WASHINGTON, OCTOBER 18: Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is leading Republican rival Donald Trump by 12 percentage points, according to a new national poll, up 8 points from a similar survey conducted last month.
The Monmouth University poll released on Monday put Clinton ahead of Trump, 50 per cent to 38 per cent, Politico news magazine reported.
The former Secretary of State’s lead was up significantly from the 4-point advantage she held in September’s Monmouth poll.
This latest poll is the first to be conducted entirely since the accusations of sexual assault against Trump began to emerge.
Sixty-two per cent of voters said they believed the allegations against Trump were credible while 58 per cent said they were not surprised by what they heard the real-estate mogul said on the recording.
Clinton’s favourability rating remained poor but steady relative to the previous poll, with just 38 per cent of voters holding a favourable opinion of her and 52 per cent holding an unfavourable opinion.
The number of respondents with a favourable opinion of Trump dipped 6 points, from 32 per cent to 26 per cent, while his unfavourable numbers climbed 4 points, from 57 per cent to 61 per cent.
The Monmouth University poll was conducted from October 14-16, reaching 805 registered voters nationwide via telephone with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.5 per cent.
Of the 805 registered voters reached, 726 were determined to be likely to vote in the November 6 election, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.6 per cent.
FBI document spurs new controversy over Clinton e-mails
WASHINGTON: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released some 100 pages relating to its investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server during her tenure as Secretary of State.
Clinton, while acknowledging in hindsight that she made a mistake in bypassing the official communications channels, has insisted she did not knowingly send or receive classified information via the server, located in the basement of her home in Chappaqua, New York, EFE news reported.
One of the documents published on Monday cites an FBI agent saying that the State Department’s top administrative official sought to persuade investigators to retroactively declassify a classified item found in the e-mails.
The agent, whose name was redacted, “indicated he had been contacted by Patrick Kennedy, Undersecretary of State, who had asked his assistance in altering the e-mail’s classification in exchange for a ‘quid pro quo’,” the FBI document stated.
“In exchange for marking the e-mail unclassified, State would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more agents in countries where they are presently forbidden,” the document said.
The e-mail in question had to do with the September 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of the ambassador and three other Americans.
There was “no quid pro quo”, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Monday when asked about the document during his daily session with reporters.
Toner added that disagreement among agencies about the proper classification of documents is common.
The FBI likewise denied any notion of a quid pro quo.
Clinton’s opponent, Republican Donald Trump, was not convinced by the assurances from the State Department and the FBI, reacting to the Kennedy document with a one-word tweet: “Unbelievable”.
A Trump ally, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, said the new documents “provide undeniable proof that Clinton colluded with the FBI, Department of Justice and State Department to cover up criminal activity at the highest levels.” “If any person had done a fraction of what she (Clinton) has done with our sensitive information, they would be criminally charged and those in our military would be court-martialed,” the former head of the Defence Intelligence Agency said in a statement. (IANS)
