A hacked email released by WikiLeaks exposes that Clinton’s team was in a panic over a pending story the NY Times was about to break, revealing Clinton had attended meetings for the SuperPAC “Priorities USA.”
According to FEC regulations, SuperPACS are supposed to be completely independent of a campaign. “These expenditures may not be made in concert or cooperation with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, the candidate’s campaign or a political party,” states the regulations.
On Wednesday, May 6, 2015, campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson sent out an SOS to Hillary Clinton and her team, including campaign finance chair Dennis Cheng, campaign manager Robby Mook, and communications director Jennifer Palmieri.
Ferguson wrote:
“FYI – the New York Times will soon report that HRC is doing meetings for Priorities USA. We have NOT confirmed the meeting and will not be confirming these types of meetings. We are, however, reflecting how will support Priorities USA work where needed and framed this up. If you get press questions as follow ups on this, please send them to me.”
Palmieri wrote back that someone from Priorities USA must have been “yapping”, and admitted that NYT had sources about the meetings.
“So afraid that NYT is going with this story on Priorities whether we like or not. They have sources about the meetings. Honestly, it sounds like Priorities staff was yapping. We are not confirming meetings on this trip but commenting on why we are participating with Priorities.”
Cheng responded, asking, “Are they reporting any specific donor names?”
Clearly, they knew they were in hot water if this story came out.
The NY Times reported in September 2016 that Priorities USA raised $21.6 million in August, bringing their combined donations and pledged donations to $161 million for this election cycle.
Comment:
Here’s a question, would you spend money supporting a candidate you knew wouldn’t win because you knew the election was rigged for the other candidate? These are important regulation because it’s meant to protect the democracy, to ensure fair and honest representation based on the will of the people. Besides, we are talking about a lot of money and rigging the election is to make people lose a lot of money for no reason, they are simply defrauded. This problem is very serious on more than one level.
