The latest batch of WikiLeaks documents belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta include key advisers lamenting her “terrible instincts.”
A Sept. 6, 2015, email from Mr. Podesta to Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden covered the trials and tribulations of the campaign, at which time he broached the subject of Mrs. Clinton’s poor instincts.
“We’ve taken on a lot of water that won’t be easy to pump out of the boat. Most of that has to do with terrible decisions made pre-campaign, but a lot has to do with her instincts,” Mr. Podesta wrote.
“You know I’m not a sycophant to you by any means. But the thing that makes me most confident she will prevail is that you are there,” Ms. Tanden, now the the co-chair of Clinton-Kaine Transition Project, responded. “Almost no one knows better [than] me that her instincts can be terrible.”
Ms. Tanden has been tight-lipped about the stolen emails, a tiny fraction of the 50,000 WikiLeaks plans to release before the Nov. 8 presidential election. She declined to discuss the matter during an Oct. 20 CNN interview with Chris Cuomo by citing Russian state actors blamed for the theft, and declined to comment for a Washington Post story titled “WikiLeaks reveals fears and frustrations inside Clinton world” published Wednesday.
Other observations by Mrs. Clinton’s adviser to make headlines include a March 2015 exchange with Mr. Podesta where she addressed the former secretary of state’s secret email server scandal.
“Why didn’t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy,” Ms. Tanden wrote March 2, 2015. “I guess I know the answer. They wanted to get away with it.”
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly has called the email thread between Mr. Podesta and Ms. Tanden a “smoking gun” that FBI Director James Comey ignored during his investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s handling of the nation’s most secretive intelligence documents.
“Why didn’t the director of the FBI tell the American people about that email?” the “O’Reilly Factor” host asked Tuesday night. “Why? The campaign itself, the Hillary Clinton machine itself, is admitting this is bad and they’ve got to do something, and Comey doesn’t think it has anything to do with the investigation? … That is so damning!”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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