A hacked email from the account of John Podesta, campaign chairman for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, was disclosed Thursday and discusses efforts to postpone the Democratic primary election in Illinois by a month, a move that advisers believed could help Clinton.
“The Clintons won’t forget what their friends have done for them,” future Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook wrote to Podesta.
The Democratic primary was held on its original date in March, and Clinton won. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump won the Republican primary in Illinois.
WikiLeaks has disclosed thousands of what it says are internal emails hacked from inside the Democratic candidate’s campaign.
Those disclosures this month have prompted some analysts to theorize that WikiLeaks is trying to thwart Clinton’s presidential bid in the final days before the Nov. 8 U.S. election.
Podesta has said a Federal Bureau of Investigation’s inquiry into the intrusion of his email files is part of a wider FBI probe into Russia’s suspected role in the hacking of many other Democratic Party emails, a charge that Moscow denies.
Earlier this week controversy arose over Clinton’s purported comments to her campaign staff about Christian teachings and the differences between Catholics and evangelical Protestants and their political leanings in the 2016 presidential race.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed those emails portray Clinton staffers as “viciously attacking” Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians.
Podesta has charged that Trump adviser Roger Stone, a long-time critic of the Clinton family, had advance knowledge of the leaks. Stone has admitted to being in contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and he also predicted two months ago that WikiLeaks would attack Clinton and Podesta in the coming weeks.
Other leaked Democratic Party emails indicated that Clinton campaign officials tried to discredit her former Democratic presidential rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and suggested the campaign should laugh off the long-running controversy surrounding Clinton’s State Department emails, both those that have been released by U.S. officials and the thousands of others that reputedly were deleted by accident.
Finally, Clinton is facing scrutiny for hacked emails that indicate she told Chinese officials they need to control North Korea’s aggression or face a buildup of U.S. defensive missile systems in the region.
The emails released this week said Clinton told a conference of investment bankers in June 2013 that her message to China had been: “You either control them or we’re going to have to defend against them.” She also noted the United States had warned Beijing it would “ring China with missile defenses” and could send additional warships to the region.
Clinton has declined to release the text of her comments to the Goldman Sachs firm, which took place several months after she stepped down as secretary of state, and her campaign has declined to either confirm or deny the authenticity of the emails.
