Here’s a rundown of what’s been revealed so far from the continuing release by Wikileaks of Clinton campaign emails. (This is an update of an earlier compilation.)
What is in the latest Wikileaks email dump?
For the last several weeks, the website Wikileaks has been publishing emails from the private Gmail inbox of John Podesta, a senior Democratic Party official who has served in a variety of senior positions. Mr. Podesta served as White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and is currently serving as the chairman to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
How many emails are involved? Are there more coming?
Wikileaks says that it is in possession of about 50,000 of Mr. Podesta’s emails. So far, the group has published about 33,000 emails, in batches of a few thousand a day. Campaign officials are bracing for ongoing releases through Election Day, though Wikileaks has not “confirmed a release schedule.” Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has refused to confirm or deny the authenticity of the hacked documents.
How did Wikileaks get the emails?
The Federal Bureau of Investigation suspects Russian intelligence agencies are behind the hack and provided them to Wikileaks, according to people briefed on the investigation. It’s not the first time that actors linked to the Russian government have hacked political email accounts: Emails and documents belonging to Democratic Party officials have been released in the past few months, including one batch that forced the resignation of the head of the Democratic National Committee.
What have we learned?
Mr. Podesta’s emails contain interesting political gossip, strategy and personnel discussions, surrounded by a sea of mundane work emails and daily political newsletters.
The emails show the Clinton campaign’s frank internal conversations about how to deal with everything from the media firestorm over Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server, to Mrs. Clinton’s reversal on an Asian trade pact, to how to deal with complicated questions about the family’s charitable foundation.
Interspersed in the emails are plenty of personal gossip — showing feuds and divisions within Mrs. Clinton’s circle and personal disagreements between staffers and the Clinton family, as well as controversial exchanges about Catholics and CNN debate questions. And some have been more lighthearted: emails show the depth of Mr. Podesta’s well-document interest in UFOs and capture him giving advice on how to cook risotto.
Some of the main takeaways:
Mrs. Clinton’s top advisers were divided about what she should do on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with some fearing that opposition to the trade pact would look like a blatant “flip-flop.” On Oct. 8, 2015, Mrs. Clinton said she opposed the trade pact, a position that proved helpful in keeping her coalition intact and beating back a primary challenge from Vermont’s liberal senator, Bernie Sanders.
The emails show there were close ties between Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign and top Democratic Party officials long before she wrapped up the nomination, despite a longstanding mandate that the national party remain neutral in intraparty fights.
Mrs. Clinton’s political team sought to contain any potential fallout over her use of a private email server by communicating with government agencies, enlisting help of congressional allies and managing public statements
The emails also show Mrs. Clinton’s advisers and allies prodding the former secretary of state to apologize for using a private email server and acknowledging her reluctance to admit mistakes.
The emails reveal deep divisions within Mrs. Clinton’s political circle about the handling of the controversy over her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state, with some upset that the arrangement wasn’t publicly disclosed far earlier.
Clinton aides chewed over campaign messages large and small as she moved through the Democratic primary and into the general election showdown with Republican rival Donald Trump. The emails underline Mrs. Clinton’s image as a highly scripted, deeply cautious candidate.
In a trio of paid talks before she entered the presidential race, Mrs. Clinton took on a more pro-business persona that Democratic voters typically saw as she pursued the party nomination. In what appear to be transcripts of her comments at the events in 2013, which were underwritten by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Mrs. Clinton spoke about the importance of free trade, sounded a skeptical note about financial regulation, and said the political system would benefit if more “successful business people” ran for public office. During the campaign, she cast herself as a committed populist fully prepared to jail Wall Street bankers.
An email sent by Chelsea Clinton in 2011 pointed to discord within the Clinton Foundation and bitter tensions inside the network of Clinton associates and aides.
Wall Street Journal
The state of Utah is historically a solid red state, its heavily Mormon population identifying best with the pro-Christian, pro-life, limited government and spending philosophies of the Republican party. This election year, however, the voters of the state of Utah appear to be enamored of the idea of a protest vote, wherein they demonstrate their dislike for the superficially flawed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump by voting for independent third-party candidate Evan McMullin.
Early results from their final debate are in, and Donald Trump remains barely ahead of Hillary Clinton in the White House Watch.
American education is failing thousands of students every year. But this crisis is not just about poor scores in math and reading. It is a deeper failure, leaving entire generations of Americans without the most basic knowledge of the country’s past and its civic institutions.
I had planned on taking a day off from the blog, but developments with the Wikileaks email dump obliged me to stay on the job. Late last night a friend informed me that Julian Assange’s internet access had been disrupted. Let me give you a bit of background on Assange and Wikileaks. Julian Assange is an Australian citizen, computer programmer by occupation, who created the organization known as Wikileaks. Since its inception over ten years ago, Wikileaks has been dedicated to hacking into private government and business computer systems, and releasing to the public confidential information. The organization claims no political bias, and only releases information that it decides is in the public interest. You may recall that former U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning was Court-martialed for sharing Top Secret military intelligence with Assange and Wikileaks. While Wikileaks was making a name for itself in the Bradley Manning affair, Assange found himself in “unrelated” difficulty with the Swedish police. Two women accuse Assange of sexual assault, relating to the time period that Assange was living in Sweden. Assange, who was in England when the accusations became public, has been hiding out at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in order to avoid extradition to Sweden to face trial. While he has been holed up in the Embassy of Ecuador, Assange has continued to control Wikileaks. In fact, Assange claimed that Wikileaks had hacked into Hillary Clinton’s server when she was Secretary of State, and that Wikileaks intended to release these emails in October, just prior to the U.S. presidential election.
When October rolled around, and Wikileaks started releasing Clinton emails, the U.S. media was busy giving airtime and legitimacy to a string of slanderous, false stories about Donald Trump. A number of us noted with anger the “coincidental” timing of the stories about Trump, but we also realized that the media could not distract the American public forever. The Wikileaks emails would eventually be disseminated, and barring any unforeseen developments, the release would take place before the November election. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Sunday night, that Assange’s email access had been disconnected, just prior to the release of another batch of emails. Wikileaks, which claims to have other methods of sharing the emails, announced that Assange’s access was terminated by the government of Ecuador. I have also read that the CIA was involved, but I doubt the verac
A senior State Department official proposed a “quid pro quo” to convince the FBI to strip the classification on an email from Hillary Clinton’s server – and repeatedly tried to “influence” the bureau’s decision when his offer was denied, even taking his plea up the chain of command, according to newly released FBI documents.
The Constitution has long been subject to attacks from individuals hostile to its guarantees of freedom, economic opportunity, and limited government, but in recent days no other provision has been as widely and intensely attacked as the First Amendment.
In the second debate of the 2016 presidential race, Trump came back strong, obviously deciding that the “gentleman” approach he had adopted for the first debate had not worked well in his favor.
On Thursday, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will release its report on “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration.” According to the report, first generation immigrants as a group increase the nation’s fiscal deficit. In other words, the government benefits they receive exceed the taxes paid.
Thus, as each adult immigrant without a high school diploma enters the country, the government would need to immediately put aside and invest $231,000 to cover the future net fiscal cost (total benefits minus total taxes) of that immigrant.
The Obama administration opposes states verifying citizenship status of registered voters. Inquiries into voter fraud are typically met with derision from both government and the media—and in at least one instance with prosecution. Prosecutors don’t prioritize voter fraud, while convictions only garner light sentences.
Some recent cases cited by the panelists demonstrate the reality of voter fraud.
Federal lawmakers seeking to pinpoint the number of illegal immigrants who successfully sneak across the southern border ordered up a report from the Department of Homeland Security, but the agency refuses to release it and instead cites a misleading statistic that overstates the number who are nabbed, sources told Fox News.
Sen. Chuck Schumer has reminded us just how important the upcoming presidential election will be in shaping the federal judiciary, calling getting a progressive Supreme Court his “number one goal.”
As Roll Call reported, Schumer “predicted that the Shelby County decision on voting rights would be overturned by a Supreme Court with the kind of progressive justices he would prioritize confirming as majority leader.”
Moments ago, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton suddenly left 9/11 ceremonies at Ground Zero in New York City, stumbling to the curb to await her motorcade to arrive. Police sources say Mrs. Clinton seemed to be suffering from some kind of “medical episode.” Witnesses say she stumbled off the curb and appeared to fa
With the presidential election two months away, a Kansas law requiring voters to show proof of citizenship remains in legal limbo.
The ACLU lawsuit specifically targets the issue of Kansas’ requiring proof of citizenship from those registering to vote at the DMV.
But the ACLU counters that, under the Kansas proof of citizenship law, people who register to vote at the DMV are not always told that they have to provide additional paperwork to get on the voter rolls. These people only learn later on—after they thought they had reg
Kobach said he expects a decision from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals before the Nov. 8 presidential election. Even if a decision comes close to the election, he says, his state has contingency plans no matter the ruling.
Phyllis Schlafly, the iconic pro-family activist who rose to fame in the 1970s when she campaigned against the Equal Rights Amendment, has died at age 92, according to the Eagle Forum, the conservative organization she founded.
“Her focus from her earliest days until her final ones was protecting the family, which she understood as the building block of life,” read the statement. “She recognized America as the greatest political embodiment of those values. From military superiority and defense to immigration and trade; from unborn life to the nuclear family and parenthood, Phyllis Schlafly was a courageous and articulate voice for common sense and traditional values.”
Moviegoers have attended American theaters over the past five years and watched three movies produced by conservative writer and producer, Dinesh D’Souza: 2016: Obama’s America (2012); America: Imagine The World Without Her (2014); and now, Hillary’s America: The Secret History Of The Democratic Party (2016).
Because Presidential hopeful Donald Trump is seeking to educate Blacks and minorities about Democrat party exploitation, and has begun spreading his message that their policies have been destructive to Blacks and other minorities, it occurs to me that broadcasting D’Souza’s latest cinematic work might have immediate and far reaching benefits in spreading that message.
In back-to-back interviews with Fox News, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange criticized the U.S. media for “incredible politicization” in its coverage of the presidential election, and vowed there are more shoes to drop before the Nov. 8 vote.
Let’s concede at the outset that many students find their college years enlightening and enriching. But something is rotten in the state of academia, and it is increasingly hard not to notice.
Harvard’s former president, Derek Bok, mildly broke ranks with the academic cheerleaders when he noted that, for all their many benefits, colleges and universities “accomplish far less for their students than they should.” Too many graduates, he admitted, leave school with the coveted and expensive credential “without being able to write well enough to satisfy employers … [or] reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, nontechnical problems.”
Bok noted that few undergraduates can understand or speak a foreign language; most never take courses in quantitative reasoning or acquire “the knowledge needed to be a reasonably informed citizen in a democracy.” Despite the massive spending on the infrastructure of higher education, he conceded, it was not at all clear that students actually learned any more than they did 50 years ago.