Over the course of the presidential race, there have been many damaging revelations about the Democratic campaign of Hillary Clinton that have come courtesy of Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks. Here’s a recap of some of the most incriminating ones that have been revealed thus far:
- Clinton Plans to Gut Social Security As We Know It This is probably one of the most sensitive revelations that not enough people are talking about.
Why has Clinton accepted so much money from Wall Street, and what will she give them in return?
As some observers may recall, in 2005, George W. Bush disastrously proposed altering Social Security with “voluntary savings accounts” that would allow people to invest their Social Security funds in private securities. This was highly unpopular with Americans, and a few months after Bush announced his plan, Congressional leaders pulled the plug.
However, what WikiLeaks has revealed is that one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest donors, Blackstone hedge fund manager Tony James — her rumored pick for Secretary of the Treasury — wrote to Clinton’s campaign Chairman John Podesta, saying “We do not believe the problem [of Social Security’s future] can be solved by making Social Security better funded and/or adding a higher minimum benefits for several reasons. Social Security was designed as a safety net for those facing poverty in old age. It was never meant to be a vehicle to guarantee a middle class retirement.”
However, this directly contradicts the Social Security administration’s own website, which states that the program was created to “assure workers that their years of employment entitled them to a life income.”
But in a private, paid speech to the National Multi-Housing Council in 2013, Clinton referred to Social Security as an “entitlement program” — just as James did to Podesta in James’ email.
In another paid speech, Clinton rhetorically asked, “Do we have to do something about entitlements? Yes. Do we have to figure out what we want to be as a nation and then pay for it? Yes. Do we have to restrain spending so that we don’t bankrupt ourselves and undermine our position at home and abroad? Yes.”
And in another private, paid speech, Clinton said she endorsed the Simpson-Bowles commission, which proposed to cut $1.4 trillion out of Social Security, saying it “put forth the right framework.”
Simultaneously, in public, Clinton claimed that she wanted to “fight any attempts to gamble seniors’ retirement security on the stock market through privatization.”
It should be noted that this is the same Hillary Clinton who told Goldman Sachs that it was important to have one political position in private and another one in public.
- Clinton Is Hedging on the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) Clinton originally wanted to continue supporting the notorious TPP free-trade agreement, which she had vigorously promoted in the past (she helped the agreement’s foreign and corporate authors compose it), calling it a “gold standard” in 2012.
Emails between Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook and foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan show that although Clinton wanted to stick to her highly unpopular position, the campaign was coming to grips with the fact that the issue wouldn’t satisfy voters, so Clinton would have to make a switch.
Several options were laid out for her, and Clinton ultimately chose one that gave her legal wiggle room — she said she opposed the TPP “in its current form” — meaning that if some superficial language was changed, she could turn around and sign the agreement. Further emails to and from Mook describe this as a “dodge” as far as the media was concerned.
- There was Improper Collusion between the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton Campaign The DNC is the central apparatus of the Democratic Party. It’s supposed to act as a support mechanism and organizational tool for all Democratic candidates.
However, the Clintons’ enormous influence in the party allowed them to select DNC leadership (including DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former Clinton campaign manager) and direct the group’s actions in ways that violated the organization’s charter and gave Hillary Clinton an all-but-impossible-to-overcome advantage when it came to beating her primary election rival Bernie Sanders (see below).
The Clinton campaign also worked with the DNC illegally to promote Clinton’s own priorities, such as attempting to denigrate Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
Specifically, the Clinton campaign coordinated actions between the DNC and Super PACs Priorities USA Action and Correct the Record, a clear violation of Federal Election Commission (FEC) laws. The DNC also coordinated with media publishers such as Politico on behalf of the Clinton campaign, editing any information that might prove damaging to Clinton.
- The DNC was Against Bernie Sanders All Along There were several revelations of anti-Bernie Sanders bias within the DNC, a clear violation of the organization’s charter. DNC CFO Brad Marshall wrote to DNC CEO Amy Dacey about how to produce a negative opinion of Sanders in the states of West Virginia and Kentucky, asking “For KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does [Sanders] believe in a God? He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
Dacey’s reply: “Amen.”
In another email, a DNC staffer put down Bernie Sanders’ supporters, calling them nuisances. “If [Clinton] outperforms this polling, the Bernie camp will go nuts and allege misconduct,” the theoretically impartial staffer wrote.
“They’ll probably complain regardless, actually.”
DNC National Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach wrote in another email that “Bernie never ever had his act together… his campaign was a mess. Specifically, [DNC Chairwoman Debbie Schultz] had to call Bernie directly in order to get the campaign to do things because they’d either ignored or forgotten something critical.”
In another email, Debbie Wasserman Schultz suggested that the topic of Israel and Palestine was “an ideal issue to marginalize Sanders on.” Schultz said when there were still nine primaries to be held that “[Bernie Sanders] isn’t going to be president.” Schultz was later fired from the DNC in the wake of the WikiLeaks information becoming public.
- Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta and Hillary Clinton have Low Opinions of Voters John Podesta appears in many of the leaked emails posted by WikiLeaks, wherein he takes shots at voter demographic segments such as Southerners, asking, “Do you think it’s weird that of the 15 finalists in [Donald Trump’s] Miss America [pageant], 10 came from the 11 states of the CSA [Confederate States of America]?”
“Not at all; I would imagine the only people who watch it are from the confederacy, and by now, they know that so they’ve rigged the thing in their honor,” was the reply from Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal-progressive think tank founded by Podesta.
In another email, Podesta referred to Latinos as “needy.”
Podesta, CAP senior fellow John Halpin and Hillary Clinton campaign Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri referred to Catholics as phonies, saying that they are Catholic only for social acceptance.
“It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy,” wrote Halpin.
“I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they become evangelicals,” answered Palmieri.
In the wake of these remarks, Catholic advocacy groups such as CatholicVote.org have accused the Clinton campaign of “dismissively question[ing] the sincerity of Catholic Americans’ faith. Had Palmieri spoken this way about other groups, she [would be] dismissed. Palmieri must resign immediately or be fired.”
- There Has Been Coordination between the Clinton Campaign and the Media Multiple emails showed a cozy relationship between the Clinton campaign and The New York Times, among other news outlets.
On July 7, 2015, there was an email from Times reporter Mark Leibovich to Jennifer Palmieri seeking approval for quotes to put in a lengthy glowing profile of Clinton to run in the paper.
CNBC anchor and Times reporter John Harwood had communications with John Podesta, gloating over Harwood’s bashing of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump at the December 2015 Republican primary debate.
And internal emails at the Clinton campaign described Times reporter Maggie Haberman as a “friendly journalist” who had “never disappointed” the organization.
The Times was far from the only news outlet that had communications with the campaign. An editorial writer for The Boston Globe wrote to Podesta with ideas for giving Clinton a “big presence” in New England when the candidate was visiting the region. “It would be good to get it in on Tuesday when she is in New Hampshire. That would give her a big presence on Tuesday,” the Globe staffer wrote.
Other Clinton campaign emails described media “surrogates,” who could be counted on to cast the Democratic nominee in a favorable light. As has been seen from the nearly one-sided media coverage of Clinton in the general election season, the amount of Clinton “surrogates” seems to number in the hundreds.
These are merely the most extreme discoveries of WikiLeaks thus far. But there are many, many others, all viewable at WikiLeaks.org and summarized at various news outlets. To say the least, this information is valuable for voters; it also leaves political observers wondering what more will be revealed in the coming weeks.
