The press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s campaign privately referred to a New York Times writer as an “idiot,” and discounted The Intercept news site for its “lousy reporting” and “loose editorial standards,” according to new hacked emails.
The comments made by Nick Merrill were included in Thursday’s publication of emails hacked from Capricia Penavic Marshall, a Clinton aide who served as chief of protocol at the State Department during Clinton’s tenure as the department.
Merrill complained about the Times’ Amy Chozick in a Feb. 2 email to Marshall, disputing a report by Chozick that some Clinton supporters were questioning campaign manager Robby Mook after the campaign’s lackluster performance in the Iowa caucuses. “Amy is an idiot. There wouldn’t have even been time for folks to say that! But that’s not where peoples’ heads are,” Merrill wrote.
“We’re [sic] people saying Robbie needs to go?” Marshall replied. “Just read in Amy piece, ground was so awesome! What you hearing? Felt badly for her. Wanted a bit more of a win, but it is a win!”
Merrill complained about The Intercept on May 23 in response to a story by Emily Kopp claiming Clinton had used a campaign account as a personal slush fund.
“This story is likely going to run tomorrow despite my efforts to shame Ms. Koop [sic] for her lousy reporting,” Merrill wrote in an email to Clinton campaign treasurer Shelly Moskwa that appeared to include blindly copying others, including Marshall.
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“She has an editor now and is running in The Intercept, which for those of you not familiar is a fairly new online publication whose stated mission is to be provocative, and does so by utilizing looser editorial standards. Glen [sic] Greenwald and the other folks who helping [sic] Edward Snowden leak what he stole from the USG founded the outlet, to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with,” Merrill wrote.
Glenn Greenwald, who played a key role in helping Snowden to reveal classified NSA surveillance secrets in 2013, is an editor at The Intercept.
The emails reveal the campaign rewarded reporters who adequately praised Clinton. They show, for example, that Clinton aide Adrienne Elrod tried to find a suitable guest for a producer on MSNBC who called Clinton “smarter than most men and more qualified” to be president.
The stash of emails was published by the secret-spilling website DCLeaks on Thursday. Marshall has not confirmed the legitimacy of information included in the leak, but DCLeaks has published information from a slew of high-profile figures this year, including the billionaire George Soros and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
