Clinton camp rocked by leaks as DNC chair resigns
Pennsylvania governor.
Republicans led by Trump jumped to portray the episode as evidence that the system was rigged for Clinton, whom Trump calls “Crooked Hillary”.
“The Democrats are in a total meltdown but the biased media will say how great they are doing!,” Trump exulted on Twitter. “E-mails say the rigged system is alive & well!”
Sanders said he was not surprised by the email revelations. He was scheduled to address the opening night of the Democratic convention yesterday. While he is expected to stress unity, many of his supporters say they are furious about what they see as evidence of party bias.
The Clinton campaign – and several cyber security experts – said the leak was a political ploy carried out by the Russian gov- ernment to aid in the election of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. That didn’t stop a massive political firestor m d i rected la rgely at Wasserman Schultz – nor strong pressure from the Clinton campaign and others to step aside.
A member of Congress from south Florida, Wasserman Schultz said that her resignation will take effect upon the close of the convention. Donna Brazile, a longtime Democratic strategist, will take over as interim chair, according to the DNC.
The controversy blew up at a key political moment for Clinton: just as convention delegates were descending on Philadelphia – and just as her campaign was hoping to patch up disagreements with Sanders supporters over superdelegates, the party platform and her choice of running mate, Senator Timothy M Kaine, who is seen by some as insufficiently progressive.
In pressuring Wasserman Schultz to resign, officials argued she had become a lightning rod for divisions within the party.
According to one Democratic member of Congress involved in the discussions leading up to her resignation, Wasserman Schultz strongly resisted giving up her position amid discussions that staff should shoulder some of the blame. Among the options discussed was having Amy Dacey, the DNC’s chief executive officer, put out a statement, according to two Democratic sources.
“There was a lot of drama,” this lawmaker said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. “She made this as painful as she could. She did not want to go.
“We were going to come into the week and be united,” said the member of Congress. “But she did ugly and messy and stepped on the message of unity.”
In addition to the friction with Sanders and his supporters that was revealed in the email hack, donors were also upset over the way they were talked about in some of the emails.
In one email exchange in May, national finance director Jordan Kaplan and one of his deputies, Alexandra Shapiro, strategised about where to seat a major Florida donor, Stephen Bittel, at a DNC fundraiser featuring President Obama. Bittel, a real estate mogul in south Florida, appears to have exasperated the officials, the documents suggest.
“He doesn’t sit next to POTUS!” Kaplan wrote.
“Bittel will be sitting in the s—est corner I can find,” responded Shapiro, who also referred to donors who had yet to confirm for the event as “clowns”.
Wasserma n Schultz expects to continue to help out through the end of the convention.
The emails revealed a DNC official apparently discussing how to use Sanders’s religion against him to help Clinton ahead of the Kentucky and West Virginia primaries. In another email, a Clinton campaign lawyer suggested to the DNC how it should respond to claims from the Sanders campaign that it was improperly using a joint fundraising committee with state parties.
More emails are expected to be released in coming days, and in an ominous sign for the party, Brazile indicated the drama was not yet over. “I don’t know the substance but I do know there are lots of stuff that we might have to apologise for and that’s why I say you got to own it, take full responsibility and work with the staff to create a different culture at the DNC,” she said.
She said there are likely “many thousands” of leaked emails to come.