CNN’s Chris Cuomo grilled a Hillary Clinton adviser Thursday morning for her refusal to discuss WikiLeaks documents seen as damaging to the candidate’s campaign.
Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden appeared on CNN to discuss the final presidential debate between Donald Trump and Mrs. Clinton Wednesday night in Las Vegas, but she refused to discuss stolen documents belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. Mr. Cuomo laughed off her assertion that she would behave the same way if Mr. Trump’s advisers were hacked.
“Neera, if this had been Kellyanne Conway to Dave Bossie, you would be giving me all your deepest thoughts about it right now,” Mr. Cuomo said, the Daily Caller reported. “You don’t like it because it’s your email. You’re ducking it. You’re not having high ground.”
At issue was an Aug. 22, 2015, email Mrs. Tanden sent to Mr. Podesta in which she said Mrs. Clinton lacked the ability to show “remorse” and “regret” over her private email server scandal.
“I know this email thing isn’t on the level,” Mrs. Tanden said. “I’m fully aware of that. But her inability to just do a national interview and communicate genuine feelings of remorse and regret is now, I fear, becoming a character problem (more so than honesty).”
Mrs. Tanden, now the co-chair of Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, said a sincere apology to the American people would go a long way towards “taking the air” out of the former secretary of state’s scandal.
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Mr. Cuomo went on to say that Democrats did not have the moral high ground on WikiLeaks since they showed no hesitation in talking about Mr. Trump’s leaked tax forms to The New York Times.
“When his taxes came out, the Clinton campaign couldn’t stop talking about it,” the CNN host said. Right? Those were leaked.”
Mrs. Tanden maintained that pundits should follow Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s advice and not discuss WikiLeaks’ document dump.
U.S. intelligence agencies say the 50,000 emails obtained by Julian Assange’s organization were stolen by Russian state actors.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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