Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief suggested in early 2015 that Clinton’s team should quickly “dump” all of the emails on her private server, documents published by WikiLeaks revealed Tuesday.
The remark was made by campaign chairman John Podesta during a March 2-3, 2015, exchange that included chief counsel Marc Elias and top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills as they were discussing whether to hire a new campaign consultant.
“On another matter … and not to sound like Lanny, but we are going to have to dump all those emails so better to do so sooner than later,” Podesta wrote.
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It’s not clear what he meant by “dump,” but the email was written on the same day the New York Times broke the story that Clinton used her own private email when she led the State Department. If he was hoping Clinton’s emails would be released quickly, those hopes would soon be dashed — her emails would be released in several tranches each month for most of 2015 and into 2016.
The email scandal continues to follow her into late 2016. Last Friday, the FBI said it believes it has found tens of thousands of additional emails on the computer of her top aide, Huma Abedin. The FBI said many of those might be duplicate emails or messages that aren’t relevant to the investigation, but it still might take weeks or even months to find out.
It’s also not clear who “Lanny” is in Podesta’s email, but Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to Bill Clinton, was urging Hillary Clinton’s team from the beginning that she should release her emails.
About a week later, on March 10, 2015, Hillary Clinton announced that she gave emails she deemed to be work-related to the State Department, and deleted 33,000 more she said were personal.
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The FBI reported in findings from its investigation that Clinton staffers had instructed the tech firm responsible for maintaining the server, Platte River Networks, to scrub the emails using proprietary software known as Bleachbit. Clinton has long contended those decisions were made in a period spanning December 2014 to January 2015, well before the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued a March 4 subpoena demanding the messages.
It was discovered in September that the process of attempting to destroy the emails lasted longer, at least to the end of March 2015. Tech staffers responsible for the operation were mostly exempt from prosecution as a result of immunity agreements granted by the FBI over the course of its investigation.
Bureau Director James Comey absolved Clinton of criminal charges in July of this year, saying his agency could not establish that “she acted with the necessary criminal intent,” but announced on Friday that the bureau was reopening the case as a result of new information.
