Top Clinton aide questioned her using private email server: WikiLeaks
At least one of Hillary Clinton’s top advisers did not know who was responsible for signing off on her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, according to an email leaked by WikiLeaks Thursday. In another, Ron Klain, who headed up debate preparation for Clinton, proposed some tough questions for the candidate.
July 2015
Neera Tanden wondered who cleared Hillary Clinton to use a private email server while she was secretary of state.
“Do we actually know who told Hillary she could use a private email?” Tanden wrote in July 2015. “And has that person been drawn and quartered?”
January 2016
With the subject line “’Political’ questions,” Ron Klain wrote to Podesta and others who were helping with debate prep to say that they would need to “set aside some time” to do some work “on the political questions, which now seem to be really owning the coverage.”
At the time of the email, a couple of polls showed Bernie Sanders leading Clinton in New Hampshire and Iowa in the run-up to the first caucuses and primaries.
A few days later, Sanders and Clinton would meet on stage for a debate in Charleston, South Carolina.
Here are the questions he was concerned about -- the fourth, “WJC Issues,” he directed to Podesta. Klain’s questions about Bill Clinton’s sexual past held nothing back.
1. Are you slipping in the polls? Why? 2. Do new revelations about your emails bring these issues back? 3. Can voters trust you? 4. WJC Issues a. Is his conduct relevant to your campaign? b. You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused him? c. Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband and his allies? d. How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did?
September 2015
Liberal columnist Brent Budowsky had accused Clinton of visiting a church just to get a photo op.
“Give me a break,” Podesta shot back in his response. “This is a church that they spent 8 years going to, which Chelsea grew up in, which rallied around them when they needed it, celebrating its bicentennial, and which they were asked to come to. What would be totally cynical and inauthentic would be avoiding it because people and pundits might think it’s political.”