The Clinton campaign considered Donna Brazile a “friend” and a “surrogate” last year, even though the Democratic party operative insisted at the time that she was neutral in the party primary race.
Brazile’s secret support for Clinton is revealed in an Oct. 29, 2015 email entitled “Bernie pushback update.”
Clinton’s campaign staff was rallying the troops after a Bernie Sanders campaign official said that the Vermont senator would consider choosing Clinton as his vice president.
“Donna Brazile – is super pissed about the VP comment and will raise it if possible tonight. Due to her contract she is on constantly and can push this tomorrow,” reads the email, which was circulated by Adrienne Elrod and released on Wednesday by Wikileaks.
The email is not the first from the Wikileaks dump to show that Brazile secretly supported the Clinton campaign.
In March, when Brazile was still a paid CNN and ABC contributor, she shared a question with the Clinton campaign that was set to be asked at a town hall hosted by CNN and TV One in March. (RELATED: Donna Brazile Shared CNN Town Hall Questions With Clinton Campaign)
The revelation sparked intense backlash against Brazile, who took over the DNC in July after emails released from another hack showed that then-chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz had a strong bias against Sanders.
Brazile told The Daily Caller that the allegation that she tipped the Clinton campaign off to the town hall question was “a stretch.” But it has since been revealed that Brazile appears to have received the question from TV One.
There is no evidence that she shared any town hall questions or other information with the Sanders campaign during the primaries.
Before taking over at the DNC, Brazile had repeatedly insisted in her many television appearances that she was neutral in the race. She did not endorse Clinton until June, when the former secretary of state essentially wrapped up the party’s nomination by defeating Sanders in the California primary.
But the latest release of Podesta emails show that the Clinton campaign did not view Brazile as neutral.
“Here is where we are from the surrogate standpoint. Also note that we are encouraging our friends to book themselves for obvious reasons,” Elrod wrote in the email which was addressed to several campaign officials, including campaign manager Robby Mook.
“All of our friends going out tonight post debate, including Granholm, Donna Brazile and Bill Burton, are ready to call Bernie’s team out if it comes up tonight.”