A Politico reporter is being scrutinized for a second week amid leaks of hacked WikiLeaks emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Political correspondent Glenn Thrush made headlines Oct. 17 for an email exchange in which he self-labeled as “a hack” while sending Mr. Podesta a section of a story. His impartiality came into question again Monday after a November 2015 email with the subject line “Hope I’m not dead to you!” turned up.
“Working on a non-HRC story Magazine opus about the 5 COSs under Obama and wanted to chat for a couple of minute OTR sorry to bother,” Mr. Thrush said Nov. 24, 2015.
Another email dated Dec. 3, 2015, titled “Me Again,” said, “I need u It’s an Obama WH story you are in the thing … in a good way but could really use your insights.”
The social-media curation website Twitchy pounced on the exchanges Monday, which were mocked as “love letters” by The Washington Free Beacon’s Elizabeth Harrington.
“So needy,” she joked.
“We’ve got ourselves a stage five clinger,” another user responded.
Mr. Thrush’s professional relationship with Mr. Podesta was first questioned Oct. 17 over exchanges the two had in May 2015. Feedback helped mold a piece titled “Hillary’s big-money dilemma.”
“Because I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u,” Mr. Thrush wrote April 30, 2015. “Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this Tell me if I f——d up anything.”
Faced with online backlash over his handling of the matter, the reporter cast his critics as “trolls.”
“My goal in emailing Podesta: TO GET HIM TO CONFIRM STUFF I HAD FROM LESSER SOURCES. It worked. Nobody controls my stories but me. Troll on!” Mr. Thrush wrote Oct. 17.
The Hill’s Joe Concha rejected the “troll” argument the next day.
“Glenn Thrush attempted to fact-check a complex story. That’s a common practice by reporters far and wide and shouldn’t be condemned out of hand,” Mr. Concha said. “But the fact-check should have never included text from the story itself. Thrush knows this by his own admission when he asks Podesta not to share or tell anyone he was doing it.”
U.S. intelligence agencies claim that up to 50,000 emails WikiLeaks plans to release before the Nov. 8 presidential election were given to the organization by Russian state actors.
My goal in emailing Podesta: TO GET HIM TO CONFIRM STUFF I HAD FROM LESSER SOURCES. It worked. Nobody controls my stories but me. Troll on!
— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) October 17, 2016
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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