On the day the news broke that Hillary Clinton had used a private email account as secretary of state, the man who would soon be named to chair her presidential campaign (Podesta) fired off a note of distress, venting frustration about some of Clinton’s closest aides.
“Speaking of transparency, our friends Kendall, Cheryl and Phillipe sure weren’t forthcoming on the facts here,” John Podesta complained in the March 2015 note, referring to Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall as well as her former State Department staffers Cheryl Mills and Philippe Reines.
“Why didn’t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy,” replied Neera Tanden, a longtime Podesta friend who also has worked for Clinton. Then, answering her own question, Tanden wrote again: “I guess I know the answer. They wanted to get away with it.”
The exchange, found in hacked emails from Podesta’s account and released Tuesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, provides a striking window into how the revelation of Clinton’s email setup roiled her nascent campaign team in the weeks before its official April 2015 kickoff.
The emails show that while campaign aides struggled to get past the public controversy, they also expressed exasperation at each other and, at times, at Clinton — both for her decision to use the server and for the way she handled questions about it. Several exchanges illustrate fears among some top advisers that Clinton and other aides were demonstrating the very traits that polls suggested made her vulnerable: a penchant for secrecy and a hesitancy to admit fault or error.
“We’ve taken on a lot of water that won’t be easy to pump out of the boat,” Podesta wrote to Tanden in September 2015, at a time when Clinton’s campaign feared that Vice President Biden was about to enter the race for the Democratic nomination. “Most of that has to do with terrible decisions made pre-campaign, but a lot has to do with her instincts.”
Tanden responded, “Almost no one knows better [than] me that her instincts can be terrible.”
Tanden and Kendall declined to comment. Neither Reines nor a lawyer for Mills responded to requests for comment.
Clinton’s campaign has largely declined to comment on the WikiLeaks emails, which U.S. officials say were stolen through hacks of Democratic groups and leaders orchestrated by the Russian government.
Some of the emails include private and contemporaneous assessments of the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses by advisers widely seen as likely to hold top posts in Clinton’s White House should she win.
‘Her instincts can be terrible’: WikiLeaks reveals fears and frustrations inside Clinton world
Hillary Clinton poses with Neera Tanden, center, president of the Center for American Progress, and the center’s founder, John Podesta, in October 2013. (Yuri Gripas /Reuters)
By Rosalind S. Helderman October 25 at 6:47 PM
On the day the news broke that Hillary Clinton had used a private email account as secretary of state, the man who would soon be named to chair her presidential campaign fired off a note of distress, venting frustration about some of Clinton’s closest aides.
“Speaking of transparency, our friends Kendall, Cheryl and Phillipe sure weren’t forthcoming on the facts here,” John Podesta complained in the March 2015 note, referring to Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall as well as her former State Department staffers Cheryl Mills and Philippe Reines.
The exchange, found in hacked emails from Podesta’s account and released Tuesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, provides a striking window into how the revelation of Clinton’s email setup roiled her nascent campaign team in the weeks before its official April 2015 kickoff.
What the hacked emails mean for Clinton’s campaign
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...ceefdc-9ae0-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html
“Speaking of transparency, our friends Kendall, Cheryl and Phillipe sure weren’t forthcoming on the facts here,” John Podesta complained in the March 2015 note, referring to Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall as well as her former State Department staffers Cheryl Mills and Philippe Reines.
“Why didn’t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy,” replied Neera Tanden, a longtime Podesta friend who also has worked for Clinton. Then, answering her own question, Tanden wrote again: “I guess I know the answer. They wanted to get away with it.”
The exchange, found in hacked emails from Podesta’s account and released Tuesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, provides a striking window into how the revelation of Clinton’s email setup roiled her nascent campaign team in the weeks before its official April 2015 kickoff.
The emails show that while campaign aides struggled to get past the public controversy, they also expressed exasperation at each other and, at times, at Clinton — both for her decision to use the server and for the way she handled questions about it. Several exchanges illustrate fears among some top advisers that Clinton and other aides were demonstrating the very traits that polls suggested made her vulnerable: a penchant for secrecy and a hesitancy to admit fault or error.
“We’ve taken on a lot of water that won’t be easy to pump out of the boat,” Podesta wrote to Tanden in September 2015, at a time when Clinton’s campaign feared that Vice President Biden was about to enter the race for the Democratic nomination. “Most of that has to do with terrible decisions made pre-campaign, but a lot has to do with her instincts.”
Tanden responded, “Almost no one knows better [than] me that her instincts can be terrible.”
Tanden and Kendall declined to comment. Neither Reines nor a lawyer for Mills responded to requests for comment.
Clinton’s campaign has largely declined to comment on the WikiLeaks emails, which U.S. officials say were stolen through hacks of Democratic groups and leaders orchestrated by the Russian government.
Some of the emails include private and contemporaneous assessments of the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses by advisers widely seen as likely to hold top posts in Clinton’s White House should she win.
‘Her instincts can be terrible’: WikiLeaks reveals fears and frustrations inside Clinton world
Hillary Clinton poses with Neera Tanden, center, president of the Center for American Progress, and the center’s founder, John Podesta, in October 2013. (Yuri Gripas /Reuters)
By Rosalind S. Helderman October 25 at 6:47 PM
On the day the news broke that Hillary Clinton had used a private email account as secretary of state, the man who would soon be named to chair her presidential campaign fired off a note of distress, venting frustration about some of Clinton’s closest aides.
“Speaking of transparency, our friends Kendall, Cheryl and Phillipe sure weren’t forthcoming on the facts here,” John Podesta complained in the March 2015 note, referring to Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall as well as her former State Department staffers Cheryl Mills and Philippe Reines.
replied Neera Tanden, a longtime Podesta friend who also has worked for Clinton. Then, answering her own question, Tanden wrote again:
The exchange, found in hacked emails from Podesta’s account and released Tuesday by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, provides a striking window into how the revelation of Clinton’s email setup roiled her nascent campaign team in the weeks before its official April 2015 kickoff.
What the hacked emails mean for Clinton’s campaign
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...ceefdc-9ae0-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html
