Hacked emails show Clinton aides
surprised at 2015 email revelations
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[October 28, 2016]
By Jonathan Allen
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two aides in charge of
running Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign were taken aback as news
broke in March 2015 of Clinton's use of private email for her work as
U.S. secretary of state, according to stolen emails published on
Thursday by WikiLeaks.
The late-night exchange between Robby Mook, Clinton's campaign manager,
and John Podesta, the campaign chairman, happened within hours of the
New York Times breaking the news that Clinton exclusively used a private
email account in a way that may have broken records rules.
"Did you have any idea of the depth of this story?" Podesta wrote to
Mook at 10:27 p.m. on the night the Times story appeared online,
according to an exchange published by WikiLeaks.
A few hours later, at 1:32 a.m., Mook wrote back: "Nope. We brought up
the existence of emails in research this summer but were told that
everything was taken care of."
The exchange took place hours before the Associated Press reported for
the first time the following morning that Clinton's email system was run
off a private server Clinton kept in the basement of her home in
Chappaqua, New York.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2016/Oct/28/images/ads/current/encompass-grain-farmers-Daily-after-book.png)
The exchange appears to show that even Clinton's most senior aides were
initially unprepared for the scale of revelations about Clinton's email
practices, which would end up dogging her campaign all the way through
to the final weeks leading up to the Nov. 8 election. Clinton, the
Democratic candidate, remains the front-runner in opinion polls over
Republican opponent Donald Trump.
Many voters have pointed to the unauthorized email system, which stymied
attempts by the public to seek Clinton's emails through open-records
laws, as a reason they find Clinton untrustworthy. Trump has repeatedly
attacked her over her emails, saying Clinton should be in prison because
she sent and received classified government secrets through the server.
After a yearlong investigation, James Comey, the director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, said in July that Clinton and her staff were
"extremely careless" with classified information, but that no reasonable
prosecutor would bring charges.
The same night of the Mook-Podesta exchange, Neera Tanden, a longtime
Clinton confidante, wrote to Podesta to express her frustration,
according to other emails stolen from Podesta's account and published in
daily batches this month by WikiLeaks, a publishing organization that
advocates extreme government transparency.
"Why didn't they get this stuff out like 18 months ago?" Tanden wrote,
criticizing Cheryl Mills, a lawyer working for Clinton and Clinton's
former chief of staff at the State Department. "So crazy."
Podesta replied with a single word: "Unbelievable."
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![](../images/102816pics/news_y45.jpg)
Hillary Clinton waves to the crowd after delivering her "official
launch speech" at a campaign kick off rally in Franklin D. Roosevelt
Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York City, June 13,
2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
![](../images/ads/current/richardson_lda_090916.png)
"I guess I know the answer," Tanden, an outside adviser who does not
have a formal role in the campaign, responded. "They wanted to get
away with it."
Podesta also suggests in the exchange that other Clinton aides
withheld information about the emails, although it is unclear if he
meant from the public or other colleagues.
"Speaking of transparency, our friends Kendall, Cheryl and Phillipe
sure weren't forthcoming on the facts here," Podesta wrote. David
Kendall is another lawyer working for Clinton, and Philippe Reines,
whose first name Podesta appeared to have misspelled, is a Clinton
adviser who handled her news coverage at the State Department.
Tanden did not respond to questions.
Glen Caplin, a Clinton campaign spokesman, declined to comment on
the exchanges, saying the campaign was not confirming the
authenticity of the emails. It has not pointed to any instances of
doctored messages. He criticized Trump for supporting WikiLeaks,
which Caplin said was "weaponizing" the emails he said were hacked
by the Russian government.
"Every American, regardless of party, should be concerned by this
national security issue," he said in a statement. Sergei Lavrov,
Russia's foreign minister, said this month the accusation his
government is behind a spate this year of stolen emails from
Democratic Party operatives was "flattering" but without proof.
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Nearly five months after the news of Clinton's private email first
broke, Tanden again wrote to Podesta to link the arrangement to
unfavorable public polling that week.
"Do we actually know who told Hillary she could use a private
email?" she wrote. "And has that person been drawn and quartered?"
(Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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