Three emails newly published by WikiLeaks show the machinations of Clinton campaign officials as the they ramped up for the 2016 campaign.
One email illustrated how the Clinton campaign planned to counter the charge by Juanita Broaddrick that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978. On January 6, Broaddrick tweeted, “I was 35 years old when Bill Clinton, Ark. Attorney General raped me and Hillary tried to silence me. I am now 73….it never goes away.”
That night, Podesta and David Kendall, a personal attorney for Bill and Hillary Clinton, discussed how to counter Broaddrick’s charges. The next day, Kendall forwarded Podesta documents showing that Broaddrick had denied the rape allegation under oath.
In an affidavit in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Jones against Bill Clinton, Broaddrick indicated that she did not have “any information to offer regarding a non-consensual or unwelcome sexual advance by Mr. Clinton.” Another piece of evidence to be used against Broaddrick came from the report from the office of Independent Counsel, Ken Starr, who investigated Clinton. Given immunity by Starr for possible perjury charges, Broaddrick said she had not told the truth in her affidavit in the Jones case.
Kendall wrote Podesta: “Starr was seeking more evidence against the President, any way he could, and he immunized Broaddrick to protect her from any prosecution for perjury if she now changed her story. Voila! She did, disavowing her sworn affidavit and sworn deposition testimony.”
Another email exchange involving Podesta involved the San Bernardino massacre in which Sayeed Farouk murdered 14 people and injured 22 others. When Karen Finney, the Strategic Communications Adviser and Senior Spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was alerted that Christopher Hayes of MSNBC had reported Farook was the perpetrator, she wrote Podesta, “Damn.” Podesta, apparently disturbed that a Muslim had committed the attack, thus reinforcing supposed Islamophobia among the public, emailed back: “Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter.”
A third exchange found in the emails revealed that after Ted Cruz became the first candidate to announce a run for the presidency, an exchange between Clinton’s Director of Communications, Jennifer Palmieri, and Jake Sullivan, a top foreign policy analyst for the Clinton Campaign, found them already preparing a “birther” argument against Cruz, stating, “1st candidate for the top job jumped in today. really early announcement. didn’t realize canada also had an election coming up.”