Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s top spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri claimed in a tweet Sunday that the WikiLeaks emails included fake information — without pointing to any prior case where one had been faked.
“Friends, please remember that if you see a whopper of a Wikileaks in next two days – it’s probably a fake,” Palmieri tweeted Sunday.
WikiLeaks’ official Twitter account shot back about an hour later. “Biggest ‘whoppers’ are those your campaign has been telling,” it said. “WikiLeaks will continue its perfect record.”
Biggest ‘whoppers’ are those your campaign has been telling https://t.co/8NCYYfwRIV
WikiLeaks will continue its perfect record.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 6, 2016
At press time, Palmieri had not done a follow-up tweet or otherwise explained why the emails might be fake. To date, not one that has been published by WikiLeaks, a website devoted to exposing government secrets, has been shown to have been fabricated or altered in any way.
For several weeks WikiLeaks has publishing daily batches of emails from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s private account. WikiLeaks has not said who gave it the emails, which were presumably obtained through an illegal hack.
The messages have laid bare the inner workings and deliberations of the Clinton campaign. They showed that the campaign was advised by top consultant Neera Tanden that a $15 minimum wage would be bad economic policy but acted to support it anyway and that it reversed itself on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in order to curry favor with organized labor, as well as how best to “dodge” reporters’ questions about the shift. They showed that Clinton Foundation resources were used for Chelsea Clinton‘s wedding and that staffers worried that Bill Clinton had “real serious conflicts” between his work for the foundation and Hillary Clinton’s work as secretary of state, among numerous other revelations.
