Clinton aides John Podesta and Philippe Reines got into a big email fight over potential “leaks” within the former Secretary of State’s inner circle, according to new emails released by WikiLeaks.
Clinton Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian told Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill in March, 2015, that “our favorite CNN source says that Brianna (who is filling in for Erin this week) and Dan have been speculating that HRC lined up an interview with Andrea Mitchell about emails.”
“This is nuts,” Merrill said, responding to rumors that Clinton would sit down with MSNBC’s Mitchell. Merrill added other Clinton aides to the email chain with the subject line “leaks.”
“Ok, this has gone too far. The email below is from Craig to Nick to me where someone knows an interview with Andrea was on the table,” Reines responded, worried someone inside the campaign was leaking information to the press.
“You got to stop this,” Podesta shot back. “The press is trading in rumors that can easily originate in their own newsrooms. If someone wanted to leak juicy tidbits, they have a lot more to work with than our press planning. If we are going to be at each others throats before we start, we are going nowhere.”
Reines didn’t stop. He sent Podesta an angry response:
With all due respect, and reluctantly to do this in front of HRC except for wanting to defend myself against being labeled as a cancer – but the conclusion that it is ME that has to stop “this” is really unfair. ýThis has happened too much over the last six weeks to chalk it up to the press guessing correctly. They don’t even get facts correctly. Cnn guessed Andrea Mitchell? Come on. That flies in the face of common sense.
Not to mention I’m following up on a topic last night where you yourself felt it enough of a problem to have warned the Secretary her people yap. I didn’t whip you up. You took that into consideration when discussing a 24 hour delay. That never should have been a factor.
Lastly, if you think I’m the only one on this chain bothered by this – and not because I whipped them up – then I have a bridge to nowhere to sell you. When I had dinner with Jim Margolis weeks ago, he broached with me that he is shocked by what he’s reading, is sure it’s close, and fears HRC is looking at him and the rest of them funny. I think that’s a problem when her team is looking funny at each other.
And for anyone to be justifiably upset to not be read in earlier on our current challenge, and then wonder why it’s difficult to speak freely about something so sensitive in large in expanded settings, is a lack of self-awareness. This topic’s a unique doozy, but it’s not the last delicate one. That someone yapped about the lamest 10%ý of our conversations is better than the most sensitive 10% is besides the point. But either way we’re going to have to agree to disagree on whether 10% is just the price of doing business.
Again, with all due respect, your reaction to me is unfair in that’s it’s stronger than any admonition anyone else has received who is actually doing something wrong.
I agree though that being at each others’ throats will get us nowhere, and if you want me to keep it to myself, ok, done. But it’s the underlying problem that’s going to be the problem, not me stating the obvious.
With that, I’m going to sit queitly in the corner until Cheryl calls me to admonish me for sending this reply and digging myself into an even deeper hole with you than I already was.
For those keeping score, that will be two more admonishment than the culprit(s) have received.
The “leaks” email chain was one of thousands published online by WikiLeaks from Podesta’s hacked Gmail account. So far, WikiLeaks released four tranches of Podesta’s emails going back years, and more emails are expected to come out in the coming days.
Podesta and other Democrats blame the email leaks on Russian hackers. Podesta is not verifying the authenticity of the emails.
“I’ve been involved in politics for nearly five decades,” Podesta told reporters Tuesday. “This definitely is the first campaign that I’ve been involved with in which I’ve had to tangle with Russian intelligence agencies… who seem to be doing everything that they can on behalf of our opponent.”
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