Clinton camp blindsided by email story

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign-in-waiting appeared unprepared for a New York Times story last year that exposed her exclusive use of private email account and server for government business, according to a newly released email.

The day the Times story was published, John Podesta, who would later be named campaign chairman, asked future campaign manager Robby Mook if he had seen it coming.

{mosads}“Did you have any idea of the depth of this story?” Podesta asked Mook in an email late on the evening of March 2, 2015, roughly a month before Clinton launched her bid for the White House.

“Nope,” Mook responded after 1 a.m. that night. “We brought up the existence of emails in reserach (sic) this summer but were told that everything was taken care of.”

The discussion, which was released by WikiLeaks from a batch of messages apparently stolen from Podesta’s account, sheds additional light on the campaign’s lack of preparation for questions about Clinton’s bespoke setup. The private email arrangement has become a cloud over the Democratic presidential nominee and spurred a yearlong FBI investigation.

The email released on Thursday is one of several published by WikiLeaks detailing the Clinton campaign’s scurrying response to revelations about her email server.

Days later, President Obama would say that he was unaware of Clinton’s email setup until it became public knowledge.

However, Clinton’s aides knew that he and the former secretary of State had exchanged emails, and they worried that contradicted Obama’s public statement.

“[W]e need to clean this up — he has emails from her — they do not say state.gov,” Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former State Department chief of staff, told other aides on March 7.

The White House later said Obama was aware of Clinton’s email address but did not know the full scope of her unusual setup. Notes from the FBI investigation into Clinton’s arrangement revealed that Obama used a pseudonym for emailing with Clinton and others.

In other messages, Clinton’s aides spent hours debating language for Clinton to use defending and, eventually, apologizing for her actions. 

Clinton’s team has refused to comment on the authenticity of the messages released by WikiLeaks. The campaign has called the publication part of a Russian plot to interfere with the presidential election.

U.S. officials have claimed that Russia is interfering with American political activities and have suggested that releases on WikiLeaks may be a part of that effort.