13 revelations from Wikileaks' hacked Clinton emails

13 revelations from Wikileaks' hacked Clinton emails

• 3 hours ago
  
• From the section US & Canada
  

Wikileaks has released a new batch of hacked emails from the account of Hillary Clinton's campaign boss.
The revelations keep coming from the cyber-breach, and the anti-secrecy website says it will release tens of thousands more emails between now and election day next month.
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, whose emails were hacked, has claimed the Russian government was behind the leak and the Trump campaign knew about it in advance.
Mr Podesta has refused to confirm or deny the emails' authenticity, suggesting some could have been doctored, without so far pinpointing any of the correspondence as fake.
These messages are different from the other Clinton email controversy, when she was found to have handled classified material and broken government rules by exclusively operating a private server from her upstate New York home while secretary of state.
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So what has the Wikileaks dump told us?

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Image copyright Reuters Image caption Bill and Melinda Gates

Bill Gates for veep?

Mrs Clinton's campaign considered Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates or his wife Melinda as her running mate, according to the hacked emails.
Mr Podesta drafted a list of nearly 40 names for her potential vice-presidential pick, organising it by what he called "rough food groups", which appeared to refer to demographic coalitions.
The list included Hispanic, white and black men, three former high-ranking military officers, business leaders and female senators.
Among those included were Apple's Tim Cook, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, General Motors' Marry Barra and Starbucks chief exeuctive Howard Schultz.
Senator Bernie Sanders was listed in a group by himself.

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'Clintons won't forget'

The Clinton campaign tried to reschedule the Illinois presidential primary to a month later, so as to make it less likely that a moderate Republican would get a boost following the Super Tuesday primaries.
"The Clintons won't forget what their friends have done for them," future Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook wrote in the November 2014 email to Mr Podesta.
But Mr Mook said the vote would be difficult to reschedule because Illinois Democrats "feel forgotten and neglected by POTUS", a reference to President Obama.
The primary was ultimately held on its original date, 15 March this year.

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Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Clinton on the campaign trail

'Covert' Syrian action

According to the latest leaked emails, Mrs Clinton told a Goldman Sachs conference she would like to intervene secretly in Syria.
She made the remark in answer to a question from Lloyd Blankfein, the bank's chief executive, in 2013 months after she left office as secretary of state.
"My view was you intervene as covertly as is possible for Americans to intervene," she told employees of the bank in South Carolina, which had paid her about $225,000 to give a speech.
Mrs Clinton - who is accused of being a war hawk by liberal critics - added: "We used to be much better at this than we are now. Now, you know, everybody can't help themselves.
"They have to go out and tell their friendly reporters and somebody else: Look what we're doing and I want credit for it."

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'Ring China'

Mrs Clinton said in emails that she had told Chinese officials if they were not able or willing to control North Korea's aggression then the US would be forced to put up missile defences in the region.
"So China, come on. You either control them or we're going to have to defend against them," she purportedly told a Goldman Sachs conference in June 2013.
She also remarked that the US would send additional warships to the region to counter the North Korean missile threat.
As secretary of state, Mrs Clinton visited China seven times and helped develop Washington's "pivot" to Asia, which has long been viewed with suspicion by Beijing.

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Catholic 'bastardisation'

A 2011 exchange between Mrs Clinton's now-communication's director Jennifer Palmieri and liberal think tank fellow John Halpin mocked a magazine article describing media mogul Rupert Murdoch raising his children as Catholics.
Mr Halpin, a self-described Catholic, writes that many of the "most powerful elements of the conservative movement are Catholics... they must be attracted to the systematic thought and [severely] backwards gender relations", adding that "it's an amazing bastardisation of the faith".
Ms Palmieri responds that those people must think it is "the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion". Ms Palmieri recently said she doesn't recognise the emails, adding that "I'm a Catholic".

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'A public and a private position'

In excerpts from one of Mrs Clinton's paid speeches to Wall Street bankers, she said: "Politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be.
"But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position."
She introduced this comment by saying that she had just watched Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln, which shows the political negotiations the US Civil War-era president undertook to pass the 13th amendment to the US constitution, abolishing slavery.
Bernie Sanders, who campaigned against Mrs Clinton during the Democratic primary season, had called repeatedly for Mrs Clinton to release the transcripts of her paid Wall Street speeches.

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Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Clinton campaigns in Las Vegas

Clinton 'was fed a question'

Donna Brazile, the former CNN contributor, notified the Clinton campaign in advance of a question she would be asked at a town hall-style event hosted by the cable network in March, according to the leaked emails.
"From time to time I get the questions in advance," Ms Brazile, now chair of the Democratic National Party (DNC), wrote in the subject line of a 12 March email to Clinton aides.
She went on to paste the text of a question about the death penalty that Mrs Clinton would be asked. The question, with very similar wording, ended up being posed to the White House hopeful at the event.
Hours after WikiLeaks broke the news of the alleged collaboration, Ms Brazile wrote in an statement: "I never had access to questions and would never have shared them with the candidates if I did."
The leaked email has also caused embarrassment for CNN, which Donald Trump has mockingly referred to as the "Clinton News Network".
Ms Brazile took over at the DNC when its former chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz over hacked emails which revealed the party establishment's favouritism towards Mrs Clinton.
The DNC was meant to be neutral in the contest between Mrs Clinton and her Democratic primary season challenger, Bernie Sanders.
While serving as DNC vice-chair in January 2016, Ms Brazile forwarded to Clinton's staff an email revealing the Sanders camp's plan to court African-American voters.
"FYI," Ms Brazile wrote to campaign spokesperson Adrienne Elrod, who responded: "Thank you for the heads up on this Donna."


Media captionGordon Corera reports on an "extraordinary" claim Russia is trying to influence the election

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Justice Department 'collusion'

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon wrote in a May 2015 email: "DOJ folks inform me there is a status hearing in this case this morning."
He was referring to a Freedom of Information Act request by a journalist seeking disclosure of Mrs Clinton's emails from her time as the secretary of state.
Mr Fallon, who is a former Department of Justice spokesman, was relaying information that was already publicly available and being reported by multiple news outlets.
Nevertheless, Donald Trump seized on the communication between the Clinton campaign and the DOJ, saying, "this is collusion and corruption of the highest order".
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Syrian refugees at the Azraq camp in Jordan

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Clinton 'wary of refugees'

In a leaked 2013 paid speech to the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, Mrs Clinton said that Jordan and Turkey "can't possibly vet all those refugees so they don't know if, you know, jihadists are coming in along with legitimate refugees".
Trump supporters seized on these remarks to criticise her call for the US to accept 65,000 refugees per year, an increase on President Obama's plan to allow 10,000 per year.
Many refugees from Syria transit through Jordan, Turkey, or Lebanon on their way to the West.
Donald Trump has called for a ban on all Muslim immigration, but said in the second debate his plan had "morphed into an extreme vetting from certain areas of the world".

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'Open borders' dream

Mrs Clinton's newfound opposition to trade deals contradicts remarks she made in a 2013 paid speech to Brazilian bank Banco Itau.
She said: "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere."
Critics seized upon those remarks, pointing to Mr Trump's frequent talking point that "without a border, we just don't have a country".
Mrs Clinton reportedly earned over $26m for speeches she gave after leaving the State Department.

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Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Demonstrators cheer Obama's decision to veto the Keystone XL pipeline

Keystone XL pipeline

Several Clinton aides discuss what political opinion their candidate should take on the controversial energy pipeline known as Keystone XL.
In May 2015 Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook pointed to a report that the Clinton Foundation had received money from one of the project's backers, emailing that "the enviros may latch onto this going forward. Have we discussed when she will come out against Keystone?"
He also asks if they should wait until after President Obama vetoes the pipeline, which he did in November 2015. Mrs Clinton announced her opposition in September.
When she was asked in 2010 about when the pipeline would be approved, the then-secretary of state said the analysis was not yet complete, "but we are inclined" to approve the project.
Critics said her subsequent opposition to the pipeline was a "flip flop".

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Chelsea Clinton a 'brat'

Doug Band, a long-time personal aide to Bill Clinton, complained that Chelsea Clinton was meddling in his consulting firm, where the former president served as a paid adviser, and also interfering with his work at the Clinton Foundation.
In a 2011 email, he wrote "she is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she's doing because she, as she has said, hasn't found her way and has a lack of focus in her life".
Chelsea Clinton, 36, had recently taken a role at the Clinton Foundation, and had complained in emails that Mr Band's consultancy was contacting members of the British Parliament "on behalf of President Clinton".

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Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Chelsea Clinton speaks at a family town hall in a crucial swing district of Pennsylvania

'Needy Latinos and 1 easy call'

That's the subject line of an August 2015 email sent by Mr Podesta to Hillary Clinton and one her closest aides, Huma Abedin.
Mr Podesta's email suggests that Mrs Clinton reach out to former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and former Energy Secretary Federico Pena to ask for their support during her primary campaign.
Mr Podesta also uses a profane term to refer to Gov Richardson, who had implied in an earlier email that he would require a phone call in order to provide his support.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37639370