The White House refused on Monday to wade into the controversy about whether the Democratic National Committee rigged the primary for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the wake of leaked internal emails, other than to say that President Obama appreciated outgoing Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s service.
“Listen, I’m not going to get into the content of the emails,” press secretary Josh Earnest said on Monday.
Earnest also refused to comment on the state of the party as the national convention gets underway in Philadelphia amid internal turmoil.
“Obviously, there are plenty people with plenty of opinions about that,” Earnest said. “And I know Senator [Bernie] Sanders … indicated his unwavering support for Secretary Clinton.”
“There plenty people who are in Philadelphia who can speak to the current state of our party and the current efforts to organize our party for success in the general election; I’ll let them speak to that,” Earnest said.
Obama “deeply appreciates what Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz has done during her five-year plus tenure at the Democratic National Committee,” he said. “She took the helm of the DNC at a critically important time in President Obama’s career. She had to — on up pretty short turnaround — work to prepare the DNC for the general election 2012.”
The lawmaker from Florida, who bowed to pressure on Sunday and announced her resignation as national party leader, deserves some credit for Obama becoming the first commander-in-chief since President Eisenhower to win back-to-back elections with more than 50 percent of the vote, Earnest said.
“That certainly speaks to some of Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz’s skills, because the apparatus of the DNC was an important part of that effort,” he said.
“There are going to be people with intense passions with a variety of points of view and given the fact that I don’t have much insight into the inner workings of the DNC … I’ll let other people make up their own minds.”
Earnest also said that Obama leaves it entirely up to Clinton to appoint Wasserman Schultz’s successor.
“The ability of the party apparatus and the Democratic nominee’s campaign working effectively together will be important to our success in the fall,” Earnest said. “So he’s long said that it’s the party nominee that should make decisions about leadership at the DNC.”
Earnest was also unwilling to blame the leak on Russia as the FBI begins investigating how the DNC emails were obtained.
“[M]y responsibility is to protect the ability of the FBI, and other national security agencies, to do their work to conduct these investigations and to follow the facts where they lead,” Earnest said. “So if there is a decision that is made by our national security professionals to release additional information about what they’ve learned in the context this investigation … they will be the first to release that information.”
