Because Democrats remain obsessed with allegations of Russian election interference, the emails released by Wikileaks from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta have yielded little reform or reprimand.
DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and several other top DNC staffers resigned in embarrassment after the leaks confirmed she and her team violated the DNC Charter in overtly favoring Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries—but Wasserman Schultz still received unprecedented re-election endorsements in her primary race and a position with the Clinton Campaign.
Her replacement as DNC chair, Donna Brazile, was implicated in the Podesta emails and exposed for forwarding debate questions in advance of the debate to the Clinton campaign. Despite the fact that she violated the DNC Charter and CNN severed ties with her in response to the exposed emails, Brazile continues to serve as DNC interim chair.
Democrats have yet to acknowledge or apologize for rigging the primaries against Bernie Sanders, leaving the wound the DNC inflicted on Sanders‘ supporters to mend itself. However, a recent ruling from a federal judge may provide some vindication: a revelation from the Wikileaks emails exposed the Department of Justice for unfairly coordinating with the Clinton campaign during the investigation into Clinton’s private email server.
In the Podesta emails, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik tipped off Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta as to what the Department of Justice was doing in regards to Hillary Clinton’s private email server. “There is a HJC oversight hearing today where the head of our Civil Division will testify. Likely to get questions on State Department emails. Another filing in the FOIA case went in last night or will go in this am that indicates it will be awhile (2016) before the State Department posts the emails,” Kadzik wrote to Podesta in May 2015. Podesta forwarded the email to the Clinton campaign staffers who were spinning the negative publicity Hillary Clinton was receiving from the investigation.
U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan, a Bill Clinton appointee, instructed that the email account Kadzik used, a private Gmail account, be preserved subject to the Freedom of Information Act Request as per requests filed by conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch.
“Defendant shall take all necessary and reasonable steps to ensure the preservation of all agency records and potential agency records between the dates of December 1, 2014 and November 7, 2016 in any personal email account of Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Peter Kadzik. Any question about whether a record is an agency record shall be resolved in favor of it being an agency record,” Sullivan wrote in the order.
Prior to the order, the Department of Justice filed in court that Kadzik did not have records subject to the FOIA, but Podesta’s emails that were released by Wikileaks suggest otherwise.
