White House press secretary Sean Spicer slammed what he views as a “double standard” in the level of interest over a batch of CIA documents purportedly posted by WikiLeaks this week and a batch of emails taken from the inbox of a prominent Democrat and posted by WikiLeaks last fall.
“There is a big difference between disclosing John Podesta’s Gmail account … and the leaking of classified information,” Spicer said Wednesday, referring to the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, who was the victim of a cyberattack during the 2016 race.
“There is a massive, massive difference between those two things,” Spicer added, noting that the outcry over WikiLeaks’ latest publication has not matched “the interest and outrage that occurred last year.”
Spicer: "There is sort of a double standard when the leaks occurred how much outrage there is" https://t.co/m4XoT3VVzv pic.twitter.com/Xs37a7262k— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) March 8, 2017
WikiLeaks posted more than 8,700 documents on Tuesday that it claimed were taken from the CIA’s high-security network. The records contained details of the intelligence agency’s hacking capabilities.
Spicer declined to confirm or deny that the documents originated in the CIA.
“For obvious reasons, it is our policy as a government not to confirm the authenticity of any kind of disclosure or hack,” he said. “But all of these alleged issues occurred under the previous administration.”
Spicer accused the media and Democrats of focusing disproportionately on politically-advantageous leaks while avoiding others.
“It’s interesting how there’s sort of a double standard when the leaks occur, how much outrage there is,” Spicer said. “I think it is interesting how different subjects are approached… There should be a lot more coverage of this.”
