Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, trashed the Clinton world’s vetting of potential new employees in emails published by WikiLeaks.
On February 23, 2015, Mook sent an email to Cheryl Mills and Clinton campaign counsel Marc Elias in response to an inquiry he had received from Heather Samuelson, one of Mills’ staffers.
“Do you guys know what this is regarding?” Mook wrote, which earned the following answer from Mills.
Cheryl Mills sits behind Hillary Clinton as the former secretary of state testifies before Congress in 2015 (Getty Images)
“After our call Sunday and the situation with New Partners, I asked Heather to make sure we had properly vetted the paradigm for their engagement… I asked her to make sure we were following consistent standards so if anyone looked at any of our folks, we had the ability to say we reviewed and cleared their arrangement consistent with any conflicts.”
“I assume she is following up.”
Mills’ response clearly rubbed Mook the wrong way.
After trying to reach her over the phone to discuss the situation offline, Mook wrote to Mills, “all these secret investigations really need to stop. I literally don’t have time for these games.”
At this point in the email chain, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta got involved.
John Podesta looks on prior to the start of the Presidential Debate at Hofstra University (Getty Images)
“Not with you on this,” he responded to Mook. “Don’t view these as ‘secret investigations’ but as establishing good practices. We need to get good systems in place at the outset.”
Mook once again found this line reasoning unsatisfactory.
“That’s exactly my point,” he wrote to Podesta. “I have a process in place with Elias and Charlie–exactly what you and she asked. So why is she secretly dispatching Heather to investigate a problem she won’t even explain–a concern she supposedly has with a contract SHE wrote negotiated.”
“What she is doing isn’t improving anything. It is secretly going around a transparent system we all agreed upon. It undermines Elias and Charlie and sucks up my time. If she has an issue–call or send an email, we can deal with it and move on. She can call Marc. But the secret shit has to stop. It’s a giant time suck.”