Podesta emails

Data theft

Researchers from the Atlanta-based cybersecurity firm Dell SecureWorks reported that the emails had been obtained through a data theft carried out by the hacker group Fancy Bear, a group of Russian intelligence-linked hackers that were also responsible for cyberattacks that targeted the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), resulting in WikiLeaks publishing emails from those hacks.

SecureWorks concluded Fancy Bear had sent Podesta an email on 19 March 2016 that had the appearance of a Google security alert, but actually contained a misleading link—a strategy known as spear-phishing. (This tactic has also been used by hackers to break into the accounts of other notable persons, such as Colin Powell). The link—which used Bitly, a URL shortening service—brought Podesta to a fake log-in page where he entered his Gmail credentials. The email was initially sent to the IT department as it was suspected of being a fake but was described as "legitimate" in an e-mail sent by a department employee, who later said he meant to write "illegitimate."

SecureWorks had tracked the activities of Fancy Bear for more than a year before the cyberattack, and in June 2016 had reported the group made use of malicious Bitly links and fake Google login pages to trick targets into divulging their passwords. However, as the New York Times reported: "The hackers made a critical error by leaving some of their Bitly accounts public, making it possible for SecureWorks to trace 9,000 of their links to nearly 4,000 Gmail accounts targeted between October 2015 and May 2016 with fake Google login pages and security alerts designed to trick users into turning over their passwords." Of this list of targeted accounts, more than one hundred were policy advisors to Clinton, or members of her presidential campaign, and by June, twenty staff members had clicked on the phishing links.

On 9 December 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded the Russian government was behind the hack and gave WikiLeaks hacked emails from John Podesta.

Authenticity

Cybersecurity experts interviewed by PolitiFact believe that while most of the emails are probably unaltered, it is possible the hackers inserted some doctored or fabricated material into the collection.

Jeffrey Carr, CEO of the cybersecurity company Taia Global, stated: "I've looked at a lot of document dumps provided by hacker groups over the years, and in almost every case you can find a few altered or entirely falsified documents. But only a few. The vast majority were genuine. I believe that's the case with the Podesta emails, as well." Jamie Winterton of the Arizona State University Global Security Initiative stated, "I would be shocked if the emails weren't altered," noting the longstanding Russian practice of promoting disinformation.

Security bloggers have authenticated the contents of some of the emails by using the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) contained in these emails' signatures. However, not all of the emails have these keys in their signature, and thus cannot be verified with this method.

A declassified report by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and National Security Agency (NSA) noted that, "Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries."

Publication

On 7 October 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of emails that it said were from Podesta's Gmail account. The first batch of emails were released less than one hour after The Washington Post published a controversial video of Donald Trump making lewd comments about women. Throughout October, WikiLeaks released installments of the Podesta emails on a daily basis. On 18 December 2016, John Podesta stated in Meet the Press that the FBI had contacted him about the leaked emails on 9 October 2016, but had not contacted him since.

On 17 October 2016 the government of Ecuador severed the internet connection of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The Ecuadorian government stated that it had "temporarily" severed Assange's internet connection because of WikiLeaks' release of documents "impacting on the U.S. election campaign," although it also stated this was not meant to prevent WikiLeaks from operating. WikiLeaks continued releasing installments of the Podesta emails during this time.

Contents

Some of the emails provide some insight into the inner workings of the Clinton campaign. For example, the emails show a discussion among campaign manager Robby Mook and top aides about possible campaign themes and slogans. Other emails reveal insights about the internal conflicts of the Clinton Foundation.

One of the emails released on 12 October 2016 included Podesta's iCloud account password. His iCloud account was reportedly hacked, and his Twitter account was briefly compromised. Some were emails that Barack Obama and Podesta exchanged in 2008.

Clinton's Wall Street speeches

One of the emails contained 25 excerpts from Clinton's paid Wall Street speeches that a staffer had flagged as politically problematic. In the October 2016 presidential debate, Clinton voiced her support for a "no-fly" zone in Syria. In a 2013 speech, Clinton had discussed the difficulties involved. In particular, she noted that in order to establish a no-fly zone, Syria's air defenses would need to be destroyed. Because the Assad government had located these anti-aircraft batteries in populated civilian areas, their destruction would cause many collateral civilian deaths. Another leaked document included eighty pages of Clinton's Wall Street speeches.

The excerpts came up in two of the presidential debates between Clinton and Trump. In one of the debates, the moderator Martha Raddatz quoted an excerpt saying that politicians "need both a public and a private position" and asked Clinton if it was okay for politicians to be "two-faced." Clinton replied, "As I recall, that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie called Lincoln. It was a master class watching president Lincoln get the Congress to approve the 13th amendment, it was principled and strategic. I was making the point that it is hard sometimes to get the Congress to do what you want to do." In the third presidential debate, the moderator Chris Wallace quoted a speech excerpt where Clinton says, "My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders," and asked if she was for open borders. Clinton replied, "If you went on to read the rest of the sentence, I was talking about energy. We trade more energy with our neighbors than we trade with the rest of the world combined. And I do want us to have an electric grid, an energy system that crosses borders."

Catholic religious activities

Sandy Newman wrote to Podesta: "I have not thought at all about how one would 'plant the seeds of the revolution', or who would plant them." Podesta agreed that this was necessary to do as Newman suggested and wrote back to note that they had created groups like Catholics in Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United to push for a more progressive approach to the faith, change would "have to be bottom up."

Raymond Arroyo responded; “It makes it seem like you're creating organizations to change the core beliefs of the church”, he said. “For someone to come and say, 'I have a political organization to change your church to complete my political agenda or advance my agenda', I don't know how anybody could embrace that.” Professor Anne Hendershott drew attention to the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United, which she called “fake catholic groups”. Professor Robert P. George added that “these groups are political operations constructed to masquerade as organizations devoted to the Catholic faith”.

Supporters and members of Donald Trump's campaign called the email exchange evidence of anti-Catholic sentiment in the Democratic Party. John Halpin, from the Center for American Progress, verified that he had written the email; though he contested claims that it was "anti-Catholic" and stated it was taken out of context. He explained that he sent the email to his Catholic colleagues "to make a fleeting point about perceived hypocrisy and the flaunting of one's faith by prominent conservative leaders."

Debate questions shared by Donna Brazile

On 11 October 2016, WikiLeaks released what it said was the text of an email sent by Donna Brazile on 12 March 2016 to Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri with the subject header "From time to time I get questions in advance." The email included a question about the death penalty. The following day Clinton received a similar question from the Townhall host, Roland Martin. Brazile denied coordinating with the Clinton campaign and a CNN spokesperson said "CNN did not share any questions with Donna Brazile, or anyone else for that matter, prior to the town hall" and that "we have never, ever given a town hall question to anyone beforehand". According to CNNMoney, the debate moderator Roland Martin did not deny that he shared questions with Brazile. In another leaked email, Brazile wrote: "One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash. Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint." At a debate in Flint the following day, a woman whose "son had developed a rash from the contaminated water" asked Clinton: "If elected president, what course will you take to regain my trust in government?" In a third email, Brazile added: "I'll send a few more."

CNN severed ties with Brazile on 14 October 2016. Brazile later said that CNN did not give her "the ability to defend myself" after the email release and referred to WikiLeaks as "WikiLies". Brazile stated repeatedly that she did not receive the question on death penalty in advance from CNN and has claimed that the documents released by WikiLeaks were "altered". In an essay for Time written on 17 March 2017, Brazile wrote that the emails revealed that "among the many things I did in my role as a Democratic operative and D.N.C. Vice Chair [...] was to share potential town hall topics with the Clinton campaign." She wrote, "My job was to make all our Democratic candidates look good, and I worked closely with both campaigns to make that happen. But sending those emails was a mistake I will forever regret."

Saudi Arabia and Qatar

One leaked email from August 2014, addressed to Podesta, identifies Saudi Arabia and Qatar as providing "clandestine," "financial and logistic" aid to ISIL and other "radical Sunni groups." The email outlines a plan of action against ISIL, and urges putting pressure on Saudi Arabia and Qatar to end their alleged support for the group. Whether the email was originally written by Hillary Clinton, her advisor Sidney Blumenthal, or another person is unclear.

Reaction

Zeynep Tufekci criticized how WikiLeaks handled the release of these emails. Regarding this, Tufekci wrote that, "Taking one campaign manager's email account and releasing it with zero curation in the last month of an election needs to be treated as what it is: political sabotage, not whistle-blowing." Glen Caplin, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said, "By dribbling these out every day WikiLeaks is proving they are nothing but a propaganda arm of the Kremlin with a political agenda doing [Vladimir] Putin's dirty work to help elect Donald Trump." When asked, president Vladimir Putin replied that Russia was being falsely accused. He said, "The hysteria is merely caused by the fact that somebody needs to divert the attention of the American people from the essence of what was exposed by the hackers."

The American public's interest in WikiLeaks in October roughly coincided with a tightening presidential race between Trump and Clinton. The release of the emails did not seem to have an effect on opinion polling for Clinton's trustworthiness. According to Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight, the activities of WikiLeaks was "among the factors that might have contributed to [Clinton's] loss."