WikiLeaks releases 2nd batch of 2,000+ emails from Clinton campaign chair

10 Oct, 2016 14:06 / Updated 8 years ago

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has released a second batch of emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman John Podesta. The new release features 2,086 hacked emails out of a trove that Julian Assange says includes 50,000 messages.

READ MORE: Wikileaks releases over 2,000 emails from Clinton campaign chair

Former President Bill Clinton features prominently in the latest leaks, as highlighted by Wikileaks’ Twitter feed. In one, People close to the power couple pushed for Mr. Clinton, referred to as “WJC” for William Jefferson Clinton, to be less involved with his wife’s presidential campaign due to his extramarital affairs.

“I had a multi-email exchange with someone in the media this morning---a name you would know---who is telling me that there are people close to the Clintons who says WJC's sex life could be damaging to her,” a January 2016 email from blogger Brent Budowsky to Podesta reads.

Another email, dated December 2011, from Doug Band, a lawyer who helped create the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), said that Clinton Foundation Chief Operating Officer Laura Graham was “suicidal” due to “the stress of all of this office crap with wjc” and the Clinton Valley Center. Band also called out the couple’s daughter Chelsea for not caring about “her role” in the office problems.

“Bruce [Lindsey] said the stress of specifically the office had caused his very serious health issues as you both know,” he wrote. “But I'm sure chelsea is more concerned with a mostly false story in the distinguished ny post about mf global and teneo not her role in what happened to laura/bruce, what she is doing to the organization or the several of stories that have appeared in the ny post about her father and a multitude of women over the years.”

That email wasn’t the first time Band expressed dislike of Chelsea Clinton. In an email to Podesta a month previous, he said she was “acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she's doing because she, as she has said, hasn't found her way and has a lack of focus in her life.”

An email between Graham and a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton, Huma Abedin, from November 2011 discusses the Clintons’ relationship with Goldman Sachs, and how it will help the foundation with additional office space.

“They have an interested party (who today just asked for a draft lease - so that is moving quickly) on the table for part of the space so if we want additional space, we need to move quickly,” Graham wrote. “Goldman, b/c of their relationship with us, is delaying the drafting of a lease for this interested party until they get a better sense from us but they cannot hold them off too much longer.”

Last March, when discussing putting out a statement or a tweet regarding a standoff over an anti-human trafficking bill that was holding up the confirmation of nominee Loretta Lynch to be attorney general, Abedin described the relationship between Mrs. Clinton, whom she refers to as “HRC” for Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Lynch as “cordial.”

“She knows Loretta. Not an extremely close relationship and don't remember last time they connected,” Abedin wrote. “She was in running to be [Eliot] Spitzer LG [lieutenant governor] years ago. Hrc wanted Leecia Eve, others pushed Lynch. Regardless, definitely a cordial relationship.”

With the nearly 2,100 emails released Monday morning, Wikileaks has now published more than 4,000 Podesta emails. During the second presidential debate on Sunday, Mrs. Clinton confirmed the authenticity of the messages released on Friday by clarifying comments exposed by the leak. Monday’s release covers emails between September 2007 and March 2016.