BuzzFeed News reporters Ruby Cramer, Adrian Carrasquillo, Darren Sands, Rosie Gray, McKay Coppins, Tarini Parti, and Bim Adewunmi are at the debate in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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(Georgia Department of Corrections via AP)

Nearly twenty years after Gregory Paul Lawler shot and killed an Atlanta police officer and wounded another, the state of Georgia is preparing to execute him.

Lawler and his girlfriend were drinking at a bar in October 1997. They left the bar and had some sort of altercation in a parking lot, according to court records. Officers John Sowa and Patricia Cocciolone approached the couple, and Lawler ran home.

The two police officers escorted Lawler's girlfriend home, where they again encountered Lawler.

"Get the fuck away from my door," Lawler said, according to court records. After his girlfriend entered the apartment, Lawler tried to shut the door on the officers — but Sowa put his hand up to stop the door.

Lawler grabbed an AR-15 rifle he had placed next to the door and fired penetrator bullets that could pierce the bullet-proof vests the officers were wearing. He instantly killed Sowa and wounded Cocciolone.

After a six-hour stand-off, a hostage negotiator convinced Lawler to surrender.

Lawler's attorneys asked the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant clemency, arguing that a new diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder helps to explain Lawler's erratic behavior and testimony. But on Tuesday, the board denied the request.

Lawler's attorneys have told BuzzFeed News they currently are asking state courts to intervene as well.

Provided they or federal courts do not step in, this will be Georgia's seventh execution this year — tying Texas. No other state has carried out multiple executions this year.

The state uses a single drug called pentobarbital supplied by an anonymous compounding pharmacy that mixes the drug.

Via cnn.com

Ivanka Trump on Wednesday called her father’s comments about women that were caught on a leaked Access Hollywood tape “crude” and “a bit jarring,” but said they were not consistent with the man she knows.

"That's not language consistent with any conversation I've ever had with him, certainly, or any conversation I've overheard," she said at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit. “So it was a bit jarring for me to hear.”

In the 2005 recording, Donald Trump describes trying to seduce a married woman and getting away with sexual misconduct, including grabbing women “by the pussy,” because of his fame while on a bus with host Billy Bush. As they approach a Days of Our Lives actress, Bush shouts, “Yes, the Donald has scored!”

"He recognizes it was crude language," Ivanka Trump said of her father. "He was embarrassed that he had said those things and he apologized."

Ivanka Trump’s comments come just days after Melania Trump defended her husband’s comments as “boy talk” that got out of hand after he was “egged on” by Bush.

“Sometimes I say I have two boys at home,” she told CNN's Anderson Cooper. “I have my young son and I have my husband. I know how some men talk and that’s how I saw it.”

Multiple women have come forward with allegations of misconduct since the recording was made public, and Trump denied ever having made unwanted sexual advances.

Bush, meanwhile, was officially fired by NBC after initially being suspended from hosting duties at Today.

LINK: Howard Stern Says Trump’s Vulgar Remarks Were Not “Locker Room Talk”

Mark Ralston / AP

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both accused each other of being puppets for the Russian government during a heated exchange about WikiLeaks at Wednesday's presidential debate.

The exchange came while Clinton was responding to a question about open borders. After saying that she wants a global energy market, Clinton slammed WikiLeaks for getting information from Russian hackers.

"What's really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans," Clinton said, adding that the Russians then gave that information to WikiLeaks "for the purpose of putting it on the internet."

Clinton later asked if Trump would "admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this and make it clear that he will not have the help of Putin in this election."

Trump initially deflected Clinton's challenge to reject the alleged Russian hack, instead repeatedly insisting that Clinton wants open borders. However, when Clinton referenced Trump moments later and said Putin would "rather have a puppet as president of the United States," the Republican nominee fired back.

"You're the puppet," he said.

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Clinton then continued her attack, saying that Trump "encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line," adding that it is an "unprecedented situation" to have a foreign government attempt to "interfere in our election."

Trump responded by slamming Clinton's record and calling into question whether the Russians really were behind hacks that ultimately provided information to WikiLeaks.

"I don't know Putin," Trump said. "I never met Putin. This is not my best friend. But if the United States got along with Russia, wouldn't be so bad. Putin has outsmarted her and Obama at every single step of the way."

Donald Trump at a presidential debate Wednesday night in Las Vegas

Mark Ralston / AP

Donald Trump repeatedly insisted at Wednesday night's debate in Las Vegas that the presidential election is rigged, and refused to say that he would ultimately accept the results regardless of the outcome.

Debate moderator Chris Wallace asked the Republican nominee if he would "absolutely accept the result of this election."

"I will look at it at the time," Trump responded.

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The candidate then doubled down on his claim that the election is rigged, a growing talking point at his recent campaign rallies, accusing the media of being biased against him, and saying there are "millions of people that are registered to vote that should not be registered to vote."

Trump also claimed the election is rigged because his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, "should not be allowed to run."

"She is guilty of a very, very serious crime," Trump said, adding a moment later that "I say it is rigged, because she should never, Chris, she should never have been allowed to run for the presidency based on what she did with emails and so many other things."

Wallace then noted the tradition of a "peaceful transition of power" after presidential elections. When Wallace asked if Trump would honor that tradition, Trump hedged.

"What I'm saying, I will tell you at the time," he said. "I will keep you in suspense."

Clinton responded, calling Trump's comments "horrifying."

"This is a mindset," Clinton said. "This is how Donald thinks. And it's funny but it's also really troubling. That is not the way our democracy works. We've been around for 240 years, we've had free and fair elections, we've accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them, and that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election."

He was mostly right about Hillary and the wall, though!

Pool / Getty Images

Donald Trump falsely claimed during Wednesday’s debate that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) endorsed him for president, but it was the union and not the federal agency who endorsed him. Trump has made the false statement many times since September when the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council endorsed him. The union represents 7,600 ICE officers, agents, and employees working for the federal agency.

During Wednesday’s debate, Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton also wants to erect a huge wall along the US-Mexico border as Trump has famously been calling for since the early days of his campaign.

“Hillary Clinton wanted the wall. Hillary Clinton fought for the wall. In 2006 or thereabouts,” Trump said. “Now she never gets anything done so naturally the wall wasn’t built, but Hillary Clinton wanted the wall.”

The statement was partly true because Clinton did vote for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which approved the construction of about 700 miles of fence along the border. But that fence is was much cheaper than the wall Trump is calling for.

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Adrian Carrasquillo

NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nevada — They came for Mexican ranchera legend Vicente Fernandez and norteño band Los Tigres del Norte, packing an amphitheater in North Las Vegas, but the hundreds of Latinos in the crowd also got a front row seat to watch Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have their long-awaited clash on immigration in the final presidential debate.

And then to see Clinton herself.

The immigration issue, one central to Trump’s rise that has also cratered his approval with Latinos, had been surprisingly absent from the first two presidential debates, and only mentioned in the vice presidential debate.

Trump led with his well-worn lines, calling for the wall along the southern border — which had crowd at the Clinton watch party whistling and jeering him — and said Clinton supports open borders and amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

He took a page, too, from Clinton’s campaign, which had previously put people in the crowd during previous debates and then mentioned them by four people in the audience whose relatives were killed by undocumented immigrants. Of his controversial call for millions of deportations, Trump said bad people in the country have to go and he will make a determination on the rest.

“But we have some bad hombres here, and we're going to get them out,” he said.

Trump senior advisor A.J. Delgado, as she has previously, said Clinton is the radical on immigration.

“It was particularly powerful when Mr. Trump pointed out that Hillary has no specific plan for protecting the border,” she said, echoing what moderator Chris Wallace said, and acknowledging the widening gulf of immigration policy between the two parties. “It is key to underscore exactly how radical her immigration position is."

Clinton does call for border security efforts as part of a larger package to address immigration.

But Clinton began with a familiar tactic — she invoked Karla Ortiz, a young girl in the crowd who came to prominence and spoke at the Democratic convention after she broke down while asking Clinton a question on stopping the deportation of her parents during a Nevada campaign event in the primary, which later led to an effective ad.

Ortiz served as an example for Clinton of not just the 11 million undocumented immigrants potentially subject to deportation, but also of the 4 million US citizen children of people in the country illegally.

“And you're right I don't want to rip families apart,” Clinton said. “I don't want to be sending parents away from children. I don't want to see the deportation force that Donald has talked about in action in our country.”

At the debate watch party, Fabian Cordero, a 20-year-old student at the College of Southern Nevada clad in a white, red, and green shirt emblazoned with MEXICO across the front said he was waiting to hear about immigration from Trump and Clinton because it’s a personal issue for him. Coming from a mixed-status family, his mother is US resident and his father is a citizen but he has uncles in the country illegally.

“I don’t believe in deporting anyone with no papers for no reason, that’s going to cause more harm,” Cordero said as he watched the debate. “The wall is unrealistic; there’s no way you can do that.”

Clinton slammed Trump for talking about the wall but not mentioning it when he had a meeting with the Mexican president.

“He choked and then got into a Twitter war because the Mexican president said we're not paying for that wall,” she said, as the watch party audience whooped and laughed, with even Trump appearing to enjoy the Trumpian insult.

After the debate, the party began, including speeches from Catherine Cortez-Masto, running to become the first Latina U.S. Senator and Ruben Kihuen, running for Congress in Las Vegas.

Performing songs like “Mis dos patrias,” an examination of dual American and Mexican identity, Los Tigres del Norte urged the crowd that “si no votamos, no contamos” — if we don’t vote, we don’t count.

Vicente Fernandez came out, not to sing, but to make the case that this election is the most historic one for the Latino community. “They say there are two choices — but there is only one choice,” he said, reading from prepared remarks, and crucially, mentioning the date when early voting begins.

The crowd loudly chanted his nickname “Chente!” but at one point those cheers mixed with chants of “Hillary!” too.

With “estoy contigo” signs in the crowd, Clinton reiterated her commitment to an immigration solution but also said half of undocumented immigrants pay taxes.

“That means you pay more to support this country than Donald Trump pays!” she said, in a message not just to Latinos but to immigrant families in the crowd.

Earlier, a host for the event, singer Jean Carlos laid out the stakes, calling for Latinos to vote and stressing a message of unity.

“When the story is told in the future, I hope it’s said that we came out to vote in a major way,” he said in Spanish, whipping up the crowd and stressing that while Latinos may speak Spanish with different accents, they should all unite and vote.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

LAS VEGAS — In an unprecedented act of defiance for a major-party presidential nominee, Donald Trump outright said he might not accept the results of next month’s election.

Trump has been forcefully making the case to his supporters in recent weeks that America’s political system is “rigged” against him, from the media to the voting booths. Asked during Wednesday’s debate if he would commit to accepting the election’s results, Trump demurred.

“I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense, OK?” Trump said, after being pressed repeatedly for a response.

Hillary Clinton immediately pounced, calling Trump's answer “horrifying.”

“That is not the way our democracy works,” she said. “We’ve been around for 240 years. We’ve had free and fair elections. We’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. And that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election.” (Later, aboard her plane and flanked by her top advisers, she told reporters that it was an effort "to blame somebody else for his campaign.")

Trump’s response to moderator Chris Wallace was consistent with the stay-tuned strategy he’s employed throughout this election. By promising to leave the world “in suspense” on such a high-stakes question as whether he will challenge US election results, Trump has created a dramatic cliffhanger that will keep the spotlight firmly on him in the final weeks of the race. And if he does concede on election night, Trump will no doubt expect credit for the decision — thus transforming an electoral tradition widely taken for granted into an act of supreme statesmanship that deserves special praise.

Still, Trump's comments set off a firestorm in the immediate aftermath of the debate. On TV, the conversation immediately turned to candidacies already lost (John Kerry and Al Gore) and in Vegas, Trump campaign surrogates in the post-debate spin room moved quickly to defend their candidate. Some pointed to the 2000 Florida recount as precedent for contesting an election, while others cited potential voter fraud as cause for alarm.

Trump, they all said, was demanding a “free and fair election.”

“If the election is too close, of course he wouldn’t accept it,” said Rudy Giuliani. “Al Gore didn’t accept it, did he? He went to court over it. … Peaceful transfer of power is important, but the accuracy of the election, as Al Gore pointed out, is even more important.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, another firm Trump ally who has flirted with the idea that the election is rigged in recent days, insisted the candidate would not challenge the results for “light or transient reasons.”

“He’s just saying, ‘I’m not giving up my rights’ … He feels strongly that there are things going on out there that worry him. And we do have voter fraud. There’s no doubt about this,” Sessions said.

He continued, “You honor the results of an election, yes, but you have every right not to accept the vote total if you think it’s fraudulent, or an error.”

Campaign strategist Sarah Huckabee Sanders said even if there isn’t evidence of rampant voter fraud, it could take “several days” for Trump to concede, as he waits for every last vote to be tallied.

Several of Trump’s top advisers and surrogates became visibly irritated Wednesday night as reporters pummeled them with questions about their candidate’s comments.

Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway pointedly refused to address questions about Trump’s “rigged” rhetoric during a spin-room gaggle, dismissing it as a media obsession that most debate viewers didn’t care about. “Mr. Trump will accept the results of the election because he will win the election,” she said.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, meanwhile, grew combative when reporters asked him if he believed the election was rigged. “I think that there is voter fraud out there, don’t you? I ask you, what do you think? Do you think there’s voter fraud? You’ve been a journalist for long enough to have watched this, haven’t you?”

“Do you think one person voting illegally is OK?” Perry asked.

In an MSNBC interview after Wednesday’s debate, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Preibus said he expected that Trump would ultimately accept the results of the election, but also suggested there was reason to be skeptical of the outcome.

“I know where he’s coming from,” said Priebus. “He is obsessed — and in some ways rightfully so — about vote fraud, and he believes he’s been totally mistreated by the media. … So I think people are obsessing over this issue and I don’t think you’re gonna get Republicans to back down on the fact that voter fraud is real and it needs to be dealt with.”

The RNC itself would honor the results, senior adviser Sean Spicer said.

"I cannot speak for what he thinks," he said of Trump, but, "I'm telling you that I think we're going to win this election and it won't be an issue."

Ruby Cramer contributed reporting.

Joel Page / Reuters

Paul LePage, the governor of Maine and a Donald Trump ally, slammed the nominee on Thursday for not committing to accept the election results at last night's debate.

Although LePage said he did not watch the debate, when told of Trump's comments on a Maine radio show, he responded that it was "an absolute stupid move. Period." LePage advised Trump to "take your licks and let's move on four years."

"Not accepting the results, I think, is a stupid comment. I mean, c'mon. Get over yourself," LePage said.

He added, however, that he agreed with Trump that he agreed things are rigged in Clinton's favor. "You've got the inside Beltway people and the media, how you going to win?"

The Maine governor also said "I find [Clinton] vile" for hacked WikiLeaks emails that appeared to show campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri joking about Catholics. "I resent that woman," he said in reference to Clinton.

So. Awkward.

Frank Franklin Ii / AP

Donald Trump delivered a stinging speech Thursday night at what was supposed to be a light-hearted charity event with a series of personal attacks on Hillary Clinton, drawing boos from the audience.

Both Trump and Clinton spoke in New York City at the white-tie Al Smith Dinner, a Catholic fundraiser during which the candidates traditionally make jokes about each other and share a stage one last time before the election. This year's dinner came just a day after the two candidates faced off during a heated debate in Las Vegas.

Trump spoke first at Thursday's event and initially landed several jokes that drew big laughs, including one that riffed on his frequent claim that Clinton is "crooked."

"We have proven that we can actually be civil to each other," Trump said. "In fact, just before taking the dais Hillary accidentally bumped into me and she very civilly said, 'Pardon me.'"

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Trump later jokingly complained that first lady Michelle Obama gave a speech and received widespread praise.

"My wife gives the exact same speech and people get on her case," Trump said, referring to a controversy over a speech Melania delivered at the Republican National Convention. "And I don’t get it. I don’t know why."

But Trump's comments appeared to increasingly cross the line with the audience as the speech continued.

"We've learned so much from WikiLeaks," he said. "For example, Hillary believes that it is vital to deceive the people by having one public policy and a totally different policy in private."

The line drew boos from the audience. "That's OK, I don't know who they're angry at, Hillary, you or I. For example, here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics."

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Steele at a debate last year.

Ethan Miller / Getty Images

Michael Steele, who led the Republican Party from 2009 to 2011, became the latest senior Republican figure to say he would not vote for Donald Trump.

"I will not be voting for Clinton," Steele told a dinner in honor of the 40th anniversary of the progressive magazine Mother Jones in San Francisco Friday. "I will not be voting for Trump either."

Steele, a former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, said that Trump has "captured that racist underbelly, that frustration, that angry underbelly of American life and gave voice to that."

"I was damn near puking during the debates," Steele said, adding that he believes Trump only represents 30% of the Republican Party.

Steele is the third former Republican National Committee Chairman to say he won't support Trump; the others are Marc Racicot and Mel Martinez.

The current RNC Chairman, Reince Priebus, in 2012 made bringing minority voters into the Republican Party a central goal. He has supported Trump.

Jim Young / Reuters

During his 2000 consideration of a presidential run, Donald Trump marveled at how "brilliantly" Adolf Hitler seized power during what was reportedly a pretty surreal visit to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

Dana Milbank, then a reporter for the New Republic, followed Trump as he was exploring entering the 2000 presidential race on the Reform Party ticket. As part of a trip to California, Trump toured the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Holocaust remembrance museum named after the famed Nazi hunter.

As Trump visited exhibits dedicated to Bosnia, Rwanda, and the Holocaust, he "seemed detached, focusing his attention on the presentation rather than the content," Milbank wrote:

As part of his California trip, Trump toured the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where he was led from one disturbing display to another: hate speech, Bosnia, Rwanda, the civil rights struggle, the Holocaust. But Trump seemed detached, focusing his attention on the presentation rather than the content. Shown a video of a racial confrontation, he remarked: "Good actors." He spent an hour or so wandering around the exhibits, muttering "fabulous" and "unbelievable" and "brilliant execution" and "extraordinary" and "outstanding." The mood was occasionally broken by Roger Stone's telephone, which played the "Grande Valse" whenever there was a call.

After a guide asked the TV cameras to leave, Trump quickened his pace, galloping through the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust in about three minutes. Rejoined by the cameras, Trump slowed down and was handed a guest book to sign. He paused thoughtfully, as if searching for the perfect sentiment, then scribbled two words in the book: "great work!" He underlined "great" three times and dotted his exclamation point with a loop.

At the end of the stop, Trump compared the "racist" views of his Reform Party rival Pat Buchanan to Hitler. "But even here Trump sounded like a developer," Milbank commented. "He marveled that Hitler came to power 'so brilliantly.'"

AP images

Salma Hayek claimed that Donald Trump pursued her while she had a boyfriend, asked her on a date, and then — angry at being rejected — planted a National Enquirer story about her being too short for him, in an interview on a nationally syndicated Spanish-language radio show that aired Friday.

Hayek, a Hillary Clinton surrogate, began by arguing that Trump was bad for the Latino community and extolled Clinton's virtues, before the host of El Show del Mandril on Radio Centro 93.9 in Los Angeles asked her opinion on the number of women who have come forward alleging that Trump sexually assaulted them.

She said she believed the allegations.

"When I met that man, I had a boyfriend, and he tried to become his friend to get my home telephone number," she said, describing meeting Trump early in her career before she was well-known. "He got my number and he would call me to invite me out."

"When I told him I wouldn’t go out with him even if I didn’t have a boyfriend, [which he took as disrespectful], he called — well, he wouldn't say he called, but someone told the National Enquirer," Hayek continued, adding that she never went out with him.

"Someone told the National Enquirer — I'm not going to say who, because you know that whatever he wants to come out comes out in the National Enquirer. It said that he wouldn’t go out with me because I was too short," she said.

"Later, he called and left me a message. 'Can you believe this? Who would say this? I don't want people to think this about you,'" she said. "He thought that I would try to go out with him so people wouldn't think that's why he wouldn't go out with me."

In July, BuzzFeed News reported that Trump bought a $120,000 luxury trip with Trump Foundation money at a 2008 charity auction that included a dinner with Hayek, but never went on the trip, with tax records showing the donation was made by his foundation, not himself.

Earlier in the interview, she argued that the press hasn't focused enough on the fact that Trump said if Mexico won't pay for his border wall he will stop the flow of money from Mexican-Americans to their families in Mexico as punishment, money that Mexicans use to eat.

"That’s gravely serious," she said. "People don’t know about this. Even if you’re here legally, a US citizen, you wouldn’t be able to send money."

Nathaniel Meyersohn contributed to this report.

Here is the interview in Spanish:

Jim Cole / AP

Vice President Joe Biden said he wished he were in high school so he could take Donald Trump "behind the gym," suggesting he would beat up the Republican presidential nominee for his vulgar comments about women.

"The press always ask me, don't I wish I were debating him," Biden said during a rally for Hillary Clinton Friday in Pennsylvania. "No, I wish we were in high school, I could take him behind the gym. That's what I wish."

Biden was criticizing Trump's comments that were recorded in 2005 inside an Access Hollywood bus and leaked earlier this month.

Trump apologized for the comments and dismissed it as "locker room talk," but shortly afterward a series of women went public with allegations that Trump groped them or forced himself on them.

Trump and his campaign have denied those allegations.

On Friday, Biden tore into the Republican nominee at the rally, criticizing not just his comments about groping, but Trump's comments that he could because he was a celebrity.

"But it's more than that. 'Because I'm famous. Because I'm a star, because I'm a billionaire I can do things other people can't,'" Biden said angrily. "What a disgusting assertion for anyone to make."

Watch his comments here:

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Donald Trump supporter and aspiring Massachusetts senator Curt Schilling asked CNN's Jake Tapper Friday how Jews can support Democrats, prompting the host to twice insist that he doesn't "speak for Jews."

Schilling — a former Red Sox pitcher who plans to challenge Elizabeth Warren for her senate seat in 2018 — was on CNN'sThe Lead when he said he assumed Tapper would vote for Hillary Clinton, and not for Trump. Tapper replied that he doesn't vote in presidential elections, prompting Schilling to pose a question to "a person who's practicing the Jewish faith and has since you were young."

"I don't understand, and maybe this is the amateur, non-politician in me, I don't understand how people of Jewish faith can back the Democratic Party, which over the last 50 years has been so clearly anti-Israel, so clearly anti-Jewish Israel," Schilling said.

After Schilling continued for a moment longer, Tapper responded.

"Well, I don't speak for Jews," he said. "And I don't support the Democratic Party or the Republican Party."

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Trapper, who is Jewish, went on to speculate that "one of the reasons many Jews are Democrats has more to do with Democrats' support for social welfare programs and that sort of thing."

"Again, I don't speak for Jews," he added.

Earlier this year, Schilling announced plans to vote for Trump. In the time since, he has become a frequent talking head on cable news, sometimes defending the Republican candidate's gaffes.

Schilling said earlier this week that he plans to challenge Warren when she is up for reelection in 2018.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images

SALT LAKE CITY — Hillary Clinton is making an unprecedented play for the deep-red state of Utah in the final weeks of the presidential race, according to sources involved with the effort.

The Clinton campaign — which first opened a bare-bones office in Salt Lake City over the summer — will add five paid staffers to its operation here by early next week, according to a source in the state party. The campaign is also flying surrogates into Utah, and dipping into its war chest to fund advertising and organizing efforts in the state.

The campaign declined to discuss how much money it would invest in Utah, and two sources with knowledge of the strategy said the total sum would be much smaller than its spending in Arizona, another traditionally conservative state that Clinton is hoping to turn blue.

Still, the campaign believes it has a real shot in this unlikeliest of battleground states, said Marlon Marshall, Clinton's director of state campaigns.

"There is no doubt that Donald Trump's offensive rhetoric has made Utah more competitive than ever before," Marshall told BuzzFeed News, adding, "We are going to make investments to talk to voters and win the state of Utah."

Clinton's team attributes her opening here to Trump's extreme unpopularity with Mormon voters, and with the rise of Evan McMullin, a conservative independent candidate who has split the state's Republican voters. Several recent polls in Utah have shown Clinton, Trump, and McMullin running virtually even in a three-way race.

According to sources close to Clinton, the campaign first seriously discussed contesting Utah — a state that hasn't gone blue in a presidential election since 1964 — after she published an op-ed in the Deseret News in August. The candidate used her space in the Mormon Church-owned newspaper to tout her record on religious freedom issues as secretary of state. The op-ed received widespread praise in Utah for its savvy appeal to Mormon voters, and a surprisingly sophisticated knowledge of the faith's history and culture. Not long after, the campaign announced the formation of a "Mormons for Hillary" group.

Clinton's team plans to continue its pitch to the state's LDS voters in the final weeks of the election. Steve Piece, a Washington-based Democratic strategist who is Mormon, is joining the campaign to run communications in Utah. And this weekend, former Sen. Larry Pressler — a Republican who converted to Mormonism last year — will campaign for Clinton across the state.

At the same time, the Clinton campaign appears determined to rally its progressive base in the state. On Friday afternoon, Gloria Steinem held a rally for Clinton in Salt Lake City.

Justin Merriman / Getty Images

The Heritage Foundation is cold-emailing potential candidates to serve in a potential Donald Trump administration, according to a copy of one of the emails obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The influential conservative think tank sent out a questionnaire to potential candidates without specifically mentioning Trump but instead referring to the “next presidential administration.” The email says candidates are being recruited as part of Heritage's "Restore America Project."

The email links to a Google Forms questionnaire that asks candidates about their job experience and which parts of the federal government they would like to serve in.

Several people with ties to Heritage are working on Trump's transition team, including former Reagan attorney general Ed Meese, a fellow at Heritage, as well as Ed Feulner, Heritage's former president. Their presence and that of other traditional conservative interests within the Trump transition team, Politico recently reported, has created tension with operatives aligned with Gov. Chris Christie, who is also involved in the transition.

Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint has been largely silent this election, as noted in a recent Washingtonian story, but the organization at large has been influential and controversial within the conservative movement and Republican Party. Spurred on by the nonprofit’s political arm, Heritage became more outwardly political — and often adversarial to Republican leadership — in recent years.

A Heritage spokesman declined to comment.

The body of the email obtained by BuzzFeed News:

The Heritage Foundation’s Restore America Project (RAP) has built an impressive roster of conservatives for potential service in the next presidential administration – receiving recommendations from right-minded Americans from across the country.

You have been recommended. Now, I need to assess your interest in serving as a presidential appointee in an administration that will promote conservative principles.

Please submit your information by completing the RAP Candidate Form linked here: Restore America Candidate Form.

Once you’ve completed the form and click “SUBMIT” your information will automatically download into our system confirming your interest.

Additionally, send your current resume, bio or CV to me at RestoreAmerica@Heritage.org by COB Wednesday, October 26th. Your timely response is appreciated.

I stand ready to address your questions via email at [redacted]@Heritage.org.

RIGHT On!

Respectfully,

Vicki

P.S. Here is a link to the famed “Plum Book” – http://www.fdsys.gov. It’s a bit overwhelming, but a good resource to identify specific appointments. Type “Plum Book” into the search engine once you’re in the site.

Parts of the questionnaire are included below:

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

GETTYSBURG, Pennsylvania — Donald Trump’s speech in the historic town where the Union won a decisive battle in the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln gave the famous Gettysburg Address, was billed as a major policy address outlining his plan for his first 100 days in office.

“Trump's Gettysburg speech will be the most decisive break with the corrupt establishment in modern times. He is detailed and decisive,” Newt Gingrich tweeted shortly before the speech.

“Tomorrow’s speech will set the tone for the closing arguments of this election,” Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller said in a statement on Friday.

But Trump spent much of the speech railing against the media, comparing his crowd sizes to Hillary Clinton’s, claiming the system is rigged, and threatening to sue the women who have accused him of sexual assault and harassment — one of the only new proposals Trump made during the speech. The speech illustrated Trump’s retrenchment to his base in the last weeks of the election, and his preoccupation with retribution against perceived enemies.

The policy portion of the speech was mostly a list of by-now familiar Trump proposals like building a southern border wall, renegotiating or withdrawing from trade deals, and labeling China a currency manipulator.

“The system is totally rigged and broken,” Trump said near the beginning of his speech. He then started talking about voter fraud, which he claims is widespread and has repeatedly mentioned on the trail recently as evidence that the election is being rigged against him.

“A big part of the rigging of this election is the fact that Hillary is being allowed to run despite having broken so many laws on so many different occasions,” Trump said. At one point, a “lock her up” chant broke out among the small audience of local supporters.

Trump gave familiar refrains about the “dishonest media,” accusing them of inventing stories and downplaying the large size of his rallies.

“They lie and fabricate stories to make a candidate that is not their preferred choice look as bad and even dangerous as possible,” Trump said. “At my rallies they never show or talk about the massive crowd size and try to diminish all of our events. On the other hand they don’t show the small size of Hillary’s crowds, but in fact talk about how many people are there.”

Trump spoke against media conglomeration, saying as president he wouldn’t approve a deal like AT&T buying Time Warner and saying of Comcast’s purchase of NBC that “we’ll look at breaking that deal up.”

Most strikingly, Trump vowed to sue the women who have come forward in the wake of the explosive Access Hollywood tape that leaked earlier this month, who have accused him of sexual assault. An 11th accuser is giving a press conference with lawyer Gloria Allred on Saturday. Trump has a history of making legal threats and not following through on them.

“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” Trump said. “Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

When Trump finally pivoted to his ideas for his first 100 days — a plan he is calling a “contract between Donald J. Trump and the American voter” — it was mostly initiatives he has already promised, though Trump did offer more detail on a few proposals, like saying he would enact a hiring freeze on the federal government workforce and pledging to cut off U.S. funding for U.N. climate change programs. Trump also put a finer point on his Muslim ban proposal, which has been watered down over the course of the campaign. Trump presented it in his Gettysburg speech as a proposal to "Suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur.” And Trump said that, while Mexico will still be paying for the wall, the way it will work is that they will “reimburse” the U.S. for the costs of building the wall.

Trump also outlined some ideas for legislation he wants to introduce in Congress, including the “End Illegal Immigration Act” and the “Clean Up Corruption In Washington Act.”

A press release from the campaign sent immediately after its conclusion heralded it as “groundbreaking.”

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Bernie Sanders is a hypocrite, "not a good boss," and "can't work with people to get things done," according to research prepared against him during the Democratic primaries by Hillary Clinton's campaign.

The extensive opposition research, or 'oppo,' was contained within a Nov. 5, 2015, email sent to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, which was published this week by WikiLeaks.

The hacking of Podesta's emails follows a wave of attacks on the email of prominent political figures and operatives that US officials have connected to Russia and Russian interest in influencing the election.

Many campaigns prepare research against their opponents, but the release of the documents comes as Democrats continue to try to unify in opposition to Donald Trump after a bruising primary battle between Clinton and Sanders.

The 2015 email, from Clinton research director Tony Carrk, included six attachments, containing more than 1,000 pages of research on Sanders, who at the time was rising in the polls.

One of the documents, called "Sanders Top Hits," included a lengthy section on the Vermont senator's "bad record on guns," an issue on which Clinton would repeatedly criticize her opponent during the primaries.

The document also includes sections describing him as being "at odds" with key Democrat constituencies, including women, black people, Latinos, and the LGBT community.

"While claiming be a champion on issues of equality, Sanders has not been a leader on issues most important to women, African Americans and Latinos, and has said that issues of race and gender were secondary to the class struggle," reads another document.

"Sanders has evolved on numerous issues," reads another section, that details his positions on marriage equality, drugs, and the legal liability of gun manufacturers.

Another section accused him of taking past "extreme" positions on taxation and drug legalization.

Read the documents here:

American Media Institute founder and CEO Richard Miniter.

Westminister Institute / Via youtu.be

WASHINGTON — A right-leaning nonprofit has proposed an 11th-hour effort to place news articles critical of HIllary Clinton and other Democrats in black newspapers in the runup to the November election, BuzzFeed News has learned.

The American Media Institute has approached Republican donors to finance the articles, three sources said. They were to run in a nominally apolitical black wire service that serves the black press, the sources said.

One source shared details of the plan with BuzzFeed News out of concern that the proposal “looks like voter suppression,” the source said. The group’s founder, Richard Miniter, adamantly denied that charge. It is also unclear whether any donors have committed to financing the project in the election’s final weeks.

Miniter, a former Washington Times editorial page editor who is CEO and founder of the American Media Institute, has told associates that the that the stories would be distributed by the nonprofit's Urban News Service, adding that the articles would include attacks on Obamacare and on the Clintons’ failures regarding people of color.

Miniter’s pitch, according to a source closely familiar with its details, centers on the prospect of reaching black voters through news articles, rather than obvious opinion pieces or advertisements.

Miniter heatedly denied that his group has any political agenda. He did not respond to more detailed questions about the Urban News Service plan.

“Urban [N]ews does not favor or oppose any candidate for office and its stories do not discuss any candidate for office anywhere in United States,” he wrote in an extended email response to BuzzFeed News, which can be read in full here.

He also suggested that black Republicans were trying to plant a negative story on him because “think that we are somehow trying to compete with them in working on black turnout for the RNC.”

“We are a nonprofit that is trying to raise money from wealthy individuals and foundations. Maybe one of those individuals got confused,” he said. “We have nothing to do with voter turnout or voter suppression or anything to do with voters of any kind.”

Indeed, the Urban News Service website hosts a range of innocuous content with only the gentlest rightward tilt, with headlines like “Indianapolis’ Oaks Schools use student diversity to teach and learn.”

But group’s new plan appears to depart dramatically from that approach, and from Miniter’s description of the venture as apolitical. Along with promising negative coverage of Clinton and Obama, the plan described to BuzzFeed News included explicit references to voters and to key swing states including Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

The suggestion that the Urban News Service could stealthily insert political messages into local newspapers follows a recent controversy over the American Media Institute, Miniter’s parent organization. The liberal group Media Matters accused AMI last week of “duping mainstream media outlets into running its right-wing investigations,” and noted that AMI is itself largely funded by a conservative group. The group’s board of directors also includes conservative luminaries like former Bush aide Richard Perle.

Miniter rejected the accusation of bias, noting that AMI aggressively covered allegations against Trump University during the Republican primary.

“We hit both sides because we are in the news business, not the politics game,” Miniter said.

In any event, the details of the new plan shared with BuzzFeed News suggest a much more direct political agenda than even Media Matters alleged, one linked to the November election.

The plan shared with BuzzFeed News includes an explicit focus on voters in swing states, two sources said, and Miniter was working to raise the money in time for the 2016 election.

The details of Miniter’s ability to deliver on that promise aren’t clear. Miniter told BuzzFeed News the Urban News Service — the proposed vehicle for anti-Clinton and anti-Obama articles — has been providing content to 214 papers for more than 18 months. A black Trump supporter on AMI’s board, Niger Innis, told BuzzFeed News that AMI is pursuing the partnership with the National Newspapers Publishing Association, a nonpartisan trade organization that represents black newspapers all over the country.

Innis, who was involved in the conversations about anti-Clinton articles, also said that Urban News Service is already providing content to 250 outlets including Ebony and Jet.

"We provide them with story and they publish. We're considered an ally,” he said.

A Google search turns up UNS articles on black news outlets ranging from Ebony to the Philadelphia Tribune, Indianapolis Recorder, and Charlotte Post as well as one article on blackpressusa, the NNPA’s website.

However the president and CEO of the NNPA, Dr. Benjamin Chavis Jr., dismissed the suggestion that they would carry content on the NNPA’s newswire written by the AMI’s Urban News Service.

"We don't have a relationship," Chavis told BuzzFeed News.

Chavis said the AMI approached the newspaper publishers group in the last week about whether they could place an "ad buy."

"In my view, there's nothing substantive or concrete on the table,” he said. "You can't buy the black press.”