DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has come under fire for rigging the DNC’s procedures to favor Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, and for her inept leadership in allowing the Democratic Party’s computers to be infiltrated by Russian hackers for over a year, has now been exposed as a liar in both instances.
The bombshell disclosures follow the release of files stolen from Democratic Party computers during a year-long hacker breach.
One claim she made, that the DNC did not favor Hillary as the Democratic nominee, was exposed as a lie in a leaked e-mail written 13 months ago that mentions specific strategies for promoting HRC against the GOP field.
A second claim Wasserman Schultz made, that no personal donor information had been stolen, has also been exposed as a lie. Detailed donor information has been posted online in a number of Word documents and Excel files hosted on a blog created by hacker “Guccifer 2.0,” which can be viewed and downloaded here.
The Excel files containing donor information contain more fields of information — cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses, for example — than the public records routinely made available in Federal Election Commission filings. The leaked files also contain notes on individual donors, with descriptions of their donation patterns and preferences.
In addition to donor information, the stolen files contain Democratic Party strategies for dealing with Donald Trump in the general election.
Guccifer 2.0 claims that roughly 100 gigabytes of data were taken from the DNC servers, and the leaked files are a small sample of the booty.
The leaked files put Wasserman Schultz in a no-win situation. Maybe she really believed — out of technical naivete or incompetence — that personal donor information had not been compromised in the hack. On the other hand, maybe she knew the extent of the damage but chose to lie about it to cover her own ass. No matter which option is closer to the truth, they both demonstrate a failure of leadership on her part.
Wasserman Schultz will almost certainly be forced to resign in the wake of the data leaks and subsequent lies she’s spun to trivialize the damage. Her inept handling of the breach — and the incompetent leadership that allowed it to occur in the first place — make her more of a liability than an asset for the Democratic Party going forward.
But it’s unlikely she’ll step down before the November election. Now that the DNC has been exposed as being all-in for Team Hillary from the outset of the campaign, they can’t back out of it now. More likely Wasserman Schultz will be allowed to save face and announce her resignation after the general election is over.
(via Gawker)
[UPDATE 6/21/2016]
DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has handed over her duties to Brandon Davis, a Clinton operative who was placed in the position at the request of Hillary Clinton.
Wasserman Schultz has not resigned, nor has she been ousted. She will continue to retain the title of DNC Chair until a permanent successor is named. This move is seen by political observers as a way to get Wasserman Schultz out of the spotlight and sitting quietly on the sidelines until the general election is over, at which time it is speculated she may be reinstated as a reward for her loyalty to Hillary.
The former DNC chairwoman has been a lightning rod of negative attention for her corrupt and incompetent leadership, and her continued presence threatened to unravel the Party. The boiling point was reached during the past week with the revelation that Russian hackers had infiltrated DNC computers for over a year, and the online posting of data files from that hack that showed the Party’s strategy over the past year was focused solely on supporting Hillary’s campaign.
Handing the DNC chair’s duties to a Clintonite won’t provide any comfort to the disgruntled Dems who want to see a thorough housecleaning of the DNC to purge it of corruption and cronyism. If anything, it will be business as usual for the DNC, just with a different bobblehead sitting atop the dashboard.
(via The Observer)