Wikileaks released the Podesta Emails on Friday, a massive dump of correspondences from the Hillary for American campaign chairman that contained over 2,000 emails. One message in particular is gaining a whole lot of attention from the leak.
In an email dated Jan. 25, 2016 and titled “HRC Paid Speeches,” campaign research director Tony Carrk gathered up remarks from over a dozen private, closed door events in which the Democratic nominee was paid to speak. Carrk used headings like “Clinton remarks are pro-Keystone and pro-trade” and “Clinton says you need to have a private and public position on policy” to organize the statements.
Though John Podesta called the validity of the leaks into question, Carrk’s email to him and other staffers looks legitimate by all accounts. The dates match up and many of the higher profile events, like the 2013 Goldman-Sachs AIMS Alternative Investments Symposium and its accompanying Builders and Innovators Summit were even publicized at the time of the event.
According to the National Review, Clinton earned around $400,000 from her Goldman-Sachs speeches, in which she complimented big banks for their help following 9/11, admitted to needing funding from them to run for office, and, curiously, also slammed the U.S. State Department for being horribly technologically un-savvy:
When I got to the State Department, we were so far behind in technology, it was embarrassing. And, you know, people were not even allowed to use mobile devices because of security issues and cost issues, and we really had to try to push into the last part of the 20th Century in order to get people functioning in 2009 and ‘10.
Perhaps the most shocking excerpt from Carrk’s email comes from Clinton’s alleged remarks to Brazil’s Bancu Itau from 2013. The candidate appears to claim she’s all for free trade, which goes against what she’s publicly been saying about the issues.
“My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere,” Clinton says. Or at least, it appears that she might have, had Bancu Itau still existed in 2013.
The bank merged with Unibanco in 2008, turning it into Itau Unibanco. Add to that an attribution wholly dissimilar from the others listed and Clinton’s Bancu Itau statement seems like a ruse. This outdated information is exactly what prompted John Podesta to question the leak’s validity.
4. …But, for starters, Assange’s first claim that I co-own the Podesta Group is completely false.
— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) October 7, 2016
According to a Politico article from August, “although the Podesta Group was founded by Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, he has not been involved with the lobbying firm that bears his name for years.” It’s his brother Tony who has been chairing the group since its founding in the ’80s.
When acknowledging WikiLeaks’ latest dump, Podesta laid the blame on Russia. The Clinton campaign has otherwise been silent about the Podesta Emails, likely because of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s latest scandal, which has thoroughly eclipsed what appears to be a dubious leak of information on WikiLeaks’ part.
