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No evidence of Russian ‘play’ to help Trump; briefer may have ‘overstated’ intelligence, official says

Contrary to numerous recent media reports, there is no evidence to suggest that Russia is making a specific “play” to boost President Trump’s reelection bid, a U.S. intelligence official told Fox News on Sunday.

In addition, top U.S. election official Shelby Pierson, who briefed Congress on Russian election interference efforts, may have overstated intelligence regarding the issue when speaking to the House Intelligence Committee earlier this month, the source added.

U.S. intelligence officials have publicly testified only that the Russians have been using “information warfare” ahead of the election. Fox News is told Democrats pressed Pierson on whether Russia was trying to help Trump, and accurate context or perspective to her responses failed to emerge.

Intelligence agencies have made great strides in preventing Russian interference this year, Fox News also was told.

Republican lawmakers who were in the Pierson briefing noted that Trump has taken on Russia in numerous ways, one official present told The Associated Press. The White House has opposed Russia’s major proposed pipeline in Germany, provided deadly arms to Ukraine and accused Russia of violating key arms treaties, among other measures.

The whiplash came as fears of Russian intervention have gripped the 2020 presidential race following an unverified report by The New York Times and CNN that Russia wanted to help Trump, which CNN has since walked back.

Then, it was reported that U.S. intelligence officials had briefed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia was trying to help his campaign too, although it was unclear how or why the alleged support for the self-described democratic socialist was occurring.

Pierson told NPR in an interview that aired last month that the Russians “are already engaging in influence operations relative to candidates going into 2020. But we do not have evidence at this time that our adversaries are directly looking at interfering with vote counts or the vote tallies.”

Pierson, appointed in July 2019 by then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, has worked with intelligence agencies including the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to identify anyone seeking to interfere with U.S. elections.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing people familiar with her work, that Pierson “has a reputation for being injudicious with her words and not appreciating the delicate work of corralling federal agencies, technology firms and state election officials to collaborate on election security.”

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Pierson told NPR that the U.S. didn’t know exactly what the Russians were planning, but she said it’s not just a Russia problem. “We’re still also concerned about China, Iran, non-state actors, hacktivists and frankly — certainly for DHS and FBI – even Americans that might be looking to undermine confidence in the elections.”

At an open hearing this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Judiciary Committee that Russia was engaged in “information warfare” heading into the November election, but that law enforcement had not seen efforts to target America’s infrastructure. He said Russia is relying on a covert social media campaign to divide the American public.

Following Sanders’ big win in the Nevada caucuses on Sunday, pundit James Carville declared on MSNBC that Russian President Vladimir Putin was the real winner in the race — a claim that drew mockery online, even as it remained a dominant theme among establishment pundits.

For example, Dan Pfeiffer, a onetime adviser to former President Obama, went so far as to say Sunday that Russians wanted Sanders to win in order to “give Trump the opponent that Trump wants” in November.

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And, CNN national security analyst Asha Rangappa, who briefly served in the FBI before becoming a university admissions officer, asserted that “Russia loves Bernie” because “He, like Trump, plays the ‘us vs. them’ game, and the ‘them’ is anyone who doesn’t support him, personally. It’s destructive, divisive, and encourages disillusionment in our institutions. Sound familiar?”

Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden has alleged that Russia was deploying a Facebook army against him, although he has acknowledged no one in U.S. intelligence informed him of this alleged development.

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Conservatives and left-of-center journalists alike have condemned the vague and unsubstantiated allegations of Russian interference, saying they would sow distrust in candidates and institutions only further — a possible goal of Putin.

“The menacing agency interfering in Our Elections isn’t the KGB/FSB. It’s the CIA,” wrote The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, referring to the leak that Sanders had been briefed weeks earlier about Russian support for his campaign. That leak was reported just hours before the Nevada caucuses began.

The Intercept last year compiled a list of media failures and false reports concerning Russian efforts.

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Added journalist Aaron Mate, referring to Pfeiffer’s remarks: “This captures why Russiagate fear-mongering was never about a real threat, or about stopping Trump. It was about defending the privilege of neoliberals who lost to Trump in 2016. Bernie is now their biggest threat, so Russiagate is deployed once more.”

“You should simply write off anyone in the media who’d run wild with a new evidence-free ‘Russian interference’ story at this point,” said commentator Michael Tracey. “Such journalists and pundits deserve contempt, mockery, and anger for ‘undermining our democracy.’ THEY are the ones ‘sowing discord.'”

“Another misinformation campaign is being launched by Democrats in Congress saying that Russia prefers me to any of the Do Nothing Democrat candidates who still have been unable to, after two weeks, count their votes in Iowa. Hoax number 7!” Trump tweeted last week, responding to the initial reports.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Buttigieg flags ‘irregularities’ in Nevada caucuses, but state party pushes back

Citing “irregularities” in vote results, Pete Buttigieg’s campaign questioned his third-place finish in Nevada’s caucuses and called for the state’s Democrats to release a more detailed breakdown of votes and address reports of more than 200 problems allocating votes Saturday.

The request from the campaign of the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., came just weeks after the debacle of the Iowa caucuses, which were derailed by unclear and inconsistent results. But, the Nevada State Democratic Party suggested that Buttigieg’s campaign seek a recount if it wanted to challenge results.

In a letter sent to the state party late Saturday night and provided to Fox News on Sunday, the Buttigieg campaign claimed the process of integrating four days of early voting into in-person caucuses held Saturday was “plagued with errors and inconsistencies.”

Campaign officials also said they received reports that volunteers running caucuses did not appear to follow rules that could have allowed candidates to pick up more support on second rounds of voting.

READ THE BUTTIGIEG LETTER RIGHT NOW

The Buttigieg campaign called for the party to release more details from the votes, including a breakdown of early votes cast by home precincts.

“First, release early vote and in-person vote totals by precinct. … Second, correct any outstanding second alignment errors identified by presidential campaigns, including ours. … Third, explain anomalies in the data,” the letter read.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won Nevada’s caucuses, with former Vice President Joe Biden a distant second and Buttigieg in third.

“Currently our data shows that this is a razor-thin margin for second place in Nevada, and due to irregularities and a number of unresolved questions we have raised with the Nevada Democratic Party, it’s unclear what the final results will be,” Buttigieg’s deputy campaign manager Hari Sevugan said in a statement.

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Nearly 75,000 people cast votes during four days of early caucus voting — almost as many Democrats who participated in Nevada’s 2016 caucuses. Their votes, cast at sites anywhere in the county, had to be routed by the party back to each voter’s home precinct and added to the in-person votes cast Saturday by neighbors.

Buttigieg’s campaign claimed it received more than 200 reports of problems merging the early votes, including cases in which the early votes weren’t used, were read incorrectly or the wrong early vote data matching another precinct was used to calculate whether a candidate had enough support.

The claim matched that of a Biden campaign precinct captain who told The Associated Press he witnessed two precincts on Saturday where caucus organizers announced midway through that they had switched the vote numbers for the precincts, before switching them back and forth at least four times.

State party spokeswoman Molly Forgey said the Democrats were continuing to verify and report results and would not offer a more detailed breakdown than they already planned to provide.

“We laid out our early vote and Caucus Day processes step by step and we communicated these processes to all campaigns,” Forgey told Fox News. “We are continuing to verify and to report results. We never indicated we would release a separate breakdown of early vote and in-person attendees by precinct and will not change our reporting process now. As laid out in our recount guidance, there is a formal method for requesting a challenge of results.”

DID REAGAN WARN OF BERNIE SANDERS?

According to the party’s rules, any request for a recount must be filed by 5 p.m. Monday.

The Buttigieg campaign did not immediately comment on whether it intended to seek a recount.

Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Biden claims Russian bots were attacking him on Facebook

Joe Biden claimed in an interview televised Sunday that Russians had spent a “lot of money” on bots to go on Facebook and claim that “Biden is a bad guy” — before later acknowledging that the information came not from the intelligence community, but secondhand from his own staff.

The former vice president’s assertion came amid heightened concerns over potential Russian interference in the White House race, following recent reports that intelligence officials told Sen. Bernie Sanders how Russia may have wanted to help his campaign. The information has sparked confusion, especially after CNN urged caution on previous reports claiming the Russians aimed to help President Trump’s reelection campaign.

“I’m the person most likely to beat Trump,” Biden told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” anchor Margaret Brennan.”The Russians don’t want me to be the nominee. They spent a lot of money on bots on Facebook and they’ve been taken down, saying Biden is a bad guy. They don’t want Biden running. They’re not — no one’s helping me to try to get the nomination. They have good reason.”

Pressed on the matter, Biden replied, “I have not spoken to the intelligence community, but I think the intelligence community should inform the rest of us who are running what they told Senator Sanders. .. I was told that there are a lot of bots on Facebook, and they’ve been all taken down. … Fake accounts, yes, and they’re taken down, but I — I don’t know who — I didn’t get a call from Facebook, but I was told by my — my staff that’s what happened.”

“I didn’t get a call from Facebook, but I was told by my — my staff that’s what happened.”

— Joe Biden, on alleged Russian bot attacks

Biden went on to suggest, seemingly as conjecture, that “the people that occupied my [campaign] office … maybe they were Russians. I don’t know, but they — they said they were Bernie supporters.”

Separately in the interview, Biden defended the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s 2016 election interference, even though the bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee faulted Obama’s actions earlier this year.

DID BIDEN JUST MAKE UP DRAMATIC ARREST ON WAY TO SEE MANDELA?

“Not at all,” Biden told Brennan when asked whether he agreed with the report’s conclusions. “Look, we went out and went to the committee, went to the Republican leadership and said, ‘Look, this is what we have.’ I didn’t, but the intelligence community did. ‘This is what we have. Why don’t you join us in condemning what’s happening?’ And, the Republican leader of Senate said, ‘No, I want no part of it- joining in what is happening.’ And, everything that came up subsequently to that reinforced what we were saying was going on.”

BIDEN VOWS RESURGENCE AFTER MAJOR SANDERS WIN IN NEVADA

The bipartisan Senate report found that the Obama White House “was not well postured” to handle the matter, and “atypically” restricted discussions on the interference to a small cadre of aides.

“The committee found that the decisions to limit and delay the information flow regarding the 2016 Russian active measures campaign, while understandable, inadvertently constrained the administration’s ability to respond,” the report read.

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., told NPR: “I think the Obama administration, with the benefit of hindsight, should have acted more aggressively.”

OOPS: BIDEN CLAIMS LATE SON WAS US ATTORNEY GENERAL

Asked whether there were lessons for the Trump administration in the report, Biden responded curtly, “Look, this administration is incapable of learning elections.”

Meanwhile, Biden also said he “feels good” about his 2020 election chances, even though he has fallen well behind Sanders in the race for the presidential nomination.

“I don’t know,” Biden said, when asked if he could stop Sanders. “It’s not about who I stop. It’s why I’m running, why I’m telling the people that I should be the next president and why I’m the best guy to beat Trump.”

The Feb. 29 South Carolina primary would afford Biden the chance to stage a comeback, given his strong — but apparently declining — support among black voters there.

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Biden has finished a disappointing fourth in the Iowa caucuses and fifth in the New Hampshire primary, but buoyed by support from black voters, claimed a second-place finish in Saturday’s Nevada Caucuses.

Less than two-thirds of precincts had reported results, however. According to the incomplete figures as of early Sunday afternoon, Sanders’ 46 percent of the vote towered over Biden’s 19.6 percent, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s 15.3 percent and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 10.1 percent.

Trump says Sanders will be Dem nominee ‘unless they cheat him’

In comments made on the South Lawn of the White House Sunday, President Trump told reporters that he thinks Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders will be the Democratic presidential nominee unless the Democratic Party bends the rules to block his nomination.

Many Sanders supporters felt the Democratic establishment favored the party’s 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, during that year’s primary contest and are concerned something similar could happen in 2020 to tip the scales against the democratic socialist senator. Sanders, however, has jumped out to be the clear front-runner, winning New Hampshire and Nevada while still competing with former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg for first in Iowa’s yet-to-be-decided caucuses.

“I think it was a great win for Bernie Sanders. We’ll see how it all turns out. They’ve got a lot of winning to do. I hope they’re treated fairly,” Trump said.

BERNIE SANDERS’ BIG NEVADA WIN PUTS SOCIALIST SENATOR IN DRIVER’S SEAT AS OTHERS SCRAMBLE

Then asked if he thought he would face Sanders in the general election, Trump said that he did, but added a qualifier.

“I think so, unless they cheat him out of it,” Trump said. “I think so. I think Bernie is looking more and more like he’ll be the nominee … A lot of people thought he was going to be the nominee last time and that didn’t work out.”

Those comments followed a Saturday night tweet in which Trump warned Sanders, “don’t let them [Democrats] take it away from you!”

Meanwhile, reports emerged last week that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was quietly plotting a strategy to unite moderate candidates’ delegates behind him to block Sanders at a brokered convention. An internal memo from his campaign, which warned that other moderate candidates should drop out before Super Tuesday to give Bloomberg a chance to stop Sanders from accruing a majority of delegates, also leaked last week.

This also comes as Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden are fighting over the mantle of the moderate, electable alternative heading into the South Carolina primary. Biden holds a thin lead there over Sanders, and a win in what has been called his firewall state could breathe new life into the flagging Biden effort.

Sanders, however, seemed to be cobbling together the kind of broad coalition that many questioned whether he could produce with his decisive Nevada win – Sanders took 46 percent of the vote with 60 percent reporting as of Sunday morning.

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Nevada is a very diverse state and entrance polls, particularly one from NBC, seemed to indicate Sanders was overperforming with minorities and moderates.

“Our multiracial, multigenerational movement is not only going to win in Nevada. It is going to sweep this country,” the senator tweeted Saturday night.

Steyer touts minority support as key in achieving much-needed South Carolina success

Billionaire Tom Steyer recognized his campaign may be nearing a make-or-break moment after another disappointing showing in the Nevada Caucuses, but looked to minority support in South Carolina as key to success in that state’s upcoming primary.

Steyer had said he was hoping to finish in first or second in Nevada and South Carolina, but after finishing fifth in Nevada, he now agrees that he needs to come in at least third place in the next contest.

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“I think I do, for sure,” Steyer told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace

This remains a possibility, as a recent RealClearPolitics polling average places Steyer in third place, ahead of former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Steyer credited this to his popularity among black and Latino voters.

“I think I have done best with black people, I have done best with Latinos. I think that when we get to the diverse Democratic electorate, when we get to the diversity that is America and the Democratic Party, I do a lot better,” Steyer said.

Wallace brought up criticism that Steyer has received after he put black Democratic leaders on his payroll, with the former head of the Charleston County Democrats accusing Steyer of paying people off for their support.

Steyer defended his moves and smart grassroots organizing.

“What we found is, if you want to organize in a community, you have to work with people from the community, and that’s exactly what we’re doing in South Carolina,” he said.

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Steyer pointed to his willingness to discuss race as a factor in the support he is getting from minorities. He touted his commitment to environment justice and how environmental problems affect poorer minority neighborhoods more than others, as well as his consistent support for reparations for slavery.

Pence chief of staff denies that intel revealed Russian preference for Trump

Marc Short, chief of staff for Vice President Pence, offered a sharp denial of a recent report that U.S. intelligence said Russia is trying to interfere in the 2020 election to help President Trump.

In an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” Short said that news of Russian interference or preferences is the result of “selective” leaking from the House Intelligence Committee led by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

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“I think that there’s not intelligence that said that the Russians are trying to help Donald Trump win [the] election,” Short said. “We know that foreign governments have been trying to interfere in elections to try and sow chaos. They’ve been doing that for many years and it’s not just limited to Russia.”

The Washington Post reported Friday that Russia U.S. officials believe Russia is trying help Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., secure the Democratic nomination, while a Thursday New York Times report cited a classified House intelligence briefing that included information that Russia was trying to get Trump reelected.

Short claimed that history leads him to believe that Russia would have no reason to prefer Trump over Sanders.

“When this admin has sanctioned Russia more than any admin since Ronald Reagan, and it seems that the Democrats can nominate someone like Bernie Sanders, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union and still seems to prefer Marxism over capitalism, it’s hard to see why they’d be choosing Donald Trump over Bernie Sanders,” he said.

Trump said that this news was the result of a Democratic “misinformation campaign.” Short was specific in assigning blame for revealing information from what was supposed to be a classified briefing.

“Once again, Adam Schiff’s committee is selectively leaking out information and often distorting information; that’s our belief,” he said, referring to the House Intelligence Committee chairman who led the impeachment inquiry against the president.

A day after the Feb. 13 briefing to the House committee, Trump berated the then-director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, and he announced this week that Maguire would be replaced by Richard Grenell.

Short denied that Maguire’s removal from the position had anything to do with the recent news, noting that Maguire was already scheduled to step down by March 12.

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While addressing reporters outside the White House Sunday morning, Trump echoed this.

“His time came up,” the president said.

Fox News’ Alex Pappas and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Bernie Sanders’ big Nevada win puts socialist senator in driver’s seat as others scramble

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., strengthened his status as the clear front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary Saturday night with a decisive win in the Nevada Caucuses, tallying 46 percent of the vote with 50 percent of the results in — a win that is worrying many members of the Democratic establishment that there may be no path to stop Sanders before the party’s convention in July.

There were also reports of confusion at some precincts, which led former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg to send a letter to the Nevada Democratic party asking for more transparency, telling The Nevada Independent that a “razor-thin” margin for second place made a closer look at the results imperative.

Though it’s not yet possible to project second place, third place and beyond with just 50 percent of the vote in, Sanders will catapult out to a lead in national convention delegates with momentum heading into South Carolina and Super Tuesday. As a result, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign joined the many voices raising the alarm that Sanders could end up squandering Democrats’ chance to unseat President Trump in November.

“The Nevada results reinforce the reality that this fragmented field is putting Bernie Sanders on pace to amass an insurmountable delegate lead,” Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said in a Saturday night statement. “This is a candidate who just declared war on the so-called ‘Democratic Establishment.’ We are going to need Independents AND Republicans to defeat Trump – attacking your own party is no way to get started. As Mike says, if we choose a candidate who appeals to a small base – like Senator Sanders – it will be a fatal error.”

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Echoing Sheekey’s point was Democratic strategist James Carville, who said on MSNBC that it would be naive for Democrats to believe Sanders has enough potential voters to top President Trump and his electoral power.

“If you’re voting for him because you think he’ll win the election, because you think he’ll galvanize heretofore sleeping parts of the electorate, politically, you’re a fool,” he said.

But Sanders’ Nevada performance could be a sign that he is able to unite broad portions of the Democratic Party, something many were suspicious he could do before Saturday. He won a very diverse state with significant portions of the minority vote, and even did well with voters who identified as moderate and conservative. According to an NBC entrance poll, Sanders roped in 23 percent of the voters who identified as “moderate or conservative.”

SANDERS SAYS HIS ‘GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT IS UNSTOPPABLE,’ VOTS TO DEFEAT TRUMP AFTER NEVADA WIN

At a Texas rally Saturday night, Sanders declared Nevada victory while stumping for votes in the diverse and delegate-rich Super Tuesday state where early voting is already underway.

“In Nevada, we have just put together a multi-generational, multi-racial coalition which is gonna not only win in Nevada, it’s gonna sweep this country,” Sanders said to a raucous crowd. “What we showed is that our volunteers are prepared to knock on hundreds of hundreds of thousands of doors, that no campaign has a grassroots movement like we do, which is another reason why we’re going to win this election… We are going to win here in Texas, we are going to win across the country.”

Meanwhile in Nevada, Buttigieg, who led the primary in delegates until Saturday night’s Sanders win, warned that Democrats needed to be a big tent party in order to take back the White House in November.

BERNIE SANDERS: 5 THINGS TO KNOW

“I congratulate Sen. Sanders on a strong showing today knowing that we celebrate many of the same ideals,” Buttigieg said. “But before we rush to nominate Sen. Sanders in our one shot to take on this president, let us take a sober look at what is at stake, for our party, for our values and for those with the most to lose. There is so much on the line. And one thing we know for sure is that we absolutely must defeat Donald Trump and everything that he represents in November.”

With 50 percent of the Nevada returns in, Buttigieg has 15 percent of the vote, behind Sanders with 46 percent and former Vice President Joe Biden at 19 percent. The former mayor, who earlier this month “Saturday Night Live” joked was trying to present himself as the “#WhiteObama,” is trying to elbow his way past Biden as the candidate with the best claim to the electability argument. That case is bolstered by the fact Buttigieg holds a lead in the yet-to-be-officially-called Iowa Caucuses and finished in a close second to Sanders in New Hampshire while Biden missed out on the top three in both states.

Nonetheless, Biden put a positive spin on his Nevada results and leaned on his supposed South Carolina firewall, where a majority African-American Democratic electorate still has him in the lead of the RealClearPolitics average of polls, with Sanders in a close second, billionaire Tom Steyer in third and Buttiegieg sitting in fourth place.

WHERE DOES BERNIE SANDERS STAND ON THE ISSUES?

“Y’all did it for me,” Biden said to supporters in Las Vegas. “Now we’re going down to South Carolina and win and then we’re going to take this back.”

Biden also criticized the media for calling his candidacy “dead,” saying, “we’re alive and we’re coming back and we’re going to win.”

Behind Sanders, Biden and Buttigieg in Nevada, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren secured 10 percent of the vote while Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Steyer hovered around 5 percent, all with 50 percent of the total votes in.

Despite scattered reports of confusion at precincts, the Nevada Caucuses appeared to run more smoothly than the Iowa Caucuses, which saw the app the state Democratic Party planned to use to report results break down and several errors tabulating and reporting votes that led to a recanvass and now an ongoing recount.

The Nevada results have been slow to come in, however, with only half being reported on the night the voting took place. This was more than enough to declare Sanders the winner, but not enough to separate the other candidates bunched below him. The Nevada Democratic Party was likely saved from a lot of scrutiny by the fact Sanders won by such a large margin.

People wait in line to vote early at the Culinary Workers union Monday, Feb. 17, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

2020 PRIMARIES & CAUCUSES

But Buttigieg’s campaign sent a letter to the Nevada Democratic Party alleging “material irregularities pertaining to the process of integrating early votes into the in-person precinct caucus results,” raising the specter that Nevada’s vote-counting process could go down a road similar to Iowa’s.

The letter, sent late Saturday, was first reported by The Nevada Independent. It alleged that the Buttigieg campaign received “more than 200 incident reports” and identified specific errors, saying, “We do not know if these issues were corrected.”

The slow trickle of results also complicates plans for any candidate who planned to claim they were the top moderate alternative to Sanders based on a relatively strong Nevada finish

Also, Nevada’s results lend credence to a Bloomberg campaign internal memo that was leaked last week, claiming non-Bloomberg moderates need to quickly exit the race or risk Sanders running away with the nomination.

“As the race stands today, Sanders is poised to leave Super Tuesday with an over-400 delegate lead verses his next closes competitor [Bloomberg] — a likely insurmountable advantage,” the first bullet point of the Feb. 17 memo, first obtained by Axios, says. Fox News has confirmed the authenticity of the memo.

Bloomberg has not even been on the ballot in any of the first three contests of the Democratic race, but he has poured over $400 million into advertising in high-delegate Super Tuesday states, an investment that has allowed him to reach second-place in some national polls despite having no pledged delegates so far.

His virtually unlimited campaign war chest, financed by his personal fortune, looms large beyond this coming Saturday’s South Carolina contest. Bloomberg seems to be the only Democratic candidate capable of financing a robust campaign against Sanders beyond Super Tuesday, especially if donations for other candidates start to dry up with Sanders taking a big lead.

Bloomberg also claimed that Sanders is Trump’s preferred opponent in a Saturday night tweet replying to the president.

Trump tweeted: “Looks like Crazy Bernie is doing well in the Great State of Nevada. Biden & the rest look weak, & no way Mini Mike can restart his campaign after the worst debate performance in the history of Presidential Debates. Congratulations Bernie, & don’t let them take it away from you!”

BLOOMBERG MEMO WARNS SANDERS COULD BE ‘IMPOSSIBLE TO STOP’ UNLESS RIVALS DROP OUT

“Can he make it any more obvious who he wants to face in the general election?” Bloomberg responded.

But Bloomberg will have to avoid repeating his clunker of a Nevada debate performance at the South Carolina debate on Tuesday, which will be candidates’ last chance to appear on a national stage with their competitors before Super Tuesday.

Less worried about Trump and more worried about their own election prospects, some moderate Democrats in Congress are freaking out over the prospect of Sanders at the top of their party’s ticket in November, Fox News’ Chad Pergram reported.

“It’s bad,” said one freshman Democrat from a swing district. “We are having conversations about how to deal with this.”

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“If [Sanders] is the nominee, we lose,” said one Democrat.

Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., who flipped a seat from red to blue in 2016, is backing Bloomberg and says she is concerned about Sanders’ building momentum.

“A Democratic primary which results in a nominee who is not a Democrat is troublesome,” said Murphy of Sanders.

Fox News’ Chad Pergram, Kelly Phares and Tara Prindiville contributed to this report.

Sotomayor issues blistering dissent, says Republican-appointed justices have bias toward Trump administration

Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing rebuke of the court’s decision to allow the Trump administration to enforce its “public charge” rule in the state of Illinois, limiting which non-citizens can obtain visas to enter the U.S.

Sotomayor’s problems with the conservative majority’s ruling went far beyond this case, claiming that it was symptomatic of the court’s habit of siding with the government when they seek emergency stays of rulings against them.

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“It is hard to say what is more troubling: that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the Court would grant it,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.

This particular case, Wolf v. Cook County, deals with the Trump administration’s expansion of situations where the government can deny visas to non-citizens looking to enter the U.S. Federal law already says that officials can take into account whether an applicant is likely to become a “public charge,” which government guidance has said refers to someone “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence.” In the past, non-cash benefits such as forms of Medicaid and certain housing assistance did not count, but the Department of Homeland Security issued its new public charge rule in 2019 which did include these benefits.

The new rule had previously been blocked with a nationwide injunction that the Supreme Court stayed in a separate case, so the injunction in the Cook County case only affected the state of Illinois.

That narrow scope, plus the fact that the 7th Circuit is scheduled to review the Illinois injunction in the coming week, led Sotomayor to believe that the government was not at risk of suffering significant harm that warranted the Supreme Court putting the injunction on hold.

The liberal justice expressed concern that a majority of her colleagues had no problem with this. She explained that it is unusual for an administration to seek stays against injunctions with this sort of frequency, yet it is becoming the new normal.

“Claiming one emergency after another, the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases, demanding immediate attention and consuming limited Court resources in each,” she wrote. “And with each successive application, of course, its cries of urgency ring increasingly hollow. Indeed, its behavior relating to the public-charge rule in particular shows how much its own definition of irreparable harm has shifted.”

Sotomayor went on to claim that the Supreme Court has been overly accommodating when it comes to stay applications, but mainly just for the Trump administration. In contrast, she pointed out, they tend to deny stay applications for executions.

KAVANAUGH AND GORSUCH DEFY DEM PREDICTIONS WITH INDEPENDENT STREAK

“I fear that this disparity in treatment erodes the fair and balanced decisionmaking process that this Court must strive to protect,” she said.

Democratic presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg threw his support behind Sotomayor in a Saturday tweet.

“Justice Sotomayor is right to sound the alarm,” Bloomberg tweeted Saturday. “If Trump wins in November, the Supreme Court essentially will become a rubber stamp for his assault on immigrants, health care and equality.”

Recent history, however, shows that the conservative majority has been anything but in lockstep with conservative politics. Last year, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — both Trump appointees — drew attention for siding with the court’s liberal contingent on a number of cases.

Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush, had perhaps the most notorious break from the conservative ranks when he ruled in favor of Obamacare in 2012.

Sanders’ win in Nevada reinforces his front-runner status, draws more attacks from rivals

LAS VEGAS – Celebrating what appeared to be a convincing Nevada caucuses victory, an exuberant Bernie Sanders crowed to a large crowd Saturday night after moving on to the Super Tuesday state of Texas.

“Don’t tell anybody, I don’t want to get them nervous,” Sanders said. “We’re going to win the Democratic primary in Texas.”

Sanders’ win in Nevada was called quickly by the major TV networks and the Associated Press  – and as the results continued trickling in from caucus precincts across the state Saturday, it became clear the populist U.S. senator from Vermont was racking up a sizable win.

BERNIE SANDERS WINS THE NEVADA CAUCUSES

Sanders explained how he pulled off the Silver State victory.

“In Nevada we have just put together a multigenerational, multiracial coalition which is going to not only win in Nevada, it’s going to sweep this country,” he said.

“In Nevada we have just put together a multigenerational, multiracial coalition which is going to not only win in Nevada, it’s going to sweep this country.”

— Bernie Sanders

His victory – following a win in last week’s New Hampshire primary and a draw with former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg in the Iowa caucuses — instantly drew incoming fire from his top rivals for the Democratic nomination. And it made already nervous moderate and establishment Democrats even more jittery over the prospect of Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, becoming their party’s standard-bearer in November against President Trump.

Biden sharpens his knives

In a speech celebrating what appeared to be a much-needed second place finish, Joe Biden made an apppeal to party loyalists.

“I’m a Democrat … and I’m proud of it,” Biden said.

“I’m a Democrat … and I’m proud of it.”

— Joe Biden

Then – sharpening his knives – the man who served as former President Barack Obama’s vice president for eight years highlighted that history.

“I was proud to run with Barack Obama,” Biden said. “I’m proud to still be his friend and, I tell you what, I promise you I wasn’t talking about running a Democratic primary against him in 2012.”

The shot by Biden referred to recent reports that former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had to convince Sanders to stop mulling a primary challenge against Obama as he ran for re-election in 2012.

‘Leaves out most Democrats’

Minutes after Biden spoke, Buttigieg complimented Sanders before launching an attack on his rival.

“Sen. Sanders believes in an inflexible, ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention most Americans,” he argued.

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Pointing to Sanders’ long time push for a government run Medicare-for-all plan that would replace current private health care coverage, Buttigieg emphasized that “Senator Sanders believes in taking away that choice — kicking people off their private plans and replacing it with a public plan, whether they want it or not.”

“Senator Sanders believes in … kicking people off their private [health] plans and replacing it with a public plan, whether they want it or not.”

— Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg also claimed Sanders and his supporters are taking aim at moderate Democrats running in congressional races, saying the senator, “is ignoring, dismissing, or even attacking the very Democrats we absolutely must send to Capitol Hill in order to keep Nancy Pelosi as speaker, in order to support judges who respect privacy and democracy, and in order to send [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell into retirement.”

Although their candidate didn’t run in Nevada, Mike Bloomberg’s campaign also took aim at Sanders – and used the senator’s apparent big win Saturday to once again make the much-derided pitch for the other moderate Democratic presidential candidates  to drop out of the race to allow Bloomberg to consolidate the anti-Sanders vote.

“The Nevada results reinforce the reality that this fragmented field is putting Bernie Sanders on pace to amass an insurmountable delegate lead. This is a candidate who just declared war on the so-called ‘Democratic Establishment.’ We are going to need Independents AND Republicans to defeat Trump – attacking your own party is no way to get started. As Mike says, if we choose a candidate who appeals to a small base – like Senator Sanders – it will be a fatal error,” Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey argued.

Pumped-up Biden

One of those candidates Bloomberg would like to see drop out is Biden. But the former vice president seemed energized after he was on course for a second-place finish.

After Biden suffered disappointing fourth- and fifth-place finishes in the overwhelmingly white Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, a stronger performance in Nevada’s much more diverse electorate was a necessity for the former vice president.

“No final results yet but I feel pretty good,” Biden told the crowd. “The press is ready to declare people dead quickly but we’re coming back and we’re going to win.”

A pumped-up Biden then looked ahead to primary elections on Feb. 29 and March 3.

“We’re ready in a position now than we haven’t been until this moment,” he said. “We’re going to win in South Carolina and then Super Tuesday.”

After narrowly winning the delegate count in Iowa and finishing a strong second to Sanders in New Hampshire, Buttigieg acknowledged after the Nevada results started coming in that “we are moving on from the battle-born state with a battle on our hand.”

Disappointment for Warren

For Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts – what appeared to be a disappointing finish in Nevada followed a lackluster fourth-place finish a week and a half ago in New Hampshire.

Warren won rave reviews for her knockout performance at Wednesday night’s debate. But that prime-time punch-fest came after some 75,000 Nevadans had already cast ballots in early caucus voting.

Campaign manager Roger Lau spotlighted the early voting results versus the Saturday caucus results, tweeting the “Vegas debate shook this election up. The ⁦‪@ewarren⁩ vote share appears to have gone up more than 50% between early vote & those who caucused today. We’ve raised $9m in 3 days & more than $21m this month.”

And he optimistically predicted that “the Nevada debate will have more impact on the structure of the race than the Nevada result. Since a huge percentage of the votes were cast before the debate — likely well more than half — tonight’s results are a lagging indicator of the current state of the race.”

Warren – speaking in Seattle on Saturday night – wasn’t discouraged by the Nevada results.

“We have a lot of states to go and right now I can feel the momentum,” she said.

“We have a lot of states to go and right now I can feel the momentum.”

— Elizabeth Warren

Klobuchar’s positive spin

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, in a speech Saturday night to supporters in her home state of Minnesota, tried to put a spin on what looked like a very disappointing finish in Nevada.

“They’re counting the votes but as usual I think we have exceeded expectations,” Klobuchar said.

“As usual I think we have exceeded expectations.”

— Amy Klobuchar

And she repeated a well-used line that “a lot of people didn’t think I’d be standing at this point.”

A top Tom Steyer campaign adviser told Fox News nothing has changed following the candidate’s poor showing in Nevada.

The billionaire environmental and progressive advocate poured plenty of resources and time into campaigning in Nevada – and didn’t appear to get much bang for his buck.

The race now moves to South Carolina – which the Biden campaign sees as his firewall – thanks to the majority African-American Democratic primary electorate.

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But just three days later on March 3,  no fewer than 14 states from coast-to-coast will hold contests on Super Tuesday. Among them are the delegate-rich behemouths of California and Texas — with their large Spanish-speaking populations.

Entrance polls in Nevada indicated Sanders scored big among Hispanic voters, which will only feed the frenzy that the senator is moving closer to locking up the nomination.

Fox News’ Tara Prindiville, Madeleine Rivera, Andrew Craft and Andres del Aguila contributed to this report.

These states recently enacted bail-reform laws

Some states have taken steps in recent years to close the gap between what criminal justice advocates claim are two tiers of the justice system: one where people can effectively buy themselves out of police custody and another where those arrested for low-level offenses are stuck in jail because they lack the financial means to bond themselves out.

Many critics say the bail system punishes people for being unable to pay and leaves defendants in a cycle of debt.

Under most bail-reform law, criminal courts are prohibited from setting cash bail in most misdemeanor cases and some non-violent felony cases. States such as New York, California and New Jersey have taken steps to ban the practice, while smaller jurisdictions are also adopting similar reforms.

New York

New York’s recently enacted bail law has been steeped in controversy since it went into effect Jan. 1. Critics have cited the law for the release of criminals who would otherwise be held in police custody on bail but re-offended instead.

One offender, Tiffany Harris, was arrested in early January on suspicion of punching a woman in the face unprovoked after she was released from police custody for another offense without bail.

In another case, a New York City subway thief thanked Democrats for guaranteeing his release despite hundreds of previous arrests.

Aerial view of Rikers Island, New York’s City main jail complex.

“Bail reform, it’s lit!” Charles Barry said as he was being transferred by police to Manhattan Central Booking. “It’s the Democrats! The Democrats know me and the Republicans fear me. You can’t touch me! I can’t be stopped!”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has defended the law, calling it an “ongoing process.”

“We need to respond to the facts but not the politics, we need to act on information and not hyperbole,” he said in January.

New Jersey

The New Jersey Criminal Justice Reform Act took effect in 2017 and essentially overhauled the state’s bail system by eliminating cash bail.

A 2019 report from the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts concluded that those released under the new law were no more likely to commit a crime while awaiting trial than those released under the prior system.

Meanwhile, the state’s jail population has decreased while defendants continue to make their court appearances.

“Concerns about a possible spike in crime and failures to appear did not materialize,” the report says, according to NorthJersey.com.

Californa

The state’s landmark voter referendum to end cash bail has been put on hold after the bail industry successfully launched a referendum drive to let voters decide the issue again in November, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail in Downtown Los Angeles. California voters will decide the fate of a bail reform referendum in November. 

Former Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 10 in 2018 to end cash bail for most suspects accused of nonviolent felonies, which was slated to go into effect last year. The bill would give judges greater power to decide who should remain in jail until trial and would eliminate cash bail.

The bail industry argues the legislation would release violent criminals onto the streets.

Alaska

Alaska joined the national trend of enacting bail reform in 2018, only for it to be rolled back months later by Republican Gov. Michael Dunleavy.

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Senate Bill 91 gave the state the ability to create a tool to assess a criminal suspect’s risk of whether or not they will show up to court or will commit a crime while out on bail.

In July 2019, Dunleavy signed into law House Bill 49, which effectively repealed the Senate legislation.