Former leader says DNC needs to clean house
Virginia governor urges the group to get ahead of the scandal
PHILADELPHIA — Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe urged the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to get ahead of any potentially damaging emails that WikiLeaks’ founder has vowed to make public.
McAuliffe, a former DNC chairman and a longtime friend and fundraiser for former President Bill Clinton and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, told the audience at a McClatchy’s America breakfast at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday that if he were still running the committee, he and his staff would be examining emails to get ahead of any damaging messages.
“What I would do if I were chair of the party — and I assume they’ve started the process — I hope they’re going through every email they have . ... Get on top of it. Let’s go back and look at it. And if there are a lot of emails that are inappropriate, start the process of firing people immediately, rebuilding the party.”
However, Clinton campaign Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri told the McClatchy’s America breakfast Wednesday that the former secretary of state’s camp hasn’t asked to see the DNC emails and isn’t likely to do so.
“They are not ours, it’s theirs,” Palmieri said. “It’s another institution’s.”
Palmieri said that “as comfortable as it may be to know” what’s in the other emails it wouldn’t be appropriate to ask the DNC to allow them to go through all of their emails.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has told CNN that a “lot more material” related to the upcoming presidential election be will released following the 20,000-message batch that threw the convention in Philadelphia into disarray.
President Barack Obama has said Russia is the likely culprit in the DNC leak and that the FBI is investigating.
Several of the emails already leaked complained about Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. One urged that the Jewish independent lawmaker from Vermont be pressed on his faith.
The emails reaffirmed the beliefs of many Sanders backers that former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the committee had rigged the campaign system against Sanders to benefit Clinton.
Rep. Wasserman Schultz, of Florida, resigned the chairmanship shortly before the convention opened Monday.
“You’ve got to run a level playing field,” McAuliffe said. “It’s not fair what they wrote about Sen. Sanders; it’s outrageous. If I had been there and seen somebody on my staff write that against Al Sharpton or (Howard) Dean or John Kerry or all the folks who ran when I was there, I would have fired them on the spot. You just can’t do that; you’re neutral.”