Midday Roundup: Hillary Clinton gives up private email server

Data dump. Hillary Clinton finally agreed late last night to turn over to federal investigators the private email server she used during her time as secretary of state. Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, also told her lawyer to release a USB flash drive containing emails between Clinton and the U.S. Justice Department. The decision came just hours after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released an inspector general’s memo with more detail about the classified messages found among 55,000 pages of printed emails Clinton gave the State Department last year. According to the memo, at least two emails were classified “top secret,” and two others are being evaluated to determine their level of classification. After revealing she used a private email server for government communication, Clinton maintained she did not send or receive classified messages on that account. Her supporters note the classified messages were not restricted or marked as classified at the time Clinton received them. Republican lawmakers have called for Clinton to release the server so investigators can check it for any deleted messages not provided to the government.

Barbaric act. Sinai Province, an Islamic State (ISIS) affiliate in Egypt, claims it has beheaded a Croatian man it kidnapped last month and threatened to kill last week. Tomislav Salopek worked as a surveyor for the French oil and gas company GCC Ardiseis. Officials in Egypt and Croatia have not been able to independently confirm Salopek’s death. Last week, militants with Sinai Province gave Egyptian officials 48 hours to release Muslim women in the country’s jails and spare Salopek’s life. The images posted today purporting to show his beheaded body were paired on social media with screenshots of Arabic language news articles with the headlines: “Croatia confirms its support for Egypt in efforts to fight terrorism and extremism” and “Croatia affirms its continued support for the Kurdistan region.” Sinai Province is one of the militant groups leading an insurgency in Egypt that erupted after the military ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Staying put. President Barack Obama’s plan to shut down the terrorist prison in Guantanamo Bay has hit another stalemate. In 2012, then-Attorney General Eric Holder pledged under oath that the Obama administration would not transfer detainees to the federal prison in Thomson, Ill. But in hopes of advancing the president’s effort to close the controversial prison before leaving office in 2017, the White House set a plan before Congress this month proposing just that. The Justice Department quickly shot it down, saying it intended to honor Holder’s commitment. Cully Stimson with the Heritage Foundation said this is just one of many stumbling blocks to closing Guantanamo: “The president has a lot of work in front of him. And the fact that one particular facility is not available is really not the problem for the president.” Despite Democratic support, lawmakers aren’t volunteering their states to host the infamous detainees, and current law restricts federal funding for their transfers.

Dirty pool? A growing number of published reports now accuse the White House of using anti-Israel proxies to smear Democratic opponents of the Iran nuclear deal. Those groups include the National Iranian American Council, the far-left Jewish lobbying group J Street, and the anti-war organization Move On. Critics say those groups are running an anti-Semitic whisper campaign accusing Democratic opponents of caving to pro-Israel lobbyists who contribute to their campaigns. And they say it all started with a subtle comment the president made on Comedy Central last month about pressuring Congress on the deal. “If people are engaged, eventually the political system responds, despite the money, despite the lobbyists, it still responds,” Obama said. Sen.Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has come out against the administration’s Iran nuclear deal, as have nine other Democrats in the House.

No exceptions. An Ohio judicial board has ruled judges who perform weddings cannot turn away same-sex couples based on religious beliefs. The Ohio Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Conduct also said judges who stop performing all marriages to avoid marrying same-sex couples may be considered biased and could thus be disqualified from any case where sexual orientation is an issue. Toledo Judge C. Alan McConnell had refused to perform a same-sex wedding because of his religious beliefs and asked the board to clarify his duties after the U.S. Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in all 50 states. McConnell said Monday he would abide by the board’s opinion.

WORLD Radio’s Mary Reichard, Steve Coleman, and Jim Henry contributed to this report.