2016 Democratic National Committee email leak
[5] The emails and documents showed that the Democratic Party's national committee favored Hillary Clinton over her rival Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
[6] These releases caused significant harm to the Clinton campaign, and have been cited as a potential contributing factor to her loss in the general election against Donald Trump.
"[11] After the convention, DNC CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda also resigned in the wake of the controversy.
[12] On December 9, 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators that the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded Russia conducted operations during the 2016 U.S. election to prevent Hillary Clinton[13] from winning the presidency.
[14] Multiple U.S intelligence agencies concluded people with direct ties to the Kremlin gave WikiLeaks hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee.
[18][19] The emails leaked by Wikileaks, in two phases (the first on July 22, 2016 and the second on November 6, 2016),[20] revealed information about the DNC's interactions with the media, Hillary Clinton's and Bernie Sanders's campaigns, and financial contributions.
"[8] Following the Nevada Democratic convention, Debbie Wasserman Schultz wrote about Jeff Weaver, manager of Bernie Sanders's campaign: "Damn liar.
[38][39] Describing the coverage as the "LAST straw", she ordered the DNC's communications director to call MSNBC president Phil Griffin to demand an apology from Brzezinski.
The emails capture a world where seating charts are arranged with dollar totals in mind, where a White House celebration of gay pride is a thinly disguised occasion for rewarding wealthy donors and where physical proximity to the president is the most precious of currencies.
"[42] In a series of email exchanges in April and May 2016, DNC fundraising staff discussed and compiled a list of people (mainly donors) who might be appointed to federal boards and commissions.
[43] OpenSecrets senior fellow Bob Biersack noted that this is a longstanding practice in the United States: "Big donors have always risen to the top of lists for appointment to plum ambassadorships and other boards and commissions around the federal landscape.
But in a private email from Sidney Blumenthal to Hillary Clinton – revealed as part of the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak – Blumenthal claimed France was more concerned with Libya's large gold reserves, which might pose a threat to the value of the Central African Franc, thereby weakening French influence in Africa, and that Sarkozy was interested in increased access to Libyan oil.
Former French diplomat Patrick Haimzadeh called Blumenthal's analysis, while it reflected a popular theory on conspiracy websites, "not credible" because "the timeline just doesn't add up" with Sarkozy's decision to intervene preceding knowledge of Gaddafi's plans.
[45] French investigative journalist Fabrice Arfi dismissed Blumenthal's claim as "far-fetched," while also acknowledging that even U.S. intelligence did not find France's publicly stated motivations for the Libya intervention to be entirely credible either.
[19][50][51][4][52][53] U.S. intelligence agencies also stated (with "high confidence"[54]) that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the DNC, according to reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post.
[71] On December 9, 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded Russia conducted operations during the 2016 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump in winning the presidency.
[14][73][74] Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies concluded people with direct ties to the Kremlin gave WikiLeaks hacked emails from the DNC and additional sources such as John Podesta, campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton.
[78][79] Throughout late 2017 into early 2018, numerous individuals gave testimonies to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) who were charged with carrying out an investigation into the series of cyberattacks.
[80] The Steele dossier, a controversial and unfinished political opposition research report published in January 2017 without the author's permission, included several allegations relating to the hacking and leaking of the emails.
[87][88][52][89] Several media commentators have disputed the significance of the emails, arguing that the DNC's internal preference for Clinton was not historically unusual and was unlikely to have swayed the final outcome of the primary;[90][91][92] whereas many of Sanders's supporters viewed the revelations as symptomatic of an entrenched, unethical political establishment.
"[101] On July 25, 2016, Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said that "Today's events show really what an uphill climb the Democrats are facing this week in unifying their party.
[103][104] On October 14, 2016, NBC News reported that multiple sources were telling them that Barack Obama had ordered the CIA to present him with options for a retaliatory cyber attack against the Russian Federation for allegedly interfering in the US presidential election.
"[22] On July 25, 2016, Anne Applebaum, columnist for the Washington Post, wrote that: ... with the exception of a few people on Twitter and a handful of print journalists, most of those covering this story, especially on television, are not interested in the nature of the hackers, and they are not asking why the Russians apparently chose to pass the emails on to WikiLeaks at this particular moment, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention.
[109] On July 25, 2016, Thomas Rid, Professor in Security Studies at King's College, London, and non-resident fellow at the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, DC, summed up the evidence pointing to Russia being behind the hacking of the DNC files and the "Guccifer-branded leaking operation.” He concluded that these actions successfully blunted the "DNC's ability to use its opposition research in surprise against Trump ..."[51] He further writes that data exfiltration from political organizations is done by many countries and is considered to be a legitimate form of intelligence work.
"But digitally exfiltrating and then publishing possibly manipulated documents disguised as freewheeling hacktivism is crossing a big red line and setting a dangerous precedent: an authoritarian country directly yet covertly trying to sabotage an American election.
"[110] On April 20, 2018, the Democratic National Committee filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in New York, accusing the Russian government, the Trump campaign, Wikileaks, and others of conspiracy to alter the course of the 2016 presidential election and asking for monetary damages and a declaration admitting guilt.
