Newly discovered emails show that former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power disparaged then President-elect Donald Trump after his surprising defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Power’s anti-Trump bias is significant because it was her authority that was used to unmask hundreds of Americans’ names during the election. The requested names were related to Trump and his transition team, according to the American Center for Law and Justice, whose lawsuit led to the most recent email discovery.
Powers previously claimed she did not make the requests, even though they were made under her name (it is still unclear how an ambassador to the U.N. would have the authority to make such requests).
In the newly discovered emails, which The Hill’s John Solomon discussed in his recent column, Powers is shown to have displayed an animus toward Trump (and then Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont) ahead of the New Hampshire primary. In an email connecting the Public Theater in New York’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis, to the American Enterprise Institute’s resident liberal Norman Ornstein, Powers suggested our political system would cease to make sense if Trump and Sanders won New Hampshire’s primary.
“Oskar, Norm will explain our political system, in a way that will fleetingly make it seem rational, though maybe not after Trump and Sanders win NH,” Powers wrote. Both candidates would go on to win their respective primaries in the Granite State.
Trump eventually won the presidency, we all know. After doing so, Powers’ emails became more toxic.
“I am discouraged and frightened. Electing a right-wing president is something, but such a morally repugnant bully!” Powers wrote on November 14, 2016. In that same email, whose subject line read “Devastated,” Powers called incoming White House adviser Steve Bannon “an avowed racist.” She then asked the recipient, whose name has been redacted, when they are coming to DC and signed the email “Kisses.”
In December 2016, Power responded to an email regarding a news story about Trump’s attempts to change the direction of the U.N., Powers wrote: “This reflects the lack of understanding of history.”
She responded to Trump’s announcement about withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement by saying: “Lord help us all.” She responded to a diplomatic issue between the U.S. and Japan by saying: “It is unreal how the Trump dynamic has changed things.” Solomon described the issue in question as “routine.”
Also revealed in the emails is Powers’ attempts to get herself on TV in the waning days of the Obama administration.
“Power and her staff spent time brainstorming a possible CBS ‘60 Minutes’ interview as Trump’s transition period began. The idea was to parlay Power’s remarks at an upcoming citizenship event and the TV news magazine interview into forums to shame the president-elect on immigration,” Solomon wrote.
Powers also spoke to Univision and CBS about interview ideas where she could be allowed to trash the incoming administration.
Back in 2018, Powers claimed it was not her who asked for the unmasking of individuals connected to the incoming Trump administration. Without a shred of evidence to suggest otherwise and her documented disdain for Trump, her testimony appears questionable.