Newly leaked emails reveal that Hillary Clinton’s staff wasn’t sure how to react to Justice Antonin Scalia’s death earlier this year.
(Photo: Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images)
The emails, hacked from the campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account and published by Wikileaks Tuesday, showed that Dan Schwerin — Clinton’s speechwriter — deliberated with other staffers over whether they should release a statement on his death. (RELATED: Clinton Staffers Whine: ‘Chelsea Keeps Going To Daddy’)
“Are we going to want to do a statement from HRC? Should she address tonight in CO?” Schwerin wrote in an email to Jennifer Palmieri, Robby Mook and several others with the subject line “Scalia.”
“I don’t know,” Palmieri responded. “Like to hear suggestions of what she would say. I am having a hard time imagining what she would say. In a day or two it could be appropriate to talk about SCOTUS stakes, but seems off for tonight.”
(Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
“I have same concern,” Schwerin said.
“I don’t feel any urgency to say anything [sic] she needs to be ready to comment obviously but i don’t see how we’d be criticised for NOT saying anything,” Mook — her campaign manager — replied. (RELATED: Leaked Emails Reveal Hillary Clinton Hates The Phrase ‘Everyday Americans’)
Though the emails suggest that the Clinton campaign wasn’t going to respond, they issued a statement on Twitter in the end.
Statement on the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: pic.twitter.com/xazj9dDd5c
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 14, 2016