| | | | Clinton's challenge: Shift focus back to Trump | | Hillary Clinton needs to make Donald Trump unacceptable again, CNN's Stephen Collinson writes. With Democratic nerves jangling amid tightening polls and the fallout of the FBI's email curveball in the final days of the election, Clinton is fervently trying to make the race about Trump's character and foibles -- not hers.
Laying low: Usually a staple by Clinton's side, Huma Abedin has not flown with her since Friday, reports CNN's Dan Merica.
Leaving late: Clinton's insistence on going home every night she can is problematic -- and today's a perfect example of why, Dan notes. Clinton, her aides and her traveling press corps left New York -- late -- close to noon, and then had a two-hour drive from the airport to her first event in Florida. By 6 p.m. ET, she'd only done one event. Politico's Shane Goldmacher and Annie Karni have a story today on Clinton and Donald Trump always going home. | | Trump's tax tactics under new scrutiny | | The New York Times' David Barstow, Mike McIntire, Patricia Cohen, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner write that "newly obtained documents show that in the early 1990s, as he scrambled to stave off financial ruin, Mr. (Donald) Trump avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tax avoidance maneuver so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would most likely declare it improper if he were audited. Thanks to this one maneuver, which was later outlawed by Congress, Mr. Trump potentially escaped paying tens of millions of dollars in federal personal income taxes."
Also don't miss CNN's Lex Haris and Jeanne Sahadi on the latest theory on how Trump avoided paying taxes on nearly $1 billion. | | FBI's Rich release has Democrats alleging a pile-on | | One week from Election Day, the FBI released heavily redacted files from its 2001 investigation of President Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich -- one of Clinton's most controversial decisions as president. The bureau Tuesday posted 129 pages from its 2001 investigation of Rich, a former hedge-fund trader who had been indicted on multiple counts of tax evasion.
The release quickly drew complaints from Democrats who have assailed FBI Director James Comey for his decision last week to tell Congress the bureau was reviewing emails potentially related to Hillary Clinton's private server. Here's Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon: | | Early voting update: A dip in African-American turnout has knocked Democratic early voting numbers off their 2012 pace in key battleground states like North Carolina, Florida and Georgia. (In North Carolina, that could be related to early voting law changes. Guilford County, for example, has a large black population and had 16 early voting sites in 2012, but just one for the first week of 2016's window.)
More Latino voters, however, are among the more than 24.4 million American voters who have already cast their ballots -- including 12.4 million in battleground states -- according to a CNN analysis of the latest early voting numbers, from Marshall Cohen and myself.
Here's a look at three key states -- but make sure to check out our story for a breakdown of all the battlegrounds: | | Battleground roundup: Clinton back on the air in Colorado | | Hillary Clinton went off the air in Colorado in July -- but her campaign is back on now, the Denver Post's Mark K. Matthews reports. Clinton's campaign says this isn't because Trump is making a late push there -- but because she wants to help down-ballot Democrats.
Where Colorado stands: Per the latest early vote numbers from CNN's partner Catalist, of the more than 1 million Coloradans who have voted so far, Democrats have a lead of 2.4 percentage points. At this point four years ago, the GOP had a 2.8 point edge, and that ultimately wasn't enough for Mitt Romney to carry the state.
More on Trump's path to 270: On a conference call with the RNC today, Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie laid out how the campaign believes it can get the 270 electoral votes it needs. First, Bossie said, are the states the campaign knows it absolutely must win: Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Iowa. Those all look close -- but only get Trump to 259. The rest, he said, will come from some combination of Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Maine's 2nd District. "And I think all of those, we are closer in some than others, but we're within the margin of error in many," he said.
Where Trump's money is being spent: The campaign's final $25 million ad buy has them on the air in the exact states Bossie named. Trump aides didn't detail how much is being spent in each state, though.
If Trump loses ... Roll Call's Jacob Rund examines Mike Pence's political future, which could be heavy on 2018 Senate stumping, media gigs and prep for a 2020 run. | | "You can vote and then go get your taco. It's like a combo meal." -- President Barack Obama, tying Taco Bell's offer of a free taco thanks to baseball's World Series to a trip to the polls at a campaign stop for Hillary Clinton in Ohio. | | | FBI investigations into Trump-Russia ties yield little | | | The FBI has been conducting multiple investigations of alleged connections between Russia and Donald Trump, his presidential campaign or its backers. But none so far has yielded proof of criminal connections between the parties, CNN's Evan Perez, Tal Kopan and Jim Sciutto report. | | | House Speaker Paul Ryan says he voted early for Donald Trump. ... The Missouri Senate race is deadlocked between incumbent GOP Sen. Roy Blunt and Democrat Jason Kander -- even though Trump is easily winning the state. ... A fake story about President Barack Obama deleting endorsements of Hillary Clinton on his Twitter account ensnared Fox News' Trump supporter Sean Hannity. | | | We'd love to share our other newsletters with you. Click above to subscribe to CNNMoney's Reliable Sources, an insider's look into the media brought to you by Brian Stelter. | | | Get the Nightcap, a comprehensive summary of the most important political news, delivered to your inbox daily. | | | | | |
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