JURY FINDS COLORADO THEATER KILLER GUILTY!

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — A verdict has been reached in the highly-anticipated capital murder case against James Holmes, the gunman who killed 12 people when he opened fire on a sold-out Colorado movie theater three years ago.

The jury’s decision comes on day two of deliberations after meeting for about 14 hours.

Holmes, 27, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Defense attorneys say the heavily armed Holmes was in clutches of a psychotic episode when he ambushed the theater watching a midnight showing of the Batman film, “The Dark Knight Rises” on July 20, 2012.

Four psychiatrists who interviewed Holmes agreed that he suffers mental illness, but were split on whether he met the criteria to be delclared insane at the time of the shooting.

Prosecutors have painted a pictured of a conniving egomaniac who killed for enjoyment.

The case has drawn international attention and stoked fiery debate about the death penalty, gun control and the execution of people who are mentally ill. A rampage killer going to trial has also boosted interest. Most mass killers commit suicide or are killed by police at the scene.

If convicted of murder, the former neuroscience graduate student could be sentenced to death. That decision would be come during a penalty phase where both sides will present evidence and arguments. A decision by the jury to spare his life would result in a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Prosecutors rejected a plea offer to a life sentence without parole in 2013. “Justice is death,” District Attorney George Brauchler said at the time.

If the jury of nine women and three men find Holmes not guilty by reason of insanity, he would be committed indefinitely to the state’s mental hospital 100 miles south of Denver. That scenario would leave open the possibility that he could be released if he were some day declared to be sane.

The tragedy at the Denver-area theater is among the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. Holmes, dressed in police-like riot gear, was armed with three guns and more than 700 rounds of ammunition. Police said the bloodshed would have been worse, but the gunman’s semi-automatic assault rifle jammed during the attack.

“He only stopped when the gun stopped,” Brauchler told the jury during closing arguments.

Those killed ranged in age from a 6-year-old kindergartner to a 51-year-old father of four. Fifty-eight moviegoers were wounded by gunfire, and 12 more were suffered other injuries in the commotion to escape the theater.

Those killed include Jon Blunk, 26; Alexander Boik, 18; Jesse Childress, 29; Alex Teves, 24; Gordon Cowden, 51; Jessica Ghawi, 24; John Larimer, 27; Matt McQuinn, 27; Micayla Medek, 23, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6; Alex Sullivan, 27; and Rebecca Wingo, 32. Some of the wounded suffered life-changing injuries including brain damage and paralysis.

It took 2½ years for the case to ever reach jury selection earlier this year. Officials have said the number of victims, amount of evidence and legal issues surrounding the death penalty and Holmes’ insanity plea contributed to the delay. Twelve jurors and 12 alternates were picked from a pool 9,000 candidates.

In February, records obtained by Yahoo News revealed the cost of the case had already exceeded $5 million three months before opening statements were made.

Holmes was charged with 165 criminal counts — each murder and attempted murder charge carries separate charges, one for showing premeditation and one for showing extreme indifference to life. He is also charged with possessing explosives because he left his apartment ahead of the attack booby-trapped with homemade bombs.

Under Colorado law, a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity means that Holmes acknowledges committing the acts, but believes he wasn’t responsible because he was incapable of determining right from wrong at the time of the shooting. The prosecution must prove he was sane for him to be found guilty.

“We know what insanity is … this ain’t it,” Brauchler said during closing arguments. “He knew what he was doing when he killed those people. He intended to kill them. That was his specific goal.”

During the 11-week trial, jurors heard from nearly 300 witnesses, were shown more than 1,500 photos — including unsettling images of the grisly crime scene — and viewed 24 hours of video.

Much of the video was interviews Holmes has done with psychiatrists since the massacre. The four psychiatrists who evaluated Holmes agreed that he suffers from Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder, but they split on whether he was legally insane at the time of shootings. The two court-appointed psychiatrists concluded he was sane, but the two working for the defense found he was legally insane.

“You cannot divorce the mental illness from this case or from Mr. Holmes,” defense attorney Daniel King told jurors during his closing argument. “Schizophrenia is a disease, inherited like cancer. We don’t blame people for getting cancer.”

Holmes surrendered to police without incident near his car behind the theater after the shooting, but prosecutors said he may have wanted to flee. Evidence recovered from his two-door hatchback included devices used to throw on the road and puncture the tires of pursuing vehicles, cash, backpacks, a first aid kit, a canister of tear gas and a .40-caliber handgun.

Prosecutors said Holmes meticulously planned the massacre for months in response to a series of personal failures including losing his first-ever girlfriend and dropping out of graduate school.

“On July 20, 2012, he tried to murder a theater full of people because he thought it would make him feel better and increase his self-worth,” Brauchler said when the trial stared on April 27.

The defense team doesn’t contest that Holmes spent three months purchasing guns, explosives and charting the attack. King, the lead court-appointed defense attorney, said Holmes began suffering from serious delusions in March 2012 that intensified when he was misdiagnosed and given anti-anxiety medication in May 2012.

The delusions and hallucinations, King said, involved Holmes believing that murder would increase his “human capital.”

“He was on autopilot. He was following the plan,” King told the jury. “We can’t attribute logic to it. That’s why it’s psychotic.”

The defense attorney used his two-hour allotment to challenge jury to change what he called America’s denial about mental illness.

“Now is the time,” King said. “This is the place and you are the people.”

Holmes did not testify in his own defense.

PUBLIUS

Ever since the United States got involved in the dispute over Ukraine — and ended up in a challenging place with Russia over it — people have been quietly reviving statements that former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made during the 2012 election about his foreign policy concerns. When Russia decided they’d like to annex Crimea this week, the dig into the Romney archive began anew, with consensus from his co-partiers — and from some people who would never admit to liking him — generally falling along the lines of “oh my dear lord, Mitt was right all along!”

Campaign statements about the Affordable Care Act and general gloom and doom were also recycled. One Web site went so far as to ask if Romney was the next Nostradamus. Actually, more than one Web site crowned him the seer of our time.

Is the hype true?

Let us go through some of Romney’s old statements, and add some context to the conversation.

First of all, Russia I indicated is a geopolitical foe. Not… excuse me. It’s a geopolitical foe, and I said in the same — in the same paragraph I said, and Iran is the greatest national security threat we face. Russia does continue to battle us in the U.N. time and time again. I have clear eyes on this. I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia, or Mr. Putin.

This is the Romney prediction that has been getting the most press lately. Over the course of the 2012 campaign, Romney repeatedly called Russia “our number one geopolitical foe.” However, when Obama pushed back against that statement in the Oct. 22, 2012, debate, Romney downgraded Russia to a geopolitical foe, as David Weigel pointed out last September. Romney decided in the end that he wasn’t set on casting the former Soviet Union as the big baddie of his hypothetical administration. He just saw Russia as a foe for all geopolitical generations.

Was Romney right?

With the conflict in Ukraine escalating and President Vladimir Putin actively annexing Crimea, many people are citing Romney’s “number one geopolitical foe” line with vindication. The fact that the New York Times editorial board wrote at the time that such rhetoric was “either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs or just craven politics” made Romney’s supporters even more gleeful. Last September, a Romney friend told Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins, “Everyone thought, Oh my goodness that is so clever and Mitt’s caught in the Cold War and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Well guess what. With all of these foreign policy initiatives — Syria, Iran, [Edward] Snowden — who’s out there causing problems for America? It’s Putin and the Russians.” Media outlets on the left and right have mentioned Romney’s remarks as “just about right” over the past year. Romney has begun “I told you so-ing” too. In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, he wrote,

 In virtually every foreign-affairs crisis we have faced these past five years, there was a point when America had good choices and good options. There was a juncture when America had the potential to influence events. But we failed to act at the propitious point; that moment having passed, we were left without acceptable options. In foreign affairs as in life, there is, as Shakespeare had it, “a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”

The difference between the foreign policy school Romney belongs to and the Obama administration is that one group has no problem seeing the world through Cold War-colored glasses, while the other would like to think we’ve moved past that mindset. As the president said in late February, “our approach in the United States is not to see these as some Cold-War chessboard in which we’re in competition with Russia.”

President Barack Obama (R) listens as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney speaks during the first presidential debate in Denver, October 3, 2012. REUTERS/Jim Bourg (UNITED STATES – Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS USA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION)

Unfortunately, the rest of the world has no problem viewing political strategy as a big board game, which is why the White House failed to predict how Russia would act with Syria and Ukraine and Edward Snowden in advance. As Stephen Walt put it earlier this month,”Did we really think that power politics was no longer relevant in the 21st century, and that the spread of democracy, free markets, rule of law, and all that other good stuff meant that other states were no longer willing to defend their own security interests?

The unfortunate and unrelenting old-school nature of international politics is what Mitt Romney was most right about.

…

 “You know that if the president were to be elected, he would still be unable to work with members of Congress. He’s ignored them, he’s attacked them, he’s blamed them. And of course the debt ceiling is going to come up again, and then there’d be a threat of shutdown or default. And that of course chills the economy, puts more people out of work.”

Was Romney right?

Yes. The debt ceiling came up. More than once. There was a shutdown. There was a threat of default. Obama still doesn’t get along with Congress. However, this was not a claim that required clairvoyance. Obama and Congress had already faced off in a series of debt-ceiling showdowns. Nothing suggested that future fights would end any differently. Romney was right, but so was everyone else watching.

Romney’s point also completely skips the part where Congress ignored, attacked and blamed Obama. During the January 2013 debt-ceiling fight, 45 percent of Americans said they’d blame Republicans in Congress if a shutdown happened. When a shutdown finally did happen, they blamed Republicans too. Why? Because congressional Republicans wanted things — like raising entitlement reform — in return for raising the debt ceiling. If President Romney attacked Senate Democrats who tried to raise the minimum wage in return for raising the debt ceiling, he’d probably think such a characterization of the political landscape was unfair. Blaming the president for near default might be a good campaign throwaway line, but it misses some of the complexity of the situation — like most campaign lines (see Obama’s questionable campaign line below).

If the president’s re-elected, Obamacare will be fully installed. In my view that’s going to mean a whole different way of life for people who counted on the insurance plan they had in the past. Many will lose it. 

Was Romney right?

Romney said this during the Oct. 3, 2012, presidential debate. The first part is unequivocally true; Obama was re-elected, and House Republicans have been unable to get the Senate to sign on to their many attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. President Obama countered Romney’s second statement — that many Americans would lose their insurance plans — from 2009 up until this November, by saying that people who liked their health-care plan, could keep their health-care plan.

Except everyone knew this wasn’t quite true. Administration estimates from July 2010 showed that “40 to 67 percent” of private health-insurance customers would have health-care plans ineligible for the grandfather clause Obama had been talking about. That percentage works out to about 7 to 12 million people, as Sarah Kliff reported last year. That’s a relatively small fraction of the entire population of Americans who have health insurance, but it is plenty large enough to provide anecdotal horror stories for the media until the end of time.

Most of the customers who received cancellation notices after October 1, 2013, had health-insurance plans that didn’t meet Affordable Care Act standards. The Obama administration contends that now these people will be able to get better insurance, and in most cases tax subsidies to stave off price increases. Customers who bought a plan after Obamacare was enacted, or who have health-care plans that have changed their deductibles, co-pays or benefits since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, also received cancellation notices.

At the end of 2013, Politifact called “if you like your plan, you can keep it,” the lie of the year.

Obama has repeatedly apologized for not peppering his health-insurance marketing with more nuance. The White House is allowing states to stave off cancellations until 2016 if they want, but for the near future, damage is done. If the Affordable Care Act ends up working well a few years from now, its early framing fumbles — and real fumbles — may fade. For now, however, the flubs will hover over any health-care debate.

In many cases, the people who lost insurance are going to have better and cheaper insurance. But, as a University of Michigan professor told Bloomberg last year, “the first thing you get that affects you personally is that you’ve lost your health insurance. That approach is going to backfire politically.”

It has, and many conservatives have gone back to Romney’s many quotes on Obamacare cancellations to strike up a “told-you-so” choir. Yes, Romney was right. But the Obama administration also knew he was right. They just did a very bad job of telling the public of why cancellations might be a good thing for many people.

By Jaime Fuller

With the level of the federal deficit over $18,000,000,000 (trillions), the interest on which costs Americans the first $1,500,000,000 (billion) they earn every day, and the recent explosion of federal power over the citizens and the states as handed to U.S. socialists by the Supreme Court and the prolific pen of the Executive Order, the independence from government rule and tyranny sought by our Founders is all but neutralized. We and our children are indebted and imprisoned by design of a leftist attack on our country, and an Orwellian federal government spies on patriotic citizens and treats them like enemies while Islamic terrorists are welcomed into the White House and allowed to overrun territories recently liberated with the blood of thousands of Americans.

A polarization has occurred in the nation—as the left has chipped away at personal liberty and individual sovereignty over the past several decades; those who cherish freedom have finally begun to become more vocal in their resistance. But is it too little, too late?

The left has made tremendous inroads in their quest to replace King George with its own elitist panels, commissions and czars, and within the past years its inches of ground-winning have become feet.

In the name of laborer parity and elevating the ethnically or socially disadvantaged, the socialists and communists of the past century have robbed the people of the world of their birthright, established by the labor and sacrifice of their 18^th and 19^th Century forebears. In the name of pretended “fairness,” leftist forces have lowered the wealth and opportunities of everyone, rather than elevate the status of the less fortunate.

Look at any country where socialism and liberalism have penetrated the veil of liberty. Not one of them has improved the quality of life of their working people.

Where do we find the bottom half of earners in America? With all of the talk of the 1% and the 99% in this country, and the mindless chants of brain-dead occupiers in the streets, even an overtaxed economy like ours has rendered our own 99%, the 1% of the world. Nearly all of our poor live in good housing, have clean water and food aplenty (many suffer from obesity), a computer of some kind, and cell phones and cable television. They live better than the wealthy of most of the earth’s nations.

Additionally, the tremendous generosity and military might of Americans has been the salvation of billions of people around the world, whose leftist economies have left them with nothing but squalor, want and exposure to dictators and war lords (usually leftist tyrants).

We hear of the Tea Party these days, and the name is spoken with disdain by over half of the country, and almost all of the mainstream media. Does any of them actually recall where the term originated? Do they remember how an oppressive monarch imposed taxes that were hard to bear and intruded into the personal liberties of a hardworking people, and that those people finally decided that they would take no more and rose up in rebellion, starting with throwing British tea into the harbor?

No, sadly enough, most young adults these days are the products of a dumbing-down campaign launched by the left and its educational arm, the National Education Association. They have mush for brains and their education consists of nothing more than pop culture and global warming propaganda.

We have nearly come full circle. We have hundreds of millions dependent on government and its handouts, a White House dedicated to the overthrow of the Constitution, and a Supreme Court that has decreed that the people are to be taxed even for services they DO NOT purchase at the government’s command and that sodomy is the equivalent of traditional marriage.

King George is back, liberty has been strangled to near enslavement, and this time it will take more than a few muskets to rid us of the burgeoning oppression. America has not seen such dark times since the Civil War. I say the Civil War, because in all other wars the enemy was external. If we fail to immediately change our course, we will be irretrievably carried back under the oppression of dictatorship. We invite all liberty loving Americans to join the revolution, and to regain our independence from oppressive, centralized government.

PUBLIUS

The man arrested in connection with the seemingly random killing of a woman who was out for a stroll with her father along the San Francisco waterfront is an illegal immigrant who previously had been deported five times, federal immigration officials say.

Further, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says San Francisco had him in their custody earlier this year but failed to notify ICE when he was released.

“DHS records indicate ICE lodged an immigration detainer on the subject at that time, requesting notification prior to his release so ICE officers could make arrangements to take custody. The detainer was not honored,” ICE said in a statement Friday afternoon.

Kathryn Steinle was killed Wednesday evening at Pier 14 — one of the busiest tourist destinations in the city.

Police said Thursday they arrested Francisco Sanchez in the shooting an hour after it occurred.

On Friday, ICE revealed their records indicate the individual has been previously deported five times, most recently in 2009, and is from Mexico.

“His criminal history includes seven prior felony convictions, four involving narcotics charges,” ICE said in a statement.

ICE briefly had him in their custody in March after he had served his latest sentence for “felony re-entry,” but turned him over to San Francisco police on an outstanding drug warrant. At this time, ICE issued the detainer — effectively asking that he be turned back over to ICE when San Francisco was finished with him.

But ICE was not notified. The incident is sure to renew criticism of San Francisco’s sanctuary city policies.

“Here’s a jurisdiction that’s not even honoring our detainer for someone who clearly is an egregious offender,” an ICE official told FoxNews.com.

ICE has since lodged another immigration detainer against the individual, though it’s unclear whether San Francisco will cooperate.

A representative with the police department has not yet responded to a request for comment from FoxNews.com.

Police Sgt. Michael Andraychak earlier said witnesses snapped photos of Sanchez immediately after the shooting and the images helped police make the arrest.

Liz Sullivan told the San Francisco Chronicle that her 32-year-old daughter turned to her father after she was shot and said she didn’t feel well before collapsing.

“She just kept saying, ‘Dad, help me, help me,'” Sullivan said. Her father reportedly tried to do CPR before she was rushed to the hospital.

The immigration detainer issued against the suspect earlier this year would have initiated the process of removing him from the U.S. once again.

“ICE places detainers on aliens arrested on criminal charges to ensure dangerous criminals are not released from prisons or jails into our communities,” ICE said in the statement. “The agency remains committed to working collaboratively with its law enforcement partners to ensure the public’s safety.”

FoxNews.com’s Adam Shaw and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

The first time I interviewed Donald Trump, back in 1987, he said this:

“When I go up to New Hampshire — I’m not running for president, by the way — I get the best crowd, the best of everything in terms of reception.

“The politicians go up and get a moderate audience. I go up, and they’re scalping tickets. You heard that? They’re scalping tickets. Why? Because people don’t want to be ripped off, and this country is being ripped off. I think if I ran, I’d win.”

He has been honing this act for a long time.

Many pundits—some of them the same wiseguys who thought Trump would sink like a stone—are saying that he’s taken a beating over the last week. After all, NBC, Univision, Macy’s and Serta have all cut ties with him over his comments on Mexican immigrants.

Many people obviously found those comments offensive. But in purely political terms, this is helping Trump.

For one thing, he has dominated the campaign news cycle for a week, drawing more attention than all the other candidates combined. He has driven home his message with a spate of cable news interviews. (And—subtle plug here—The Donald will be talking about these issues Sunday on “Media Buzz.”)

Here’s what the media elite misses, and why he’s surged into second place in Fox and CNN polls. Trump portrays himself as a fighter, and that resonates with many voters. Trump casts himself as a straight talker, and voters like that. Trump markets himself as a non-politician in an era when the public is fed up with pols. He’s seen as tough on illegal immigration, which doesn’t hurt in a Republican primary.

The bombastic billionaire also strikes a populist note by going to war with big corporations.

And this just in: President Obama, in Tennessee, called for a smart legal immigration system “that doesn’t separate families but does focus on making sure that people who are dangerous, people who are, you know, gang-bangers, who are criminals that we’re deporting as quickly as possible.”

Gang-bangers? Trump’s version was more inelegant, but if the president is worried about Mexican gang-bangers, doesn’t it suggest the businessman had a point?

By now, most politicians would have softened or papered over the remarks about Mexican immigrants including such miscreants as rapists. But Trump has doubled and tripled down. He’s denounced NBC, sued Univision for $500 million and urged customers to boycott Macy’s. This dovetails nicely with his refrain about politicians being “all talk and no action.”

Meanwhile, the press has been prodding Trump’s Republican rivals to take him on. “His outlandish rhetoric and skill at occupying the national spotlight are also proving to be dangerously toxic for the GOP brand, which remains in the rehabilitation stage after losing the 2012 presidential race,” says a front-page Washington Post story.

CBS’s Nancy Cordes said Republican leaders “worry” that Trump’s rising polls “will just embolden him and further alienate the critical Hispanic vote.”

But why is this a Republican problem? Yes, the party has well-documented difficulties with Hispanic voters, but Trump is hardly an establishment Republican. He might be causing himself problems with Latinos, but why would that rub off on, for example, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio? The media often demand that all party members respond to one Republican’s controversial comments in a way that you rarely see with Democrats.

Still, some GOPers realized they could ride this wave. George Pataki, perhaps to remind people he’s running, called Trump’s comments “unacceptable.”

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez said “I think those are horrible things to say about anyone and any culture.”

Hillary hit Trump, but without naming him, while Jeb Bush limited himself to “I don’t agree with him. I think he’s wrong.”

The point is, they’re all responding to Donald Trump. And for the moment, he’s the guy driving the campaign narrative.

By Howard Kurtz

The nation’s upcoming birthday party could be awkward — as our relationship with Uncle Sam is on the rocks.

Most American voters distrust their government, are unsure their president is honest, and feel Barack Obama has made false claims about transparency in his administration.

The latest Fox News national poll finds that 61 percent don’t trust the federal government. That’s just one percentage point below the record high of 62 percent distrust in both 2013 and 2011. And it’s a reversal from 2002, soon after the 9/11 attacks, when a 54-percent majority trusted Uncle Sam and only 36 percent didn’t (June 2002).

Click to read the full poll results

Trust among Democrats has gone up since 2002, when George W. Bush was president. It was 47 percent then compared to 54 percent in the new poll.

Trust has precipitously dropped among independents (-32 points) and Republicans (-38 points) over that same time period. Among independents, 53 percent trusted the government in 2002, while 21 percent say the same now. For Republicans, trust was 63 percent then and it’s 25 percent now.

Meanwhile, voters continue to disagree with the administration’s repeated claim that it is the “most transparent administration in history.” Only 29 percent agree with that. Two-thirds say this isn’t the most open White House (67 percent). Last year, it was 28-68 percent (July 2014).

The reviews are far from glowing even among the president’s party faithful: 49 percent of Democrats say Obama is the most transparent, while 46 percent disagree.

Overall, 47 percent of voters think President Obama is honest and trustworthy, yet slightly more — 50 percent — say he isn’t. That’s almost identical to last year when it was 48-50 percent (July 2014).

Obama’s high honesty mark was in April 2009, when he had been in office about 100 days. At that time, 73 percent said he was honest and trustworthy and 22 percent disagreed.

Fully 94 percent of Democrats said Obama was honest and trustworthy in 2009. That’s down 14 points to 80 percent in the new poll. For independents, it’s a 32-point drop: 73 percent honest in 2009 and 41 percent now. Among Republicans: 43 percent said Obama was honest in 2009, while just 13 percent say the same today (-30 points).

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,005 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from June 21-23, 2015. The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

By Dana Blanton

New York real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump on Tuesday declared himself a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, launching his against-the-odds campaign after teasing one for years.

“I am officially running for president of the United States,” Trump said from inside his signature Trump Towers in midtown Manhattan. “We are going to make our country great again.”

Trump flirted with a White House run in 2012 but ultimately did not enter the race. Though Trump is a first-time political candidate, he has become an influential voice in conservative political circles. He has spoken at political events in early-voting states, and makes frequent appearances on Fox News, among other outlets.

Trump has for months shown signs that he intended get into the White House race this time.

He has formed a presidential exploratory committee and has made numerous visits this year to early-voting states Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Also, he has remained competitive in early polling.

Trump said he will file a financial statement showing his net worth is $8.73 billion, though several of his ventures have declared bankruptcy. All president candidates are required to file a financial disclosure.

The 69-year-old Trump joins the field of 11 other GOP candidates, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker expected to enter the race in mid-July and several other hopefuls still considering. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush announced his bid a day earlier.

Most polls have Trump in the top 10 in the field of Republican candidates and hopefuls, which would qualify him for the nationally televised GOP primary debate in August hosted by Fox News.

His unabashed businesses success will likely position him as a candidate riding a strong free-market, pro-business platform. It would also set him apart from candidates pitching a populist message, and trying to make themselves relatable to middle-class voters.

Trump, who was born in Queens, inherited his father’s successful real estate company in 1972 and has since grown and diversified the business to include Trump Entertainment Resorts as well as a clothing and fragrance line.

Trump’s extravagant lifestyle and brash manner is frequently on display during episodes of his long-running ABC TV show, “The Apprentice,” which the network in February approved for another season.

Trump, popularly known as “the Donald,” married for the third time in 2005 and has a total five children and seven grandchildren. He attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

FoxNews.com

President Obama bluntly challenged the Supreme Court over a pending ruling on the validity of ObamaCare subsidies, complaining Monday that the court should never have taken up the case — and warning that a ruling against subsidies would be a “twisted interpretation” of the law.

The president and his administration’s legal team for months have fought the Affordable Care Act court challenge, which is over whether people who enrolled through the federal HealthCare.gov are entitled to subsidies.

But the president’s comments on Monday, during a press conference on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Germany, were perhaps his toughest to date. He strongly suggested the court would be running afoul of established legal guidance if it rules against the administration, and took the rare step of saying the court should have stayed out of this fight.

“This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up,” Obama said.

The administration has argued in court that the subsidies are valid through both state-run exchanges and exchanges run through HealthCare.gov. Foes argue that the Affordable Care Act stipulates subsidies are only intended for those buying insurance on state-run exchanges.

The court decision, expected any day, could have far-reaching implications because millions would lose their insurance if the court rules against the administration.

Yet the Obama administration has faced criticism for declining the spell out what its contingency plan is if the court rules that way, instead voicing confidence that the Supreme Court will keep the program as is.

Obama again voiced that confidence on Monday, and urged the court not to rule otherwise.

He said it’s safe to “assume” the court will do what most legal scholars expect and “play it straight.” Obama said it has been well-documented that Congress never intended to exclude people who went through the federal exchange.

To rule the other way, the president said, would be a “contorted reading of the statute” and a “twisted interpretation.”

But if that does happen, Obama said, “that throws off how that exchange operates” and millions of people would lose subsidies.

“It’s a bad idea,” Obama said.

The president went on to mount a robust defense of the law itself, saying “none” of the alleged “horrors” associated with ObamaCare have “come to pass.”

FoxNews.com/The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Most of the illegal immigrant criminals Homeland Security officials released from custody last year were discretionary, meaning the department could have kept them in detention but chose instead to let them onto the streets as their deportation cases moved through the system, according to new numbers from Congress.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently heard new information that could blow the lid off of the Hillary Clinton private email server scandal and shed new light on a consulting job Huma Abedin held while working as Clinton’s aide at the State Department.

The Daily Caller learned of a three-hour May 1 meeting two State Department whistleblowers held with the general counsel and staffers for the Oversight Committee, which is led by Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz.

According to a copy of notes from that meeting, State Department whistleblower Richard Higbie and another whistleblower told of an inspector-turned-whistleblower with State’s office of the inspector general who claims his investigation into Abedin’s work with Teneo Holdings, a consulting firm, led to the discovery of Clinton’s private email server.

According to the notes, the whistleblower also told Higbie that the investigation was shut down by Harold Geisel, the former acting inspector general for the State Department whose tenure was marked by accusations of political favoritism.

Joseph R. Biden III, Vice President’s Son, Dies at 46

WASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden III, the former attorney general of Delaware and the eldest son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., has died of brain cancer, his father announced on Saturday. The younger Mr. Biden was 46.

Mr. Biden had spent more than a week receiving treatment at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington.

In a statement Saturday night, the vice president said: “It is with broken hearts that Hallie, Hunter, Ashley, Jill and I announce the passing of our husband, brother and son, Beau, after he battled brain cancer with the same integrity, courage and strength he demonstrated every day of his life.”

“In the words of the Biden family: Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known.”

In 2010, the younger Mr. Biden, known as Beau, had suffered what officials described as a mild stroke. Three years later, he was admitted to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston after what White House officials described at the time as “an episode of disorientation and weakness.”

Officials said in 2013 that the doctors in Texas had removed a small lesion from his brain.

Mr. Biden’s death marks a second tragic loss for the vice president, whose first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in 1972 when the station wagon they were driving in to go Christmas shopping was hit by a tractor-trailer. Beau Biden and his brother, Hunter, were also injured in the crash, but both survived.

A popular Democratic politician in his home state who was known to be very close to his father, Mr. Biden served two terms as Delaware’s top law enforcement official before announcing last year that he would not run for a third term so he could make a bid for governor in 2016.

“What started as a thought — a very persistent thought — has now become a course of action that I wish to pursue,” Mr. Biden wrote in an open letter to his constituents in April 2014.

As recently as late February, some Delaware politicians close to Mr. Biden told news organizations that they still believed Mr. Biden planned to run for governor in 2016.

But Mr. Biden’s health had apparently declined in recent weeks, and he was taken to Walter Reed on May 20.

A handsome, energetic politician whose broad smile mirrored that of his father, Mr. Biden appeared to be a natural to follow his father’s path toward national political success.

A lawyer by training, Mr. Biden joined the Delaware National Guard in 2003, serving as a major in the Judge Advocate General Corps. His unit was deployed to Iraq in 2008, while his father was running for vice president.

In a short, emotional speech introducing his father at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Mr. Biden recalled the tragedy that had touched his family, describing the moments after the crash.

“One of my earliest memories was being in that hospital, Dad always at our side. We, not the Senate, were all he cared about,” Mr. Biden said. “He decided not to take the oath of office. He said, ‘Delaware can get another senator, but my boys can’t get another father.’ However, great men like Ted Kennedy, Mike Mansfield, Hubert Humphrey — men who had been tested themselves — convinced him to serve. So he was sworn in, in the hospital, at my bedside.”

Many in Delaware expected Mr. Biden to run for his father’s Senate seat after the 2008 election, but the younger Biden, who was elected attorney general in 2006, declined, saying he was still needed in his state as he pressed ahead on a major child molestation case his agency was pursuing against a pediatrician.

“I have a duty to fulfill as attorney general, and the immediate need to focus on a case of great consequence. And that is what I must do.”

Instead, he ran for re-election in 2010, serving a second term before deciding to seek higher office.

Mr. Biden is survived by his wife, Hallie, and two children.

President Obama said in a statement that he was grieving for the vice president and his family.

“For all that Beau Biden achieved in his life, nothing made him prouder, nothing made him happier, nothing claimed a fuller focus of his love and devotion than his family,” Mr. Obama said. “Just like his dad.”

Mr. Obama called the vice president “one of the strongest men” he had ever known and offered a quote from the poet, William Butler Yeats. “I have believed the best of every man,” Yeats wrote, “and find that to believe it is enough to make a bad man show him at his best or even a good man swing his lantern higher.”

“Beau Biden believed the best of us all. For him, and for his family, we swing our lanterns higher.”

New York Times

The Clinton camp was hit Friday with yet another bombshell report on the family foundation, even as the Democratic power couple launched a counteroffensive against critics of the foundation’s dealings.

The New York Times reported Friday on a questionable arrangement last year involving Bill Clinton’s attendance at a fundraising gala thrown by a school-building charity.

According to the report, Clinton agreed to accept a lifetime achievement award at the June 2014 gala, hosted by the Happy Hearts Fund, only after founder Petra Nemcova offered to give $500,000 to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

Sue Veres Royal, the group’s executive director at the time who was later “dismissed,” alleged that this amounted to a “quid pro quo.”

She told the Times the foundation had rejected an invitation from the Happy Hearts Fund “more than once.” That changed, she said, when “there was a thinly veiled solicitation and then the offer of an honorarium.”

Representatives for Nemcova and the foundation countered that the money was not solicited — and would be used for projects in Haiti.

The revelations are the latest to raise questions about possible favor-trading at the foundation, as Hillary Clinton mounts her run for the Democratic presidential nomination and her supporters try to tamp down controversy surrounding the family charity.

The fundraiser in question was initially meant to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami — Nemcova, a well-known Czech model, founded the charity after surviving the 2004 disaster, while in Thailand.

The Times reported that the fund first asked Bill Clinton to be an honoree in 2011, and again in 2013. They were turned down. But another invitation letter was reportedly sent in August 2013, offering to work around Clinton’s schedule, and shifting the focus from Indonesia to Haiti.

The invitation added that the fund “would like to also share the proceeds of the event with the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, committing at least $500,000 in partnership on a joint educational project in Haiti, of your selection.”

He accepted.

The Times report pointed out that the foundation donation effectively rerouted money raised at the gala to an organization with a significantly larger budget. According to the Times, the $500,000 donation was worth almost a quarter of the event’s net proceeds and could have funded the construction of several schools in Indonesia.

Charity experts told the Times it is rare for such honorees to get money from a gala’s proceeds.

The former president and aides to Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, are pushing back on some of the critical reports surrounding the foundation.

On Friday, the former president said in a letter to supporters that the foundation remains a “non-partisan” philanthropy and he’s determined to continue its mission.

The former president said in the letter that “it’s the political season in America” and the impact of the organization has “largely been ignored” recently.

Top aides to Hillary Clinton also said late Thursday they see no permanent damage to her campaign over questions about the Clinton Foundation and other ethics issues, while acknowledging they expect an extremely competitive general election fought on other issues like the economy next year.

One top Clinton campaign official said they have a good story to tell about the philanthropic work of the Clintons and will make that case in the days ahead. The aides spoke at a briefing with reporters at Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn.

Fox News’ Ed Henry and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

From suggesting combating ISIS with jobs to dismissing questions about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s conduct as “rumor,” spokeswoman Marie Harf has woven a rich tapestry as the voice of the State Department.

But she’s moving on.

The department announced late Tuesday that starting June 1, Harf will be moving out of the briefing room and beginning a “new role” as senior adviser for strategic communications to Secretary of State John Kerry. (Ex-Pentagon spokesman John Kirby has already assumed the role of spokesman, while former deputy spokesman Mark Toner is moving into his old job.)

Here’s a look back at some of Harf’s more memorable moments:

June 3, 2014: In response to questioning by Fox News at the briefing, Harf downplayed criticism of the recently announced trade of five Taliban fighters for Bergdahl.

She downplayed “conflicting reports” and “rumor” when asked about accounts from Bergdahl’s platoon-mates that he walked off base.

“There’s a lot of rumor and telephone game that’s being played here,” she said.

After continued questioning, she said: “It happened five years ago.”

Bergdahl would later be charged with desertion. Former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal also told Fox News this week it was his initial understanding as well that Bergdahl walked off his base before he disappeared.

Sept. 25, 2014: Harf was asked, in an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, to respond to a warning that the U.S. would lose if President Obama did not approve ground troops to fight the Islamic State in Iraq.

“I’m not exactly sure what ‘lose’ means,” Harf said, arguing the solution is “targeted military action.” She said the prior U.S. engagement in Iraq, with tens of thousands of U.S. troops on the ground, couldn’t prevent terrorism.

Feb. 16, 2015: Speaking on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Harf suggested that jobs programs are needed to help take on the Islamic State.

“We’re killing a lot of them, and we’re going to keep killing more of them. … But we cannot win this war by killing them,” she said. “We need … to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether –”

Harf was interrupted by host Chris Matthews, who pointed out, “There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor Muslims.” She acknowledged there’s “no easy solution” and said the U.S. would still take out ISIS leaders. But Harf said: “If we can help countries work at the root causes of this — what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business?”

Feb. 17, 2015: Responding to critics of her remarks on helping fight terror by creating jobs, Harf said her statements were just “too nuanced” for her critics.

“Longer term, we cannot kill every terrorist around the world, nor should we try,” Harf said on CNN. “How do you get at the root causes of this? Look, it might be too nuanced an argument for some, like I’ve seen over the past 24 hours some of the commentary out there, but it’s really the smart way that Democrats, Republicans, military commanders, our partners in the Arab world think we need to combat this.” Harf went on to say the approach doesn’t fit “into a sound bite.”

March 6, 2015: Fielding questions at the briefing about ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of private email, Harf was asked if the department would release a 2011 cable — obtained by Fox News — showing her office told employees not to use personal email for security reasons.

“I think everyone can read it at FoxNews.com,” she quipped.

She then assured, “That was in no way an endorsement,” before adding: “I don’t mean to be flip about it.”

Everyone can still read it at FoxNews.com, here.

After several weeks of speculation whether the Department of Justice would investigate wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton in their “Pay for Play” scheme through their family’s foundation, the FBI has in fact launched a formal investigation.

At stake is more than $100 million purportedly paid to the Clintons through their foundation–The Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Reports have surfaced that the foundation served as nothing more than a pool into which bribes were paid, soliciting political favors from Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State.