2016 Democratic National Committee Email Leak

Overview

2016 Democratic National Committee Email Leak is an ongoing political scandal surrounding a series of internal correspondences among the staff members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in which they discuss various tactics to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders in order to secure Hillary Clinton’s victory in the primaries. While the source of the leak remains unknown, the emails were published by the online whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks in late July 2016.

Background

On July 22nd, 2016, Wikileaks^[9] published a collection of nearly 20,000 e-mails exchanged among key staff members within the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the governing body of the United States Democratic Party, as well as unofficial correspondences with members of the press, between January 2015 and May 2016. Among other findings, the leaked emails detail how several officials within the DNC, which is supposed to remain neutral during the primary electoral process, had attempted to sabotage Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in order to secure the victory of Hillary Clinton.

Developments

DNC Chairperson's Resignation

On July 24th, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, United States congresswoman and the chairwoman of the DNC, announced her immediate resignation from the position in the aftermath of the leak. In addition, Schultz' scheduled appearances at the Democratic National Convention on the following week were cancelled.

Official Responses

In response to the revelation, Bernie Sanders expressed that he was "disappointed" by the leak, though "not shocked," and urged Schultz to resign from the chair, while Terry McAuliffe, Governor of Virginia who previously served as the DNC chairman, slammed the findings from the emails as "totally unacceptable behavior." On July 24th, Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook publicly alleged that the leak was orchestrated by Russian hackers in an effort to help Donald Trump win the election.

Source of Origin

Although WikiLeaks has not disclosed any information regarding the identity of its source, several Democratic party officials have alleged that Russian hackers were behind the breach of the DNC email servers, while a lone hacker who goes by the handle Guccifer 2.0, a tribute to the pseudonym used by the convicted Romanian hacker Marcel Lazar Lehel, has claimed responsibility for providing The Hill and WikiLeaks with the emails, in addition to a string of smaller-scale leaks of DNC internal documents that have been released via Twitter between late June and early July.

FBI Investigation

On July 25th, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a statement confirming its investigation of a Russian hack into the DNC's email servers that had occurred on June 14th, an incident that quickly became implicated as a possible origin of the leak by major news outlets over the weekend. However, the agency did not officially confirm the involvement of the Russian cyber attacks as the source of the leak. On July 26th, The New York Times^[14] reported that American intelligence informed the White House they have "high confidence" that the DNC email hack was orchestrated by the Russian government.^[14] Additionally, the Times reported that the hacker Guccifer 2.0 was believed to be an agent of Russia's G.R.U. military intelligence service.

Donald Trump's Response

On July 26th, 2016, Trump posted a tweet mocking rumors that he was working with the Russian government to harm Democrats (shown below, left), followed by a tweet claiming he had no investments in Russian businesses (shown below, left).^[11]

The following day, Trump discussed concerns about Russia's involvement in the DNC leak during a press conference, saying "it's probably not, nobody know who it is." Additionally, he called on Russia to to find the missing 30,000 messages deleted from Clinton's private email server during her tenure as United States Secretary of State.

"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."

Meanwhile, Trump posted a tweet urging "Russia or any other country" in possession of Clinton's deleted emails to "share them with the FBI" (shown below). Within 24 hours, the tweet gained over 58,500 likes and 23,400 retweets.^[10]

Also on July 27th, The Washington Post^[8] published an article titled "Donald Trump Basically Just Encouraged Russia to Spy on Hillary Clinton," which subsequently reached the front page of the /r/politics^[9] subreddit. Shortly after, Redditor forgitittwice submitted a post titled "Trump's call for Russia to find Clinton's deleted emails is treasonous" to the /r/changemyview^[13] subreddit, where it gathered upwards of 2,100 votes (72% upvoted) and 330 comments in 24 hours. On July 28th, Trump was interviewed on the talk show Fox & Friends, where he claimed he was being "sarcastic" about urging Russia to find Clinton's missing emails.

The same day, television host Piers Morgan posted a tweet mocking the United States media for going "insane with fury" over Trump's "funny, obvious joke" regarding Russia finding Clinton's missing emails (shown below).^[12]

More Democratic National Committee Document Leak

On September 13th, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 leaked a new batch of internal documents obtained from the Democratic National Committee's servers as a downloadable file via torrent sharing services. The leak, which consisted of over 670 megabytes of DNC internal documents, including work and personal cell phone numbers and personal email addresses of top officials within the White House, as well as sensitive information about high-profile donors to the Democratic Party and filings to the Federal Election Commission, was subsequently published by WikiLeaks.

As news media outlets began analyzing the details of the leaked documents, a document titled "11-26-08 NFC Members Raised” soon emerged as a talking point, which listed more than 450 fundraising individuals who helped bring in millions of dollars for three major organizations with ties to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Obama for America (OFA), the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). According to the Observer and RT, several high-profile donors listed in the document were subsequently appointed as officials within the Obama administration, including Matthew Barzun (the current US ambassador to the United Kingdom), Kirk Wagar (the current US ambassador to Singapore), Alan Solomont (the former US Ambassador to Spain), John Roos (the former US ambassador to Japan) and Ken Blackwell (the former US ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council).

Lawsuit

On April 20th, 2018, the DNC filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and Wikileaks. At the time, DNC chairman Tom Perez said,^[20] "During the 2016 presidential campaign, Russia launched an all-out assault on our democracy, and it found a willing and active partner in Donald Trump’s campaign. This constituted an act of unprecedented treachery: the campaign of a nominee for President of the United States in league with a hostile foreign power to bolster its own chance to win the presidency."

Wikileaks responded to the lawsuit by tweeting, "Democrats have gone all Scientology against @WikiLeaks. We read the DNC lawsuit. Its primary claim against @WikiLeaks is that we published their "trade secrets". Scientology infamously tried this trick when we published their secret bibles. Didn't work out well for them." The post (shown below, left) received more than 5,000 retweets and 9,000 likes in four months.

Several months later, the law firm representing the DNC received a court order allowing the firm to serve Wikileaks with the court documents via Twitter, as they have thus far been unresponsive.^[22] They captioned the links,^[21] "By Court order, you are being served with the following legal documents." The post (shown below, right) received more than 1,300 retweets and 2,700 likes in three days.

Search Interest

External References