Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is the latest figure in politics to be the victim of an email hack. The emails were given to DC Leaks -– an organization that is believed to have ties to the Guccifer 2.0 hacker –- by anonymous hackers. Two years of emails from Powell’s personal email account that are now on public record and they reveal Powell’s thoughts on notable figures and issues in this election cycle.
Here are nine revelations from Powell’s email hack.
1. Powell does not like Donald Trump. In one email, Powell called Trump “a national disgrace and an international pariah.”
Another email featured Powell seething that Trump “appeals to the worst angels of the GOP nature and poor white folks.”
Powell did say in one email that he understands that Trump “has captured the frustration and disappointment of average folks and not just racist nuts. But he is not the solution to their problems and angst. He is a know nothing.”
Naturally, Trump voiced his displeasure with Powell on Twitter, via CNN:
I was never a fan of Colin Powell after his weak understanding of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq = disaster. We can do much better!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2016
2. Powell is still obsessing over the birthers. “Yup, the whole birther movement was racist,” Powell wrote in an August email. “That’s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim.”
Powell went onto say that it didn’t matter if President Barack Obama was born Muslim.
Trump also sent in an email in May where he re-hashed his criticism that “there is a level of intolerance in parts of the Republican Party.”
Interestingly, Powell did not mention the fact that the conspiracy theories of Obama being born as a Muslim outside of the U.S. originated with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Has Powell ever said that there was a “level of intolerance” in that Clinton campaign?
3. Powell doesn’t seem to care much for Hillary Clinton, and used rather colorful language to describe her husband. In March 2015, right at the beginning of Clinton’s email scandal, Powell warned Clinton confidant Cheryl Mills: “You really don’t want to get me into this. I haven’t been asked nor said a word about HRC and won’t unless you all start it.’
The Clinton campaign did get Powell involved, claiming that he told Clinton to set up a private server. He was rather disappointed about it:
“Spent last week with Cheryl Mills and the HRC team burying the email flap,” Powell wrote in an email to one of his confidants in late August. “Madeleine [Albright] also says she doesn’t remember the dinner conversation or launching such a conversation. Sad thing it [sic] HRC could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me to it. I told her staff three times not to try that gambit. I had to throw a mini tantrum at a Hampton’s party to get their attention. She keeps tripping into these ‘character’ minefields.”
Powell used more crude language in an exchange with business partner Jeffrey Leeds.
“They are going to dick up the legitimate and necessary use of emails with friggin record rules,” wrote Powell. “I saw email more like a telephone than a cable machine, as long as the stuff is unclassified.”
Powell has admitted to using a personal AOL email address as well as an official computer sanctioned by the State Department, but never set up his own private server of improperly transmitted classified information like Clinton.
Powell later noted that “everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.”
He also complained that Clinton’s absurd charge for speaking fees prevented him from attending at a speaking engagement, lamenting that he “should send her a bill.”
The former Secretary of State did write that he “would rather not vote for” Clinton because she is “a 70-year-old person with a long track-record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still d***ing bimbos at home (according to the NYP).” And yet…
4. It seems like Powell will endorse Clinton at some point. The Daily Caller obtained some of the hacked emails and found this exchange between Powell Christie Whitman, the former Republican New Jersey governor who has endorsed Clinton:
“Have you endorsed her yet?” the one line email said.
“Nope,” Powell replied. “By the way, if you have a WSJ today take a look at my piece on immigration. I can send it you missed. On Oped pages.”
“You’ll recall that in 2008 and 2012 I waited until early fall,” he added.
The fact that Whitman used the word “yet” and Powell’s response operated under that premise certainly suggests that it’s only a matter of time before Powell endorses Clinton. Despite the fact that Clinton has thrown him under the bus, ruined a speaking engagement for him, and ignored his advice on handling her email server, he might still endorse her.
5. Powell might deliver a “knock out blow” against Trump. The Daily Caller also found this rather cryptic exchange:
On August 2, longtime Powell friend and adviser Harlan Ullman asked Powell, “when are you going to throw the knock out blow?”
“I try not to bother someone who is beating himself and the GOP up. And please, don’t start bugging me like every newsie and getter in town,” Powell replied. “If and when I do it will be known.”
Powell’s response has to be referencing Trump, and even though Powell is a registered Republican he has no problem with Trump beating “the GOP up.” If Clinton’s slide in the polls continues, the public may find out what that “knock out blow” is soon enough.
6. Powell doesn’t seem to think too highly of a couple of his former colleagues in the Bush administration. Powell and his successor, Condoleeza Rice discussed a piece written by veteran journalist Bob Woodward that criticized comments made by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the Iraq war, bemoaning Rumsfeld and other members of the administration for the Iraq War fallout. Via CNN:
Rice praised Woodward and added: “First, we didn’t invade Iraq to bring democracy — but once we overthrew Saddam (Hussein), we had a view of what should follow. If Don and the Pentagon had done their job … things might have turned out differently.”
Powell criticized “Doug and Paul,” presumably Douglas J. Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, for their plan on Iraq and praised his former boss, President George W. Bush.
“43 (Bush, the 43rd president) knew what had to be done,” Powell wrote to Rice. “As you say, the boys in the band were brain dead.”
Powell really does not like Wolfowitz, calling him a “a f***ing liar” when Wolfowitz laid some blame at the feet of Powell “for what many experts allege were the United States’ two largest post-invasion blunders: the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the decision to expel members of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist Party from the civilian government,” according to Politico.
Powell also admitted he “gagged” when former President George H.W. Bush lavished praised onto Rumsfeld at an event.
In a separate email, Powell tore into former vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney when they were promoting their new book in 2015.
“They are idiots and spent force peddling a book that ain’t going nowhere,” Powell wrote.
7. Powell actually blamed former Ambassador Chris Stevens for his death at Benghazi. According to Politico:
In her email to Powell, Condoleezza Rice wrote that “intel agencies know how to cover themselves and hang policy types (even POTUS) out to dry.”
Powell replied that the Benghazi investigation was “a stupid witch hunt” and said the “basic fault” for the attack “falls on a courageous ambassador who thought Libyans now love me and I am ok in this very vulnerable place.” He was apparently referring to Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the assault.
Powell did later lay some blame onto Clinton, but the fact that he views the Benghazi investigation as “a stupid witch hunt” shows how little he thinks of it. And the fact that he places the “basic fault” on Stevens is reprehensible.
8. Powell’s emails confirm that Obama and Hillary Clinton don’t like each other. Leeds wrote to Powell in March 2015 “that other State people were on the Clinton email so none of their emails were captured by the government. I think Hillary can’t believe she might not make it. It’s the one prize she wants. She has everything and she HATES that the president (‘that man’ as the Clintons call him) kicked her ass in 2008.”
9. Powell also made a sexist remark about Fox News host Megyn Kelly. According to USA Today:
He also said former FOX News CEO Roger Ailesended his brief feud with Trump because of the high ratings Trump brought. So, Ailes sent “Megyn Kelly off to get over her period,” Powell wrote.