Newly leaked emails reveal that staffers were eager to give People magazine puff pieces about Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
(Photo: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)
The emails, hacked from the campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account and published by Wikileaks Wednesday, reveal an exchange between Sandra Sobieraj Westfall — a reporter for People — and Clinton’s press secretary Nick Merrill. (RELATED: Leaked Emails Reveal Hillary Clinton Hates The Phrase ‘Everyday Americans’)
“Hi. Traffic on our Hillary stories is absolutely off the charts!” Westfall writes an email to the campaign in April 2015. “Which only means an insatiable demand for more. Is there any color you can whisper on background at all on what Sec. Clinton is doing today or this weekend or anything?”
“Anything we want to give PEOPLE?” Merrill responds in an email to other staffers. “We could wait until we have a nice photo tomorrow and do that with some color.”
(Photo: Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images)
“I would give her some color — they will eat it up,” Kristina Schake said. (RELATED: Clinton Staffers Whine: ‘Chelsea Keeps Going To Daddy’)
“OK tomorrow,” Merrill replied.
“How about HRC calling in to HQ tonight to thank/fire up the staff w/a little from what it was like on your end and on our end here?” Karen Finney added.
“Agree we should give it to People,” Schake said. “They have 20 stories on their news feed right now and 6 are about HRC. They are giving us lots of coverage and we should keep giving them more so they keep it up.”
Westfall did not immediately respond to request for comment.