Infighting, intrigue mar Clinton celebration
PHILADELPHIA — On the heels of a tumultuous Republican convention, Hillary Clinton’s hopes that her gathering in Philadelphia will show off a forward-looking Democratic Party united behind her steady leadership appear in jeopardy.
The Democratic National Convention was set to kick off Monday as a week of optimistic celebration with high-powered elected officials and celebrities re-introducing Clinton to a general election audience.
But she must overcome lingering bitterness among supporters of defeated rival Bernie Sanders and a political mess and last-minute leadership shakeup of the party’s own making — along with accusations of Cold War-style international intrigue, after the publication of 19,000 hacked emails on the website WikiLeaks, suggesting the Democratic National Committee had played favourites for Clinton during the primary.
The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, announced abruptly Sunday afternoon that she would step down at week’s end. Sanders had called earlier Sunday for her departure.
Wasserman Schultz has been a lightning rod throughout the presidential campaign for criticism from the party’s more liberal wing, with Sanders repeatedly accusing the national party of favouring Clinton despite officially being neutral.
Adding intrigue, Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, said “Russian state actors” may have hacked into DNC computers “for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.
“It was concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian,” Mook said.
Mook told ABC News that “experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, took all these emails and now are leaking them out through these websites ... It’s troubling that some experts are now telling us that this was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.”
Some cyber-security experts in the U.S. and overseas agree with Mook’s extraordinary claim, although Trump campaign officials rejected the suggestion as absurd.
Late last week, hours before the records were released by the website WikiLeaks, the White House convened a high-level security meeting to discuss reports that Russia had hacked into systems at the Democratic National Committee.
Although other experts remain skeptical of a Russian role, the hacking incident has caused alarm within the Clinton campaign and also in the national security arena. Officials from various intelligence and defence agencies, including the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, attended the White House meeting Thursday, on the eve of the email release.
If the accusation is true, it would be the first time the Russians have actively tried to influence an election in this manner, analysts said.
“I’m not shocked, but I’m disappointed,” Sanders said of the hacked emails, one of which questioned whether his religious beliefs could be used against him, on ABC’s This Week.