AP Fact Check: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and their debate claims
EDITOR'S NOTE - A look at the veracity of claims by political figures
WASHINGTON - Donald Trump mischaracterized the record on Hillary Clinton's defense of her husband and her own treatment of women when he brought up Bill Clinton's sexual history and other episodes of the past. Clinton didn't give a square account of the fallout from her email practices.
A look at some of the claims in the second presidential debate:
TRUMP, asked whether the predatory behavior with women that he described in a 2005 video amounted to sexual assault: "No, I didn't say that at all."
THE FACTS: He certainly didn't own up to sexual assault in his boastful remarks in 2005. But he clearly described groping and kissing women without their permission, using his celebrity to impose himself on them.
"I don't even wait," he bragged in the video. "And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything." He went on: "Grab them by the p----. You can do anything."
He described a specific sexual advance toward a married woman. "I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn't get there."
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TRUMP on Hillary Clinton's behavior when, as a young public defender, she was assigned to represent an accused child rapist: "She's seen on two separate occasions, laughing at the girl who was raped. Kathy Shelton, that young woman, is here with us tonight."
THE FACTS: At no point was Clinton seen laughing at the victim.
In 1975, at the age of 12, Shelton was sexually assaulted in Northwest Arkansas. Clinton was asked by a judge overseeing the case to represent her alleged attacker. After the prosecution lost key evidence, Clinton's client entered a plea to a lesser charge.
In an interview a decade later, Clinton expressed horror at the crime, but was recorded on tape laughing about procedural details of the case. The audio has been seized on by conservative groups looking to attack Clinton's presidential candidacy but does not convey mirth at the girl's fate.
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TRUMP on women linked to Bill Clinton sexually: "Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously."
THE FACTS: There is no clear, independent evidence that Hillary Clinton "viciously" attacked women who alleged or confirmed sexual contact with her husband.
To be sure, in the 1992 Democratic primaries, she was deeply involved in the Clinton campaign's effort to discredit one accuser, actress Gennifer Flowers, who alleged she had a long-running affair with Bill Clinton. Both Clintons acknowledged past troubles in their marriage but sought to undermine Flowers' claims. Bill Clinton later acknowledged in a 1998 court deposition that he had a sexual encounter with Flowers.
Hillary Clinton was also quoted over the years making disparaging comments about other women linked with her husband.
What is lacking is proof that she engineered efforts to smear their reputation. Diane Blair, a political science professor and long-time Hillary Clinton friend who died in 2000, left behind an account of private interviews with Hillary Clinton in which she told her during the Monica Lewinsky affair that she considered the former White House intern a "narcissistic loony toon."
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CLINTON: "After a yearlong investigation, there is no evidence that anyone hacked the server I was using, and there is no evidence that anyone can point to, at all ... that any classified material ended up in the wrong hands."
THE FACTS: Maybe, maybe not. While there's indeed no direct, explicit evidence that classified information was leaked or that her server was breached, it was nevertheless connected to the internet in ways that made it more vulnerable to hackers - and the public may never know who saw them. FBI Director James Comey has said: "We assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal e-mail account."
The Associated Press previously discovered that her private server, which has been a major campaign issue for Clinton and the focus of U.S. investigations, appeared to allow users to connect to it openly over the internet and control it remotely. That practice, experts said, wasn't intended to be used without additional protective measures, and was the subject of U.S. government warnings at the time over attacks from even amateur hackers.
Since the AP in early 2015 traced her server to her home in Chappaqua, New York, Clinton hasn't fully explained who administered her server, if it received software updates to plug security holes or if it was monitored for unauthorized access. It's also unclear what, if any, encryption software Clinton's server may have used to communicate with official U.S. government email accounts.
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