Clinton’s Campaign Tries to Divert Attention From WikiLeaks’ ‘Podesta Emails’ Toward Russia

John Podesta photographed during the Senate Budget Committee’s Task Force on Government Performance in March 2009.(Mark Warner / CC BY-SA 2.0) Hillary Clinton’s team is in crisis management mode after WikiLeaks’ release of emails involving her presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta. The campaign has made a concerted effort to deflect scrutiny of Podesta’s leaked emails and their contents by accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of interfering with the election through hacks he “engineered” to benefit Republican nominee Donald Trump. After WikiLeaks dropped its first batch of emails reportedly from Podesta’s server Friday, Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon fired off tweets to WikiLeaks’ Twitter account Monday night, calling it a “propaganda arm of the Russian [government]” and accusing Julian Assange of “colluding with [the] Russian government to help Trump”:

.@wikileaks You are no media organization. You are a propaganda arm of the Russian govt, running interference for their pet candidate, Trump

— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) October 11, 2016

In response to Fallon’s tweets, WikiLeaks denied working with Russia:

@brianefallon False. Spewing lies does not increase your campaign’s credibility. Who we are is well documented: https://t.co/hgo2xg3ukr

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 11, 2016

Fallon tried to divert attention away from the contents of the leaks by insisting that the bigger issue is Trump’s possible ties to Russia:

How about probing possibility of Trump associates directly coordinating with Russia and Wikileaks? That is the thing that shd cause chills

— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) October 11, 2016

Wouldn’t it be good reading to see internal discussions abt Trump’s taxes? Yes but Wikileaks isnt targeting Trump. That tells you something.

— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) October 11, 2016

Glen Caplin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, did not comment Monday on the legitimacy of Podesta’s leaked emails, instead denouncing the Trump campaign and the Russian government for the attack:

“It is absolutely disgraceful that the Trump campaign is cheering on a release today engineered by Vladimir Putin to interfere in this election, and this comes after Donald Trump encouraged more espionage over the summer and continued to deny the hack even happened at Sunday’s debate. The timing shows you that even Putin knows Trump had a bad weekend and a bad debate.”

During Sunday’s debate, Clinton also cited Russian hackers as WikiLeaks’ source.

But, you know, let’s talk about what’s really going on here, Martha [Raddatz], because our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days that the Kremlin, meaning Putin and the Russian government, are directing the attacks, the hacking on American accounts to influence our election. And WikiLeaks is part of that, as are other sites where the Russians hack information. We don’t even know if it’s accurate information, and then they put it out. We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election, and believe, they’re not doing it to get me elected. They are doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump.

On the Trump campaign front, both the nominee and adviser Jason Miller have shared leaked Podesta emails. “She is unfit to run,” Trump tweeted Tuesday:

And here…we…go https://t.co/NSlBXI8ACK

— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) October 10, 2016

Wow. Unbelievable. https://t.co/RcBPCcmwnD

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016

Clinton and her team have yet to deny the authenticity of the contents of the emails. “Not one person has identified even a single email or document released by WikiLeaks of questionable authenticity—that includes all of the Clinton officials whose names are listed as their authors and recipients,” The Intercept reports.

“Not even Clinton disputes the validity of our publications; in fact, she cited them in the laste (sic) debate,” the WikiLeaks account tweeted Tuesday, referencing Clinton’s response to moderator Martha Raddatz’ statement during the second presidential debate, held at Washington University in St. Louis.

“In one line in particular […] you, Sec. Clinton, purportedly say, ‘You need both a public and private position on certain issues,’ ” Raddatz said. Clinton confirmed her quote—found in excerpts of her paid speeches that WikiLeaks posted—saying, “Right. As I recall, that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie called ‘Lincoln.’ ”

—Posted by KiMi Robinson

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