WASHINGTON—Hacked emails released in daily dispatches this past week by the WikiLeaks group exposed the inner workings of Hillary Clinton’s campaign leading up to her 2015 announcement that she would seek the presidency, and through this year’s primary.
The thousands of emails were hacked from the accounts of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
U.S. intelligence officials have blamed the Russian government for a series of breaches intended to influence the presidential election. The Russians deny involvement.
Among the revelations from Podesta’s hacked emails:
What to Say About Email Scandal
A series of exchanges among Clinton aides and her attorney in August 2015 show internal wrangling over what to say to the public about the ongoing scandal over her use of personal email and a private server.
In one conversation, speechwriter Dan Schwerin sent Podesta and top aides a suggested statement from Clinton saying that she had asked her team to “hand over my email server, as well as a thumb drive” with her emails. At the time, The Washington Post had reported that the FBI was looking into the security of the server and drive.
Clinton lawyer David Kendall pushed back on the statement’s wording because it didn’t specify that the server was being given to the Justice Department as opposed to the State Department, which was reviewing Clinton’s emails for public release.
“There they go again—misleading, devious, non-transparent, tricky etc,” he wrote, predicting how Clinton critics might respond once the full facts came out.
In a separate exchange a day later, aides wrestled with whether an open letter from Clinton should specifically reference former Secretary of State Colin Powell in arguing that she used the same email practices as her predecessors. They agreed to say that Clinton’s actions had been “consistent with practice of prior secretaries” but to remove a reference in a fact-sheet to Powell.
Powell’s private advice to Clinton about setting up private email later became public. In Powell’s own emails that were hacked this year, he complained that Clinton’s team was trying to blame him for her mistakes.
Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri in August 2015 also told her colleagues she hoped that “we could use the ’server moment' as an opportunity” for Clinton to be seen as taking a big step to deal with the controversy. But Palmieri said it was clear Clinton “is not in the same place,” unless Podesta was able to get her to change her mind.
Juanita Broaddrick
A January 2016 email from Clinton’s personal lawyer, David Kendall, to Podesta followed up on a phone call to provide a history of allegations made by Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Bill Clinton of raping her in the late 1970s.
Broaddrick was among the three past accusers of the former president who attended last week’s debate in St. Louis at the invitation of Trump. Clinton has denied the rape accusation made by Broaddrick, which was never adjudicated by a criminal court.
The documents in the WikiLeaks release include the affidavit that Broaddrick signed saying that Clinton did not assault her and the independent counsel’s history of the Paula Jones case in which Broaddrick later received immunity from any prosecution for perjury if she changed her story.
“Voila! She did, disavowing her sworn affidavit and sworn deposition testimony,” Kendall wrote in the email to Podesta. He concluded, “Please let me know if there’s anything else I can provide about this slimefest.”
Star Power
As Clinton’s campaign geared up in 2015, her aides hoped to procure some star power to give her a boost—someone sensational, but not too sensational.
Less than two weeks before her formal launch speech in New York, her scheduling director asked for a list of celebrities willing to help and said the campaign wanted options “somewhere between a high school band and Lady Gaga.”
