Hacked Document Shows DNC Pushing to Make Clinton the Nominee

By Harper Neidig, The Hill

17 June 16

he Republican National Committee is promoting a report that accuses the Democratic Party of conspiring to nominate Hillary Clinton in the early days of the presidential primary.

In an email, the RNC sent to reporters a story published by the New York Post about a document that purportedly shows the Democratic National Committee was strategizing to make Hillary Clinton president — and not a generic Democratic candidate — in the spring of 2015.

The story is based on a document posted on the blog of a user named “Guccifer 2.0,” and appears to be part of a trove of documents that were stolen from the DNC by Russian government hackers.

The alleged memo to the DNC, dated May 26, 2015, says that the party should work to “provide a contrast between the GOP field and HRC.”

HRC is a common abbreviation for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Sanders launched his campaign nearly a month prior to the date of the memo — though according to RealClearPolitics, he was still trailing Clinton by nearly 57 points in the polls.

It’s unclear whether the document that the hacker claims is from the DNC is a real one.

On Thursday night a senior DNC official did tell The Hill that documents were stolen in a breach and suggested they were part of a Russian “disinformation campaign.”

“Our experts are confident in their assessment that the Russian government hackers were the actors responsible for the breach detected in April, and we believe that today’s release and the claims around it may be a part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians,” the official said. “We’ve deployed the recommended technology so that today our systems are secure thanks to a swift response to that attack and we will continue to monitor our systems closely.”

The RNC sent out the article in an email blast to reporters, writing that the memo “appears to show the DNC working on behalf of Hillary Clinton from the start of the presidential campaign — just as Bernie Sanders has claimed.”

An RNC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The RNC push comes as Clinton and Sanders are in discussions after the end of the Democratic primary to unify the party.