GOP nominee demands investigation of Clintons
AUSTIN — Coming out swinging over new influence-peddling allegations involving the Clinton Foundation, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday demanded that a special prosecutor should fully investigate rival Hillary Clinton’s involvement.
“It is now abundantly clear that the Clintons set up a business to profit from public office,” Trump told a cheering crowd of an estimated 8,000 that packed the Travis County Exposition Center. “They sold access and specific actions by and to them for money.”
The latest pay-to-play allegations involving the charitable foundation operated by former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state should be investigated by a special prosecutor, Trump said — even though that’s an unlikely option since the Obama administration would have to approve such an inquiry.
“Justice is supposed to be blind. It’s never supposed to be for sale,” Trump said.
Questions about the overlapping ties between the charitable foundation and Democrat Clinton have dogged her campaign.
The Clinton campaign had no immediate response late Tuesday. But the campaign previously has said that controversy over Clinton use of a private email server had no bearing on the foundation’s work, and on Monday Clinton brushed off any concerns about the release of additional emails.
Stands firm on wall
During Tuesday’s hourlong speech, Trump also reiterated his pledge to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and to stop illegal immigration if elected, though he gave no hint of a softening of his call for mass deportations — as he did earlier in the day in an interview with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity.
Trump’s ramped-up calls for an investigation of the Clinton Foundation came Tuesday after the Associated Press disclosed that 55 percent of Hillary Clinton’s non-governmental meetings while she was secretary of state were with foundation donors whose contributions to the foundation totaled at least $156 million.
“If our secretary of state can be bought or bribed, or sell or trade government favors, then the whole American system is threatened,” Trump told the crowd, as they cheered “Jail for Clinton.”
“The new revelations about Hillary Clinton email scandal make clear why we have only seen the tip of the iceberg,” Trump said. “Hillary Clinton is desperate to cover up her crimes. That’s why she deleted 33,000 emails. That’s why she lied repeatedly to Congress and the American public.”
In addition, Trump asserted that that the payto-play atmosphere “was more than a business. It was a continuing big time criminal enterprise.”
Only once during his speech, though, did he refer to her as “Crooked Hillary Clinton,” as he did during the primary.
At the rally, though, the crowd in Democratic-controlled Austin — the “blueberry in the tomato soup that is Texas,” as GOP officials like to call it — seemed to care less about his shift on immigration than they did about defeating Clinton.
Trump also hammered Clinton and President Barack Obama over the unaddressed high rate of murders of African-American youths, and for continuing social policies that keep blacks oppressed by poverty.
“Black crime is the legacy of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton,” he said, in an appeal for black voters to abandon their tradition alliance to the Democratic Party and vote for him in November.
The question to Black America is, Trump said at one point: “What do you have to lose in trying Trump — I will fix it.”
Trump also said his campaign is about “re-declaring our independence of our country — independent from special interests, corrupt politics, corrupt politicians and a system that benefits only the insiders.”
Boisterous supporters
Supporters came from as far away as San Angelo, Houston, Tyler and Corpus Christi — many of whom said they are voting for the New York tycoon because they are fed up. Included in the crowd were Hispanics who said they supported his call for immigration reform, even deportations if necessary.
Many supporters said border security and Trump’s wall are key reasons they like him. Some said they are glad he may be reconsidering his call for mass deportations.
“He was right, but it was harsh,” said Dallas resident Gloria Gallego, 31. “A lot of law-abiding families who have been here for years could be deported. He can listen and change.”
Many said they are drawn to Trump solely because they want to vote against a failed American political system that Clinton represents.
“Anybody but Hillary as far as I’m concerned,” said Jack Kenton, 44, of Killeen. “The political system in this country is rotten, and Hillary Clinton is the head of that rottenness.”
Buda residents Shirley and Dick Folger, one of several couples who came to the rally attired in prison stripes wearing Bill and Hillary Clinton labels, agreed.
“She should be in prison, not in the White House,” she said. “The corrupt political system has to end.”
For more than an hour before Trump arrived, speakers whipped up the crowd with the contention that the Obama administration paid a ransom to Iran for hostages, by blasting Obama for not visiting Louisiana after the floods, as Trump did, and that Hillary Clinton has repeatedly lied.
If the show inside the Travis County Expo Center was an entertaining show, so was the scene outside. Protesters waving “Love Trumps Hate” and “Inbreds 4 Trump” were countered by supporters waving ones reading, “Build that wall” and “Hillary for prison.”