement

J Pat Carter / Getty Images

If Donald Trump loses in November, it has been widely speculated that, with Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon and ousted Fox News chief Roger Ailes by his side, he’ll look to capitalize on his devoted audience by launching a television channel.

If he does so, he’ll be following in the footsteps of another large, made-for-TV personality with a loyal following: Glenn Beck, who in 2011 left his perch at Fox News and launched GBTV (now The Blaze) as an online, subscription-based video channel. In an phone interview on Thursday, Beck told BuzzFeed News he thinks that Trump will start a channel of his own.

“To me, it seems very Trump. Trump steaks, Trump water, Trump TV,” Beck said. “Why not?”

“Make sure that it is clearly understood my disdain for this entire vision, but I do believe that is a very big possibility of what he will do,” he later added.

Most of the public conversation around Trump’s potential venture has focused on him launching a cable channel — a risky and expensive decision for even large media conglomerates let alone a one self-proclaimed billionaire. A source familiar with the Trump family's thinking said he sees a bigger opportunity in what is known as an OTT product — content delivered online directly to a subscriber base without the involvement of a cable provider.

Beck said if he were advising Trump, he’d tell him to go the OTT route, not only because of the financial incentives, but also because controversial figures like Trump would face difficulty getting advertisers on cable. GBTV, in its first year as an OTT product, was reportedly on track to take in $40 million in revenue from 300,000 plus subscribers and advertising.

“I would start an OTT product and go for a $19.99 or a $10 a month subscription — maybe $19.99 with a premium wrestling event Donald Trump might do and roll in the money,” Beck said.

He continued, “And then on top of it, if you want to make an impact, Don, you’re going to have maybe, I don’t know, 5 to 10 million people—maybe—and with those people, you can start your own kind of—I hate using this term—but kind of your own alt-right, rebel party. And come back in the 2020 election or even the midterms as a credible source for telling the truth for those people who believed you in 2016.”

One of the real questions about a Trump media venture is what role the man himself would play. Unlike Beck, Trump has no daily talk-radio or television experience as a host — the kind of background that has served Beck well in programming his own network. In Beck’s mind, Trump’s name would be the draw for his base, but allies like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham could end up being the daily faces of the channel.

“Trump gets bored awfully darn quickly,” he said. “First of all, I think the numbers might be big at first, but would dwindle quickly. My guess would be, if he wanted to start a network, he would look at people like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, who have been backing him and believing in him from the beginning.”

Beck added Trump would pop in on the channel as a guest occasionally, when, he said, Trump has a salad bowl and wants to talk about Hispanics. Bannon, who is currently heading up Trump’s campaign, would run the channel, according to Beck.

“Bannon knows how to draw that angry, alt-right crowd,” he said.

Trump is already building a subscriber base — a source within the Trump family orbit told BuzzFeed News his presidential campaign is the perfect market research, and by building email lists and collecting personal information, a lot of the groundwork will be done come November, if Trump chooses to pursue a channel.

Beck said that over time, Trump’s audience doesn’t really have much of a future and his channel would have influence over “a segment of the population that is best left in the past.”

“He’ll never broadcast,” Beck said. “It seems to me he doesn’t care really about the broadcast, he cares about the narrowcast. He cares about the people that are in the stadium, not the people on television. And that’s vastly different.”

“Trump is just that one story of ‘4 Racist Things Your Drunk Friend Says After He Voted.’ And that’s it,” he added. “It doesn’t also have the cat video and a serious story that I can actually learn from. It’s just the drunk story.”

Gerald Herbert / AP Photo

Donald Trump’s campaign CEO, Stephen Bannon, allegedly pulled at his then-wife’s neck and wrist during a 1996 dispute in Santa Monica, and smashed a phone when she tried to call the police, according to court documents.

Bannon was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and dissuading a witness for the 1996 incident, according to court records and a police report first obtained by Politico and the New York Post. The case was later dropped when his ex-wife Mary Piccard refused to press charges.

On Friday, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said she didn't know if Trump was aware of the incident.

According to court documents, Santa Monica police responded to a call the morning of Jan. 1, 1996. The caller dialed 911 but had hung up. When officers arrived, they said Piccard, Bannon’s then-wife appeared “very upset,” according to the police report.

She later told authorities that she and Bannon, to whom she had been married seven months at the time, had a history of arguing frequently and physically fighting, though they hadn't for some time. They had twins who were less than 1 year old.

The fight that morning was prompted by an argument over whether Piccard could use a credit card to go shopping. She told Bannon that she wanted a divorce, and later related to police that he “laughed at her, and said he would never move out,” according to the police report.

Outside, near their car, Piccard said in the report she spat on him, and in response he “reached up to her from the driver’s seat of his car and grabbed her left wrist. He pulled her down, as if he was trying to pull [her] into the car, over the door."

She added that Bannon “grabbed at her neck, also pulling her into the car.” She fought back and eventually escaped.

When she went back inside to call the police, Piccard said Bannon chased her around the house screaming "that he was going to take the girls and leave." She said in court documents "I took the phone to call police and he grabbed the phone away from me throwing it across the room, breaking it as he screamed that I was a 'crazy f----g c--t!"

She said the phone had broken into so many pieces that she could not use it. Police said that the attack left “red marks on her left wrist and the right side of her neck.”

The Santa Monica District Attorney’s office filed a complaint against Bannon on Feb. 22, 1996. He was arraigned on March 12 that year, and pleaded not guilty to the counts of misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and dissuading a witness.

After a delayed trial date in July, a judge ordered the case to be dismissed after the “victim/witness” could not be found.

Speaking on the 1996 case, a Bannon spokesperson told Politico, “The bottom line is he has a great relationship with the twins, he has a great relationship with the ex-wife, he still supports them."

Piccard also said she would only see him in public spaces because he "has been verbally abusive to me in front of the girls and I do not fee safe," according to a court document filed in Los Angeles County. At another time, she said in a court document, Bannon "spanked" one of their children while the girl was sick.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, The Guardian US reported that Bannon is currently registered to vote in Florida but does not live there, a possible violation of election law.

Yuri Gripas / AFP / Getty Images

Eric Trump, listing off reasons his father is running for president, said in an interview this week that one of the motivations was the renaming of the White House Christmas tree to the "holiday tree."

The tree placed on the White House lawn during the holiday season is still called the National Christmas Tree.

"He opens up the paper each morning and sees our nation’s leaders giving a hundred billion dollars to Iran, or he opens the paper and some new school district has just eliminated the ability for its students to say the pledge of allegiance, or some fire department in some town is ordered by the mayor to no longer fly the American flag on the back of a fire truck," Trump told James Robison in an interview posted this week.

"Or he sees the tree on the White House lawn has been renamed 'holiday tree' instead of 'Christmas tree,'" continued Trump. "I could go on and on for hours. Those are the very things that made my father run, and those are the very things he cares about."

Chain emails that began when President Obama took office falsely claimed that tree had been renamed. A tree on Capitol Hill was briefly called a "holiday tree" in the '90s, but the name was changed in 2005 at the direction of then-Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Lucas Jackson / Reuters

Donald Trump's adviser on veterans issues, New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro, told BuzzFeed News on Friday that he regrets the way he phrased his comment that Hillary Clinton should be shot for treason.

"I mean, I regret saying it the way I did," Baldasaro said. "It's a shame because I should have spoke out and said she's got to be found guilty. We're a country of laws—for treason. I used the word 'should be,' and the liberal media took it and ran with it."

Trump said he didn't know about about Baldasaro’s remarks when asked about it on local New Hampshire TV on Thursday.

"I will tell you he’s a very fine person. Nobody wants to take care of the veterans in this country, who have been treated horribly, more than Al, so that's what I know," Trump said.

“I was honest and Trump stood by me,” Baldasaro continued. “He understands, I'm sure, because I don't think he's aware of what actually was said or maybe he is, I don't know. He said he wasn't, but of course I never talked to him. I talked with the Trump team about it. I was impressed. He always compliments me wherever he goes. I put 150% in New Hampshire on veterans' issues, medical issues, VA benefits.”

“I spoke with Hope. I spoke with people on the Trump campaign at the convention—a senior advisor in New Hampshire,” he added.

Baldasaro said he was upset the way it was perceived, saying he wasn’t calling for assassination. He said he was receiving hate mail saying his wife who is being treated for cancer should die.

“My wife, who just had cancer, got cards in the mail that she should die. The disgrace that's gone over my family,” he said.

The Republican presidential nominee has come under renewed scrutiny, particularly by those in his own party, for his apparent shift on what to do with the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US.

When Donald Trump announced his bid for president in 2015, he did so on a tough platform on immigration, particularly regarding Muslims and undocumented immigrants from Mexico.

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

Trump’s hardline stances — including erecting a wall on the US-Mexico border and a temporary ban on Muslims from abroad — have endeared him to his core supporters, and attracted widespread loathing among moderates, which is why statements the candidate made this week that appeared to show a willingness to let up a bit prompted a fresh round of scrutiny.

He was accused of reneging on a core pledge when he told Fox News' Sean Hannity on Monday that he was open to "softening" his approach to illegal immigrants. And attempts by him and his surrogates to clarify his comments have only added to the confusion over his immigration policy ahead of a key speech on the issue.

But it’s not the first time the blustery candidate has shifted and changed his language on immigration, whether on undocumented immigrants already living in the US, or his proposed ban on all Muslims entering the country.

Here’s a look at all the substantial shifts during his campaign so far:

But on Monday, Trump appeared to change his hardline approach, saying he was interested in a “really fair” proposal for dealing with the undocumented community in the US.

Angelo Merendino / Getty Images

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A unisex sign and the 'We Are Not This' slogan are outside a bathroom at Bull McCabes Irish Pub on May 10, 2016 in Durham, North Carolina.

Sara D. Davis / Getty Images

In a limited ruling on Friday afternoon, a federal judge barred the University of North Carolina from enforcing the "bathroom bill" provision of the state's anti-LGBT HB 2 law against those transgender individuals who sued the state following the passage of the law.

In the ruling U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder noted, "Ultimately, the record reflects what counsel for Governor [Pat] McCrory candidly speculates was the status quo ante in North Carolina in recent years: some transgender individuals have been quietly using bathrooms and other facilities that match their gender identity, without public awareness or incident."

The case was brought by the ACLU and Lambda Legal on behalf of several North Carolina residents, including professors and students at UNC schools.

After reviewing the record in the case and relevant case law, Schroeder concluded a preliminary injunction of part of the law was appropriate. Specifically, he pointed to a case (G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board) in which the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals — from which appeals from North Carolina are heard — held that the Obama administration's interpretation of Title IX's sex discrimination provision as including anti-transgender discrimination was permitted.

"Part I’s wholesale ban on access to facilities is inconsistent with DOE’s guidance on Title IX compliance under G.G.," Schroeder concluded.

"Accordingly, the court will enjoin UNC from enforcing Part I against the individual transgender Plaintiffs until the court reaches a final decision on the merits in this case," Schroeder concluded.

He ruled that plaintiffs did not make the same case that they were likely to succeed on an equal protection challenge to the law and did not rule at this time on their due process-related claim.

Finally, he also noted that "this injunction returns the parties to the status quo ante as it existed in Title IX facilities prior to Part I [of HB 2]’s passage in March 2016."

Read the order and opinion:

youtube.com

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday halted the upcoming execution of Ronaldo Ruiz, who was set to be put to death on Aug. 31.

Texas was set to execute Ruiz, a hit man in the 1992 murder of a 29-year-old woman. Ruiz, 43, was set to die by lethal injection on Aug. 31 after he was convicted in the murder-for-hire of Theresa Rodriguez.

Ruiz would have become the sixth inmate to be executed in Texas in 2016.

In his latest habeas corpus application, Ruiz raised questions about deficiency of his trial counsel and his initial habeas counsel, as well as questions about the constitutionality of executing him "over two decades after his conviction" — a matter the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to consider.

In the Court of Criminal Appeals' brief, unsigned order, the court restates Ruiz's claims and then concludes, "After reviewing applicant’s writ application, we have determined that his execution should be stayed pending further order by this Court."

The country's busiest death chamber has not carried out an execution in nearly four months. The past six scheduled executions in Texas — including Ruiz's previously scheduled July execution date — were stayed, delayed, or withdrawn for various reasons.

This marks the longest period Texas has gone without killing inmates since 2014, when no executions took place for nearly five months amid furor over Oklahoma's botched execution of Clayton Lockett and legal challenges related to Texas' drug secrecy.

Jason Clark, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), told BuzzFeed News prior to Friday's ruling in Ruiz's case that the agency was "not involved in setting or withdrawing execution dates." He added that the TDCJ "stands ready to carry out" executions.

In a year already marked by fewer executions, Texas is the only state with executions scheduled for the remainder of 2016. Other active death penalty states are grappling with a variety of obstacles ranging from the effect of Supreme Court rulings earlier this year to drug shortages and the fallout from botched executions.

Even in Texas, in August alone now, three scheduled executions have been stayed — while the date for another was changed.

Ruiz was hired by two brothers, Mark Rodriguez and Michael Rodriguez, to kill Michael's wife Theresa for a life insurance scheme. Ruiz shot and killed Theresa in the couple's garage after following them home from a movie theater. The brothers paid Ruiz $2,000 for the murder.

Ruiz was first scheduled to die in 2007, but a federal appeals court gave him a reprieve. His execution was then set for July 27 of this year after the US Supreme Court refused to review his case in May 2015. However, his execution was pushed to Aug. 31 because of the state's failure to sufficiently notify his counsel of his pending execution, Jennifer Moreno, an attorney at the Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic told BuzzFeed News.

On Aug. 19, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit from five death row inmates, including Ruiz, who demanded that the state retest its drugs before executing them. That case is now on appeal before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Read the order:

Ben Jackson / Getty

Donald Trump's campaign CEO, Stephen Bannon, was accused by his ex-wife during divorce proceedings of trying to thwart her efforts to send their children to private schools with large numbers of Jewish students, citing his disdain for "whiny brats."

"He said that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiny brats' and that he didn’t want the girls to go to school with Jews," his ex-wife, Mary Louise Piccard, claimed in court fillings reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

Bannon's spokeswoman, Alexandra Preate, denied that he ever made the comments.

"Mr. Bannon said he never said anything like that and proudly sent the girls to Archer for their middle school and high school education," Preate said.

In his response filed in court, Bannon said he was cut out of the selection process altogether.

I was never consulted about the selection of the proposed school and no effort was made to give me the opportunity to participate in the process.

I do not support the children attending a secular school and I do not agree with the or approve the unilateral selection made by (Piccard)."

Attempts to reach Piccard were not immediately successful.

The accusations are the latest to come out of a court record that has come under scrutiny after the former head of Breitbart News was tapped to lead Trump's Republican presidential campaign. They also come on the heels of Hillary Clinton accusing Trump of "taking hate groups mainstream" at a campaign rally, citing Bannon's role and the Republican candidate's association with British politician Nigel Farage.

Bannon was also charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and dissuading a witness after allegedly grabbing his then-wife's neck and wrist during a dispute in 1996, and smashing a phone when she tried to call 911, according to court documents.

A Santa Monica police report also detailed the incident. However, the case was later dropped when his ex-wife failed to appear in court.

On Friday, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told BuzzFeed News she didn’t know if he was aware of the incident.

In the divorce declaration filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2007, Piccard claimed Bannon had demanded their daughters "go to a strict structured Catholic School."

At one point, Piccard alleged Bannon called administrators at the private school and threatened to sue them if they accepted their children.

"During a joint visit to see Westland School and Willows Community School, (Bannon) asked the director why there were so many Chanukah books in the library. After we saw Willows he asked me if it bothered me that the school used to be a Temple. I said no and asked why he asked...he did not respond," Piccard alleged.

Piccard also cited an email exchange dated March 31, 2007, in which she told Bannon she didn't know what percentage of Jewish girls made up the student population at the Archer School for Girls.

Piccard wrote in her filings that she asked Bannon why he cared, adding that she had "not been raising the girls to be prejudiced against Jews or anyone else for that matter."

LINK: Donald Trump’s Campaign Manager Was Charged In A Domestic Violence Case

When Paul Manafort resigned last Friday morning, I was sitting at a brightly colored diner on Park Avenue, Big Daddy’s, eating eggs opposite an old friend of his.

You may know Steve Goldberg’s work, if not his name. He first made national waves working for Bob Dole’s presidential campaign in 1995, for what Newsweek described as “thousands of anonymous phone calls telling Iowa Christians that [Republican candidate Steve] Forbes was wobbly on abortion.”

During Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for Senate, in 2000, Goldberg worked for the New York Republican Party, and flooded voters’ phones with calls tying Clinton to support from a group misleadingly described as one that ''openly brags about its support for a Mideast terrorism group — the same kind of terrorism that killed our sailors on the U.S.S. Cole.''

And in Israel last year, a wave of Goldberg’s phone calls on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party made headlines on election day for referring to the American president as “Hussein Obama.”

Steve Goldberg is a kind of underground legend in Republican politics — best known for inventing what is now called “push polling” — but one who has operated more or less under the media radar since Dole’s bid ended in recriminations and a messy federal inquiry into campaign spending.

Today he, like many Republicans, believes his party has lost its way, and he has something to offer. His, though, is not exactly patrician handwringing. Rather, he worries that the trade he invented is becoming a “lost art." Where are the phone calls now that hit you over the head with a hammer, and upset some people enough that they make news? And which give the campaign a glimpse into where you stand in the meantime?

He worries that the GOP has gone soft. He thinks even Donald Trump isn’t campaigning viscerally enough.

“I’m sorry, Neanderthal is real,” he said, explaining his credo. Neanderthal “still exists somewhere inside there, OK? You have to protect your women and your children.”

Goldberg and I have talked occasionally through the years about his worry that his techniques are undervalued. He had been hoping Manafort would bring him into the Trump campaign, but as the notion that his old friend would invite Goldberg into the fold faded a bit, he called me up to talk. He is a trader of favors, and he believes — accurately — that I owe him one: One of his rare appearances on the record was confirming a big story for me in 2012 about money that went missing from former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman's campaign. (Some of that money, needless to say, Goldberg thought should have gone to him.)

I was late to see Goldberg, whose wife had persuaded him to (just barely) clean up, and who had only spilled a little breakfast on his shirt. Goldberg, who was born to Orthodox Jewish parents in Crown Heights in 1953, is devout and fiercely tribal. He had spent a lot of time talking to the notoriously bare-knuckled Republican consultant Lee Atwater — who encouraged him to develop push polling, and to keep the practice secret — about the older man's regrets about anti-Semitic campaigning, and now refers to Atwater as "Lee of blessed memory." I arrived at the diner to find him giving grandfatherly Jewish advice to my photographer.

He wanted to be a lawyer but wound up in politics, first working for Democrats, including the 1980 campaign of Chuck Schumer (a “prick”), before following the Upper West Side Svengali Dick Morris rightward to the Republican Party. He worked both for Reagan and for the Democratic Speaker of the House, Tom Foley, in 1984.

Bob and Elizabeth Dole work the telephones at his headquarters in 1988, eight years before Goldberg joined his next presidential campaign.

Bettmann Archive

Goldberg had learned phones — telemarketing, as the game is known outside politics — working for a DNC contractor in the 1970s, and he became one of a handful of masters of the trade. When he started, he was working on the frontier of two pillars of American politics: data and persuasion. He resisted technology before it was cool: Goldberg has always relied on phone banks full of hundreds of people making phone calls for near-minimum wage, rather than on the cheaper recordings — robocalls — that began to proliferate in the 1990s.

And by the time of Dole's campaign in 1996, the Newsweek embed — back then, a reporter would be given full, behind-the-scenes access on the condition they not publish until after the election, something that has given way to the Game Change franchise — described him as “a short, stocky New Yorker who looked like Detective Sipowicz on NYPD Blue.''

He also played a behind-the-scenes role in that campaign’s bitter infighting, at one point arriving in the middle of the night to warn the campaign manager his rivals were plotting.

"I had to tell you,'' Goldberg reportedly said. "It's the law of the jungle. Kill or be killed.” While he waited to meet me, Goldberg composed on his phone a list of talking points — insights, grudges, ideas. It read in full:

Cuban

RNC primitive data knowledge

Rasputin
Lee
Space future millennials

Bottom out trump most campaigns will figure out they need to be the anti Hillary hero in their state and district and usurp that dynamic from trump and say elect me cause Hillary will be pres and u need me the Republican to protect u!

McCain

Btw I did both the r President and d speaker in 1984

(Mark Cuban, Steve has an idea for you. Call him.)

Goldberg’s belief that the Republicans are lost has a villain. He worked for George H.W. Bush in 1988 and 1992, and his phone calls incurred enough gratitude to earn a seat on the board of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. But he never got along with their son's political guru, Karl Rove, who he believes “destroyed the Bush family." (Goldberg describes George W. Bush as "mentally challenged.") Rove, in Goldberg's view, pulled the party toward a clinical, hard-right economic conservatism and foreign policy adventurism, and away from the more practical, visceral appeals Goldberg used to deliver on the phone. Rove was ruthless toward rival consultants: He blacklisted his old Texas rival, McCain adviser John Weaver, who was a Goldberg ally, and Goldberg — who had run into financial problems and lost his business in the late 1990s — found it hard to work in the Bush years.

Here in 2016, Goldberg admires Donald Trump’s core proposition: “His scenario is that the silent majority is angry, powerful, and ready to rumble.”

But he doesn’t think the Republican Party is capable of delivering on it.

“The whole culture of the RNC right now is hiding behind algorithms, hiding behind apps, and not interacting with people,” he said.

“They’re primitive. Not so much in terms of the apps, the algorithm — sure, they’re selling their fucking snake oil, okay, but they’re primitive in how they use it and they’re lazy,” he said. “Because Republicans have no clue how to maintain the relationship with the voter. How to create and to cultivate one. And they think that you do an app and they check the box or do the roll call, you check the box, and now, OK, I’ve now campaigned.”

What’s missing, he said, is the “third dimension” — the human connection you get from someone calling you, arguing with you, listening to you. These are, he acknowledged, random minimum-wage workers, but he said that the practice of calling selects out the ones who are good at it — and that the ones who are good at it come to believe what they’re saying. “They become paid quasi-supporters,” he said.

“No Republican phone operatives right now have a clue,” he said. “They don’t know how to listen. They’re so primitive.”

Goldberg believes the power in politics comes in the questions you ask, not the answers you give, which is why the form of “polling” — even if the data is less important than the impression you leave — is so important.

“That’s really what Trump came from. He figured out the right question very early,” he said.

“Which is immigration?” I asked.

Goldberg shook his head patronizingly.

“Just fear,” he said.

Steve Goldberg photographed during breakfast on Aug. 19, 2016, in New York City.

Mark Abramson for BuzzFeed News

Goldberg had hoped to get in on the Trump campaign. When we met earlier in the summer, he showed me some reassuring texts from Manafort, suggesting that some kind of gig was in the works. Even last Friday, he told me, “I really hope Paul does get empowered.” His Netanyahu connection also gives him a line into the mercurial casino magnate and Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, who is Netanyahu’s key patron, and who was the subject of reports earlier this summer that he would finance a pro-Trump super PAC, one of many things that hasn’t come through for The Donald.

“The thing that upsets me the most — and I do hope you use this line, I love this line: I want to be in the O.K. Corral. Because the presidential campaign is the O.K. Corral. My job would be to have Trump’s back or whoever and take out the opposition. That’s what I want,” he said.

We left, and by the time I got back to the office, Manafort had resigned from the campaign. I texted Golberg to ask for his reaction.

“Game over!” he replied. “The bottom falling out and being so bad it probably won’t affect the Senate and House lol.”

Michael Dwyer / AP Photo

In a bid to address alleged claims from a state lawmaker that he is racist, Maine Governor Paul LePage said Friday that people of color and those of Hispanic origin were “the enemy” in the country's drug war.

While defending his practice of keeping a binder full of the photos of convicted drug dealers, and commenting that a majority of them were black or Hispanic, LePage told reporters at a press conference that he was just stating facts.

“When you go to war, if you know the enemy is in red, and you dress in blue, you shoot at red, don’t you? You shoot at the enemy,” he said.

“You try to identify the enemy, and the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin. I can’t help that,” he added.

His comments came the day after he left an expletive-laden voicemail for Maine representative Drew Gattine. LePage claims the lawmaker accused him of racism after learning about his binder.

“I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you cocksucker,” LePage said, according to audio first obtained by the Portland Press Herald.

“I’ve spent my life helping black people, and you little son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker...I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you. Thank you,” he added.

LePage walked back parts of his message Friday.

In a statement, he clarified that when he said he was "after" Gattine, a Democrat, "I meant I would do everything I could to see that he and his agenda is defeated politically."

During Friday's press conference, LePage also said that while he was “enormously angry” with Gattine, his message was meant only for his ears.

The governor also came under fire in January for his controversial tirade against drug dealers with names like “Shifty” and “D-Money” who deal drugs in Maine and getting “white women” pregnant.

Watch Governor LePage’s full press conference below.

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Christine Grunnet / Reuters

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A robocall from white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke urges voters to vote for him for U.S. Senate in Louisiana and for Donald Trump for president.

"Unless massive immigration is stopped now, we'll be out numbered and outvoted in our own nation. It's happening," Duke says. "We're losing our gun rights, our free speech. We're taxed to death. We're losing our jobs and businesses to unfair trade. We're losing our country. Look at the Super Bowl salute to the Black Panther cop killers.

"It's time to stand up and vote for Donald Trump for president and vote for me, David Duke for the U.S. Senate."

In a phone interview with BuzzFeed News on Monday, Duke confirmed that the call was his.

"Everyone is saying they're voting for Duke and Trump," he said. "A blind man told me he was voting for Duke and Trump. The response has been overwhelming."

Here's the full text of the robocall:

"Hi, this is David Duke. I'm sorry I missed you. I'm running for U.S. Senate. I'll tell the truth that no other candidate will dare say. Unless massive immigration is stopped now, we'll be out numbered and outvoted in our own nation. It's happening. We're losing our gun rights, our free speech. We're taxed to death. We're losing our jobs and businesses to unfair trade. We're losing our country. Look at the Super Bowl salute to the Black Panther cop killers. It's time to stand up and vote for Donald Trump for president and vote for me David Duke for the U.S. Senate. I'd love to hear from you. To find out more contribute or volunteer for the DavidDuke.com. Go to Davidduke.com. Together, we'll save America and save Louisiana. Paid for by the Duke campaign."

The Trump campaign repudiated Duke's robocall in a comment to Politico.

Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Virginia school district seeking to limit restroom use to people's biological sex — effectively barring transgender students from using the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity — on Monday asked the US Supreme Court to hear its appeal.

The Gloucester County School Board asked the high court to take the case and reverse an appeals court decision that sided with a transgender student and the Obama administration.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court issued an order allowing the school to keep its policy in place while the justices decide whether to hear the appeal. If the justices agree to hear the appeal, per the earlier order, the court's order allowing the policy to stay in place will remain in effect until the justices reach a decision in the case.

The student, Gavin Grimm, is represented by the ACLU. The Obama administration, through interpretation of existing laws and regulations, has determined that the sex discrimination ban in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 includes a ban on anti-transgender discrimination.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the administration's interpretation was a permissible interpretation, leading the district court in Grimm's case to issue an injunction against Gloucester schools. The Supreme Court's order, however, stayed that injunction for the time being — meaning Grimm, and any other transgender student, could not use the restroom that accords with their gender identity.

The lawyers for the school district frame the case as one not about transgender rights, but rather one about "agency behavior" in setting policies such as the Title IX interpretation advanced by the Obama administration.

"[T]his case is not really about whether G.G. should be allowed to access the boys’ restrooms, nor even primarily about whether Title IX can be interpreted to require recipients to allow transgender students into the restrooms and locker rooms that accord with their gender identity," the school board's lawyers write. "Fundamentally, this case is about whether an agency employee can impose that policy in a piece of private correspondence."

In addition to the Virginia lawyers from Harman, Claytor, Corrigan & Wellman — which has been representing the school district — the legal team representing Gloucester schools now has expanded to include some of the leading national lawyers fighting the administration's pro-transgender policies. Kyle Duncan is listed as the counsel of record in the case, and he is joined on the brief by his law partner, Gene Schaerr, as well as St. Louis lawyers from the James Otis Law Group, Jonathan Mitchell and D. John Sauer.

Once briefs are filed responding to the school board's Monday filing, the justices generally schedule a private vote on whether to hear the case.

The current composition of the Supreme Court — it has operated with only eight justices since Antonin Scalia's death in February — could become a key factor in what happens next with the case.

It takes four justices to grant the certiorari petition and hear an appeal. It takes five votes, however, to reach a majority opinion. If the court accepted the case, and split down ideological grounds 4–4, the lower court's decision in favor of Grimm and the administration would be left in place — but no national precedent would be set by the case.

Read the petition:

Molly Riley / AFP / Getty Images

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Donald Trump, asked about San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's refusal on Saturday to stand during a performance of the national anthem, says maybe Kaepernick "should find a country that works better for him."

“I have followed it and I think it’s personally not a good thing. I think it’s a terrible thing, and you know, maybe he should find a country that works better for him, let him try, it’s not gonna happen,” Trump told theThe Dori Monson Show on Monday.

Kaepernick stoked controversy after he refused to stand for the national anthem at a football game on Saturday. In an interview the next day, he said that he refused to support a country that he believes oppresses minorities.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said.

Ben Jackson / Getty Images

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Donald Trump’s campaign CEO, Stephen Bannon, said during a 2011 radio interview that progressives vilify prominent women in the conservative movement because they are not "a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools."

Citing women like Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann, and Sarah Palin, Bannon said conservative women threaten the progressive narrative.

"And so these women cut to the heart of the progressive narrative," he said on Political Vindication Radio while promoting his movie, Fire From the Heartland: the Awakening of the Conservative Woman.

"That's why there are some unintended consequences of the women’s liberation movement. That, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children. They wouldn't be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England. That drives the left insane and that's why they hate these women," he said.

The Seven Sisters schools are the historic women's colleges of Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College in the Northeast.

Bannon's past has come under scrutiny in recent days, with old court filings showing he faced accusations from his ex-wife of anti-Semitism and domestic violence.

Bannon said earlier in the 2011 interview that the progressive narrative was all about victimhood.

"The progressive narrative Saturday morning was the progressive narrative and that is all about victimhood," he said. "They're either a victim of race. They're victim of their sexual preference. They're a victim of gender. All about victimhood and the United States is the great oppressor, not the great liberator."

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Fox News hit back in a legal filing on Monday at former host Andrea Tantaros's claim that she was retaliated against by the network for reporting sexual harassment by former CEO Roger Ailes and other several other men.

Lawyers for the cable network called Tantaros a "opportunist" and a "wannabe," and called her claim, filed in Manhattan last week, "baseless." Fox News is motioning to keep Tantaros's case out of the courtroom and compel arbitration, as stipulated in her contract.

"Tantaros is not a victim; she is an opportunist," lawyers for Fox News state bluntly in the filing.

"Tantaros's unverified complaint of August 22 in this Court bears all the hallmarks of the wannabe': she claims now that she too was victimized by Roger Ailes, when, in fact, contrary to her pleading, she never complained of any such conduct in the course of an investigation months ago," the filing adds.

Tantaros has been off Fox News's air since April, when her book, Tied Up In Knots, was published. Fox News lawyers say Tantaros did not follow the contractually required procedures to get her book approved and as a result she was removed from air. Tantaros tells a much different story, claiming the network made an issue out of her book only after she reported sexual harassment at the network.

Tantaros's lawyer, Judd Burstein, said in a statement on Monday that Fox News’s motion to compel arbitration corroborates Tantaros's allegations.

"If Mr. Shine and his minions are innocent, why do they want this dispute to be resolved in the shadows," he said, referring to Bill Shine, the newly-minted co-president of Fox News.

Ailes, who resigned from the network in July and has denied all allegations against him, also responded in a legal filing on Monday, calling Tantaros's claims opportunistic and also motioning to compel arbitration in the case.

"To be clear, Mr. Ailes categorically denies her false and libelous allegations of harassment and retaliation, and views this case as a desperate attempt to sell books and speeches
and otherwise raise money," Ailes's lawyers said in the filing.

Earlier on Monday, Tantaros's attorney said she would submit herself to a lie detector test if defendants would do the same.

LINK: Andrea Tantaros Names O’Reilly, Scott Brown In Sexual Harassment Suit Against Fox

LINK: Months Of Messy Legal Dispute Preceded Andrea Tantaros’s Removal From Fox News

LINK: Fox Launches Internal Review Following Gretchen Carlson’s Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

Cindy Ord / Getty Images

Donald Trump’s campaign CEO Stephen Bannon and an associate were accused of sexual harassment in a 1990s court case.

The suit was related to Bannon’s time as director of Biosphere 2, a research facility located in Oracle, Arizona, that aimed to simulate the surface of Mars. Then a Los Angeles–based investment banker, Bannon worked as a consultant trying to cut ballooning costs related to the ecological research center at behest of Texas billionaire Edward Bass, the project’s financial backer.

The suit, filed by Biosphere 2’s former director Margret Augustine, named Bass as the primary defendant. Bannon and a fellow banker, Martin Bowen, were also named and accused of having acted as his agents.

Augustine accused Bass of having used his agents to dissociate her from the Biosphere project in breach of an earlier agreement. She also accused him of using Bannon and Bowen to slander her by saying she had stolen from the Biosphere gift shop and the project’s construction fund. Soon after filing the complaint, she dropped a claim that Bannon and Bowen had invaded her privacy by deleting messages from her answering machine and opening her mail, saying that she would only press charges for incidents that occurred before April 1, 1994. The claims provoked a counter-suit from Space Biosphere Ventures, the company that controlled the project, accusing Augustine of having engaged in self-dealing and stealing from the company.

But the most explosive allegations were that Bannon and Bowen, had made sexually suggestive remarks and lewd remarks toward her, and had disparaged female employees of the research facility.

Both Bannon and Bowen denied the sexual harassment at the time. An affidavit from Bannon said he “did not undertake any sexual harassment towards Margaret Augustine.” On Monday, a spokeswoman for Bannon told BuzzFeed News, "The Bass Organization sued Ms. Augustine for fraud for embezzling $800,000. She then sued two representatives of the Bass Organization having never complained about any behavior. Subsequently, she dropped her legal action. Ms Augustine was removed as CEO in a corporate restructuring in 1993.”

In her complaint, Augustine said, “Both Bowen and Bannon were insulting to the plaintiff and other females employees of Biosphere 2, and in their presence, and against their will, made lewd remarks, told offensive off-color stories, made disparaging remarks about females, made sexually suggestive remarks, discussed females they had known in a lewd and derogatory fashion and in general acted with total indifference to the feelings of the plaintiff and other female employees of Biosphere 2.”

Augustine claimed specifically that Bannon once commented the problem with an employee she “was a woman in a man’s job.”

She claimed that during a trip, “Steve Bannon and Martin Bowen made comments as women walked by about the size of women’s breasts and body parts in lewd tones and language. Martin spoke about a centerfold in Playboy magazine who was born in a town he went to school in or grew up in, in Texas on 5 separate occasions, discussing the size of her ‘boobs,’ ‘titties,’ etc.”

She said at company party she danced with Bannon and he “held my wrist tightly and told me that once I’d done it with him I’d never want to do it with anyone else.”

On another occasion, she said Bannon yelled at her, citing another employee’s performance.

“Steve Bannon started shouting at me that the whole ‘Goddam problem was that I let Larry Pomatte get his swinging dick in here.’ I stood up and said I would not continue a meeting being spoken to in that manner. Steve said, ‘You will Goddam well will sit the fuck down and…’” She said she was shaken and ended the meeting.

Augustine added in the complaint she contacted Bass about the behavior to advise him about the conduct but not action was taken. As a result, she alleged, Bannon “continued to make the same sort of lewd, suggestive, rude, and insulting comments to the plaintiff and other female employees of Biosphere 2.”

She said as a result she “suffered severe mental distress and anxiety” that required “the help of medical care practitioners and the incurring of medical and hospital bills as a result thereof.”

Bass had sued Augustine just a day before her case was filed. His suit claimed that Augustine “allegedly paid a company she owned nearly $800,000 in unaccounted-for Biosphere funds,” according to a report in the Tucson Citizen.

Bass accused her of “diverting funds for her personal use, including having SBV pay to remodel her house, thefts from the six gift shops, kickbacks, and apparent sweetheart deals with subcontractor,” according to author Jane Poynter in The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2.

The judge ruled in favor of the defense on Augustine’s allegation that Bass had dissociated her from the project and Augustine ultimately dropped her slander claims, in addition to her claims that her privacy was invaded. The sexual harassment count, along with the counter-suit against Augustine, was ultimately settled.

Augustine’s lawyer was not immediately available to discuss the case. Augustine did not return a request for comment on the matter. Bowen did not return a request for comment. Neither Bass, nor his publicist, immediately returned a request for comment.

According two books on Biosphere 2 and newspaper accounts, Bannon had originally been brought into bring costs under but was not allowed by the current management, including Augustine, to audit the project’s records with accounts conflicting as to why. Bass got a court order take control of the project and an order to bar the current management employees from the premise, and that’s when Bannon was given control.

On Friday, Mother Jones reported on a separate trial related to Biosphere where Bannon said in testimony that he had called one of the plaintiffs a "self-centered, deluded young woman" and a "bimbo." The “bimbo” comment came after the plaintiff had compared a atmospheric breach into the closed research center to the space shuttle Challenger explosion, according to a report in the Arizona Daily Star.

Bannon would eventually leave the project and Columbia University would take over Biosphere 2.

BuzzFeed News

Over the past several years, states have become increasingly secretive about the drugs officials use to execute people.

Despite widespread problems with drugs used in executions, states often claim this secrecy is necessary, and the product of intimidation: Officials say lethal drug suppliers face harassment and even physical threats after the suppliers’ identities have been revealed.

But there are few concrete examples to justify the secrecy, a BuzzFeed News review found. And the states' marquee example — in which the FBI allegedly investigated a serious bomb threat sent to a drug supplier — is contradicted by internal FBI documents.

The question of who supplies drugs, and which drugs are used, has dominated discussion about the death penalty over the last several years. Inmates argue that information about who is supplying the drugs could reveal questionable practices or even illegal activity, and that without transparency there can be no oversight. States counter that the information is too dangerous to be made public.

But the real danger to drug suppliers appears to be legal and economic risk, not risk of violence.

Two states appear to have premised the need for this kind of secrecy on an FBI investigation of threats made to one drug supplier. But the states’ claims don’t hold up to scrutiny.

In early 2014, a man sent an email in his own name to a pharmacy that supplied execution drug that alluded to violence the pharmacy could face.

Later, states claimed that FBI agents investigated the man, believing it was a credible threat, and hired an expert who testified to that effect under oath.

But according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News, the FBI didn't even hear about the threat until months later, when a reporter called. FBI documents show that the threats were characterized as "not specific" in nature, there was no follow up provided by the the pharmacy, and no further action was taken by the FBI.

In the course of fighting lawsuits seeking information about execution drug suppliers, both Texas and Ohio hired the same expert to gauge the risk of threats to those suppliers. The two states turned to Lawrence Cunningham, a former US Secret Service officer who retired in 1994 and now works as a security consultant for a company called Torchstone.

Cunningham admits that he didn’t speak to any execution drug suppliers when he was forming his opinions, and based much of his research on social media. Cunningham found evidence of angry emails and protests, but was unable to find any examples of suppliers actually being attacked.

The most damning evidence Cunningham and the two states were able to find was an email sent to a pharmacy in Oklahoma that, at the time, supplied execution drugs to Missouri.

Missouri had been trying to keep the supplier of its execution drugs a secret. But in early 2014, journalists discovered a pharmacy called the Apothecary Shoppe was selling the drugs without a license in Missouri.

A retired college humanities professor living in Ohio read one of the stories, went to the pharmacy’s website, clicked on “Contact,” and left a comment.

In the comment, Nick Humez wrote:

“Your site says nothing about pentobarbital. Do you compound it for the state of Missouri’s department of corrections, as has been publicly alleged in an AP story that ran this morning, and if so, now that the story has gone public, do you think that is prudent? Seems to me that manufacturing a drug expressly to kill people flies in the face of one of those commandments Moses got from Jehovah on Sinai, but maybe I’m just being old-fashioned. Still, were I you I’d at least want to beef up my security now that you’ve been put in the spotlight as a likely supplier and failed to issue a flat denial. As the folks at the federal building can tell you, it only takes one fanatic with a truckload of fertilizer to make a real dent in business as usual. In your place, I’d either swear to the nation that my company didn’t make execution drugs of ANY sort, and then make dang sure that’s true, or else openly accept the burden of putting my employees and myself at unacceptable (and possibly uninsurable) risk. Just sayin’.”

In a court filing, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office wrote, “Needless to say, the email got the authorities’ attention. Federal agents questioned Humez about it and his underlying intentions in connection to the” pharmacy.

“The undisputed content of Humez’s email, and the extent to which federal and state law enforcement took the email seriously, exceeds what is required to demonstrate a substantial threat of physical harm, as a matter of law,” the state asserted.

Humez has claimed in repeated conversations, including with BuzzFeed News, that he didn’t intend the email as a threat — pointing out that he included his real name and phone number in the email. Instead, he says he was trying to warn the supplier to be cautious.

In the Ohio and Texas cases, arguing for secrecy, Cunningham said that the email was a serious threat, testifying under oath that state and FBI agents investigated and interviewed Humez.

The contention that law enforcement considered the email credible enough for an investigation is central to the states’ argument that this information is too dangerous to be public.

“The fact that they went to interview him based on this email is significant,” Cunningham said in the Texas case. “They felt it was serious. They interviewed him.

“I would offer that the FBI considered that serious enough to interview Humez, so they considered that a threat on its surface,” Cunningham testified. “They had to investigate it further. They expended resources to go talk to this individual.”

In an October 2014 deposition for the Texas case, Cunningham initially claimed knowledge of why the FBI interviewed Humez — specifically noting his reference to the Oklahoma City bombing — and said that the FBI kept a file on the professor after speaking with him.

But an internal FBI report obtained by BuzzFeed News through a Freedom of Information Act request disputes Cunningham’s testimony.

The Apothecary Shoppe

Screenshot via Google Maps

According to a May 2014 report, Tulsa’s FBI office did not hear about the threat from the pharmacy when it received the email. Instead, the report shows the office only heard about it months later, when an Associated Press reporter called and asked about threats against the pharmacy.

Both the Tulsa Police Department (TPD) and the FBI’s Tulsa office wrote in the report that they weren’t aware of any threats against the pharmacy. The FBI and a TPD detective then reached out to the pharmacy’s employees.

An Apothecary Shoppe employee “stated that immediately following their name being released to the media they received a couple of threatening phone calls and emails but the threats [were] not specific in nature,” according to a TPD report.

The FBI provided contact information so the Apothecary Shoppe could provide any copies of threatening emails. But a month later, the FBI wrote in its report that the pharmacy had not forwarded any threats and that “[w]ithout further cooperation from the Apothecary Shoppe the types of threats remain unspecified.”

An FBI spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that it has no other reports about threats against the pharmacy. The only evidence in the court record that Humez was interviewed by the FBI is Humez's claim that he was.

Cunningham declined numerous requests for an interview. “At this juncture, I have no comment,” Cunningham said, when asked to explain his testimony. Torchstone did not respond to a request for comment.

The Ohio and Texas departments of correction declined to comment, and their attorneys general did not respond to requests for comment regarding their court filings in the cases.

A year after the Texas testimony, in September 2015 testimony in the Ohio case, Cunningham claimed that the Texas Department of Public Safety interviewed Humez as well.

However, that claim is contradicted by Texas DPS documents and sworn statements of its department head, FBI internal documents, and Cunningham’s own testimony in the Texas case.

The head of the Texas DPS, in that earlier case, said his agency “[a]bsolutely [did] not” do any investigation into the matter.

“I did not do any investigations,” Colonel Steven McCraw said in a deposition, when asked about the email. “We didn’t look at any people. We didn’t do anything.”

At that time, Cunningham himself also agreed that the Texas law enforcement agency did not interview Humez.

Cunningham’s testimony in both cases was based more on conclusions he drew from related — or what he determined to be analogous — threats than on specific, concrete examples relating to execution drugs.

In his testimony in the two cases, Cunningham readily admits that he didn’t speak to any execution drug suppliers when he was forming his opinions, and based much of his research on social media.

“In this era, as we all know now, social media has become both a blessing and a curse,” Cunningham said.

“In the curse side of it, yes, a lot of recruiting can go on. In fact, ISIS and other terrorist organizations are doing a very effective job recruiting children and others to join the cause. It's a very serious issue. And so a lot of what you find on the internet can be very useful in validating and adding to the leads or the assessment process.”

In fact, between the two cases, Cunningham referenced ISIS, al-Qaeda, or the September 11th attacks a total of 28 times in his testimony.

At one point, Cunningham claimed that his company checked Humez out in a database. When asked what database they used, he clarifies that they had Googled him.

Cunningham also testified that he believed that the anti-death penalty movement is similar to the anti-abortion movement, or movements for animal and environmental rights.

“I would consider, for example, the abortion movement relevant,” he said. “This is a relatively new focus compared to the history of the abortion issue. If you look at the abortion issue and trace its history, there's an ocean of examples showing violence, bombings, and killings. It's created an outrage and they've acted on it. Animal rights groups have done the same thing.”

“So the point is, these things are in a similar vein. They have to do with life and right to life. And they're obviously divisive, they create a lot of angst and in some cases people act on these things and become very obsessed and attack.”

The National Abortion Federation keeps data on incidents of violence against abortion providers, detailing more than 7,000 incidents since 1977. Regarding execution drug providers, on the other hand, Cunningham was unable to find any examples.

Cunningham testified that “it would be nice to have a direct threat” that he could point to, but said that “just because I’m not aware of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

In what could stand in as a summary of his analysis, Cunningham later said, “In my mind, in my view it's very important to [be proactive] to identify the threat before it finds you.”

For example, Cunningham identified threats in many places. At one point, he said Christians boycotting the abortion pill was “an aggressive act” and financial terrorism.

“Your grandmother. Your sister. My mother. My first grade teacher if she was still alive. All these people we're finding have propensity for violence. If they're involved in [boycotts and protests], I don't just offhandedly say, well, that's just one — one little protest, this is America, they're allowed to be protesting, they're allowed to sit down and be arrested. Environmental — environmental protests do it all the time,” Cunningham said. “But in the context of what we're talking about here, I feel like it adds more to the argument” that execution drug suppliers should be secret.

At another point, Cunningham pointed to a list of news stories that he believed supported his opinion that the drug supplier information should be kept secret. One of the news stories detailed a love triangle murder that had been featured on Dateline. In that case, a plastic surgeon hired a man to kill another doctor because the doctor was dating his ex-girlfriend.

Cunningham argued the case showed violence in the medical community. The lawyer deposing him — fighting the secrecy — was skeptical.

“This seems far fetched and crazy,” attorney Philip Durst said. He then read from Cunningham’s notes. “‘David Shepard murdered Dr. Joseph Sonnier in Lubbock, Texas. Shepard was hired to commit the crime by a plastic surgeon angry about a love triangle.’ You’re the paid expert for the state,” he continued. Of Cunningham’s conclusion that the story is relevant to the question of execution drug secrecy, Durst asked: “Tell me why you think that is not crazy.”

“I wouldn’t call it crazy, but it speaks to violence,” Cunningham responded. “It speaks to violence in the medical arena. This is important.”

Cunningham wasn’t the first expert that Texas turned to in the case. The state earlier had the head of the Department of Public Safety, Col. McCraw, perform a threat assessment. McCraw said he spent “a couple of hours at the most” looking at emails sent to drug suppliers, and concluded there was the potential for serious threats.

In a deposition, McCraw said that the head of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice requested specific language be used — that he say there was a “substantial threat” of harm to the pharmacies if they were made public.

McCraw testified that the request did not bother him and that he was not asked to conclude anything he did not believe.

As the case progressed, however, Texas also retained Cunningham’s services to do his external threat assessment.

A year later, he gave a similar assessment for Ohio, concluding, “I believe it's reasonable to withhold the identities of those people.”

Threats “have to be taken seriously,” he explained. “When you look at all these factors in total I believe it's very important to protect their identities until this firestorm dies down, if you will, or is reconciled. But right now this is a volatile area and these people are vulnerable based on my experience and my assessment of all the factors I've looked at in this case.”

In the two cases where Cunningham testified, state officials received mixed results.

A federal judge in the Ohio case found Cunningham’s testimony “perhaps more persuasive” than the expert hired by death row inmates, ultimately deciding that information about execution drug suppliers could be kept secret. The inmates have appealed the ruling.

Much of the Ohio case took place behind closed doors, and most of the filings, including Cunningham’s testimony, were originally sealed. Later, at the request of death row inmates, the judge unsealed the testimony — enabling this BuzzFeed News review to proceed.

In the Texas case, the state lost but has has appealed the decision. In a May hearing, Texas’ 3rd Court of Appeals appeared skeptical of the state’s position.

"Where do we draw the line… without blowing a hole in the (Public Information Act) big enough to drive a truck through anytime the government says, 'Well, gee, this can cause harm?'” asked one of the justices.

"It is not as if there's a known assailant out there who says any compounding pharmacy will be attacked. It's not that specific," another justice remarked.

The appeals court has yet to make a ruling in the case.