Drip-Drip: Clinton Campaign Has 3 More WikiLeaks Fires to Put Out
As journalists all over the country continue to work through the more than 5,500 emails and documents released by WikiLeaks in the past week, the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign finds it has an increasing number of fires to put out.
And the Donald Trump campaign has been more than happy to alert the public as to their existence.
Three new scandals developed Tuesday afternoon. The first of those was a report alleging Clinton may have discussed classified information during a paid private speech in 2013 in Toronto. According to The New York Post:
Other emails disclosing the content of her speeches to bankers and business groups show Clinton revealing insider details of how bin Laden was targeted.
“I was in the small group that recommended to the president that he go after bin Laden,” Clinton said in a 2013 speech to a Toronto business organization.
She went on: “The amount of work that was required to get a strong-enough basis of information on which to plan took more than a decade
… and then all of a sudden putting this matrix together and saying, ‘This guy used to protect bin Laden—he has just made a phone call. He said this in the phone call. We need to figure out where he is. Then we need to follow him.’
“And that is how we found this compound in Abbottabad [Pakistan]”—where a team of Navy SEALs took out bin Laden in May 2011.
WikiLeaks asked in a tweet if Clinton’s comments revealed too much about the bin Laden hunt by mentioning the phone calls.
While The Post reports it’s “unclear” whether Clinton’s speech contained classified information, it did note that it “varies” from other accounts as to how the U.S. tracked down bin Laden. The Trump campaign issued the following statement regarding the report:
“The revelation that Hillary Clinton may have revealed classified information about the Bin Laden raid in a private, paid speech is deeply disturbing. Coupled with Clinton keeping classified information on an easily hacked secret server with a subsequent cover-up, shows Clinton has such a disregard for classified information that one has to wonder if she would even be able to receive a security clearance should she be elected president.”
Next, NBC News’ Tom Winter tweeted an image of an email from Hillary Clinton’s press secretary, Brian Fallon, that suggests the campaign was working with Department of Justice officials to coordinate their reaction to the release of emails in the FBI’s possession, which were ordered released by federal judges. Those orders were due to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed when the State Department did not produce requested documents, including the emails.
The email, dated May 26, 2015, and sent to several top members of the Clinton presidential campaign, stated:
“A reminder that DOJ will be making its latest filing in this case later today, proposing a revised schedule for producing the emails—this time on a rolling basis, in accordance with the judge’s order.”
A second email dated May 19 states:
“DOJ folks inform me there is a status hearing in this case this morning, so we could have a window into the judge’s thinking about this proposed production schedule as quickly as today.”
Again, the Trump campaign was quick to react, putting out the following statement:
“Today’s report that Clinton’s campaign was in communication with the Obama Department of Justice on the email investigation shows a level of collusion which calls into question the entire investigation into her private server. The Department of Justice must release all communications with the Clinton campaign and her allies as soon as possible in order to definitively prove their investigation was completely above board.”
Additionally, ABC News’ investigative team unearthed newly released emails that suggested Hillary Clinton’s State Department had prioritized to get access to the island nation of Haiti in order to reap the profits. The emails referred to the humanitarian crisis following the 2010 earthquake a “gold rush” for government contractors and aid groups.
And once again, the Trump team was on top of the new development, issuing a third statement:
“Today’s bombshell from ABC News about big Clinton Foundation donors profiting off the suffering of Haitian earthquake victims thanks to Hillary Clinton’s State Department is disgusting, disturbing and completely disqualifying. Hillary Clinton’s penchant for putting the profits of big donors ahead of suffering civilians shows what kind of person she is. Clinton is not ‘fighting for you,’ she’s only fighting for herself and her donors.”
Trump himself was following the developments and issued his own separate statement via Twitter Tuesday afternoon, saying he hoped Americans were paying attention to the new developing scandals. He said they were further evidence that Clinton was “unfit” to serve as president.
