As WikiLeaks continues to release batches of e-mails from the hacked account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, a wider picture of the internal deliberations in the Clinton campaign and among its allies is beginning to emerge. Moreover, the long-simmering accusations from the Bernie Sanders campaign that the Democratic National Committee apparatus was in the tank for Hillary Clinton is becoming harder and harder to deny.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=O3lUBH0-nEE%3Fstart%3D3805
CNN denies that they had any role in Brazile obtaining the question in advance — pointing the finger at TVOne and Roland Martin.
So just how neutral was Brazile? Apparently not so much. A January 3, 2016, e-mail to Podesta has Brazile declaring, “As soon as the nomination is wrapped up, I will be your biggest surrogate.”
It’s not surprising, then, that Hillary’s people took the DNC’s cooperation and tacit support as foreordained. In March 2015 — before Hillary had even officially declared her candidacy for the White House! — Robby Mook, now the Clinton campaign manager, complained, “I’m distressed that DWS [i.e., Debbie Wasserman Schultz] hired a convention CEO without consulting us after Charlie and I both told them repeatedly that we expected to be consulted–and we were under the impression they would.”
Mook added, “It boggles my mind that they didn’t even consult the White House or us.” If the DNC was so steadfastly neutral between the various Democratic campaigns, why exactly should they have consulted the representatives of one particular campaign before staffing up for the 2016 convention?
Who is behind the hacks and the subsequent leaks? According to the Wall Street Journal, the FBI suspects the whole thing is a Russian intelligence operation — and Russian officials aren’t exactly forcefully denying it:
President Vladimir Putin said it is irrelevant who stole the computer records, and the foreign minister said the U.S. hasn’t proven anything so far. . . .
“Everyone is saying, ‘Who did it?’” Mr. Putin said at an investor forum in Moscow. “But does it matter that much? It’s what’s inside the information that matters.”
‐Rounding up National Review’s coverage of the Podesta hack: Here’s my Tuesday write-up on the initial Columbus Day weekend leaks, including excerpts of Hillary’s speeches to Wall Street firms. Notably, Hillary told a Brazilian bank in 2013 that her “dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders” — a position at odds with her current protectionist trade policy, to say the least, while taking the most liberal immigration line possible.
‐Andrew McCarthy details Hillary’s memorandum to the White House (written after she left the State Department) advocating her nine-point plan to defeat ISIS. The memo also explicitly accuses the Saudi and Qatari governments of supporting terrorism — a position quite at odds with public U.S. government pronouncements. Finally, the memo potentially undermines Clinton’s under-oath 2013 testimony to the Senate in which she denied any knowledge of weapons shipments to Benghazi.
‐Andy also takes a hard look at the alleged impropriety of contact and communications between the Department of Justice and the Clinton team. Needless to say, the timing of DOJ communications, tweets from Camp Clinton on her desire for transparency during the e-mail scandal, and the deletion of tens of thousands of e-mails from the Clinton server by a technician at Platte River Networks is . . . interesting.
‐Jim Geraghty notes that, contrary to the insistence of the State Department and the Clinton campaign, it seems “FOB”s — i.e., “Friends of Bill” — were given special attention, access, and treatment by the Hillary Clinton State Department. Also, the State Department paid for polling to be conducted in Haiti, where Bill Clinton was fronting earthquake relief efforts, to measure the popularity of former president Bill Clinton.
‐Jim reviews e-mails between Sandy Newman, president of Voices for Progress, and John Podesta in which Newman calls the Catholic Church a “middle ages dictatorship.” (There were other internal e-mails disparaging Catholics from members of Camp Clinton, including an exchange between Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, Podesta, and Center for American Progress fellow John Halpin decrying conservative Catholics’ “bastardization of the faith” and positing that conservatives are attracted to Catholicism because of its “severely backward gender relations.”)
‐Finally, Jim explores whether the Clinton team thought the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal was a big deal. Apparently not: John Podesta wrote his daughter, in response to a question about whether he would be held up in New York working on the scandal, “What scandal? A few e-mails we’ve asked be made public?”
What scandal, indeed — but maybe Team Clinton should avoid using e-mail for the remainder of the campaign season.