Private Clinton speeches leaked in hacking blamed on Russia

Hillary Clinton told bankers behind closed doors that she favored “open trade and open borders” and said Wall Street executives were best-positioned to help reform the US financial sector, according to transcripts of her private, paid speeches leaked Friday. The leaks were the result of another email hacking intended to influence the presidential election. Excerpts of the speeches given in the years before her 2016 presidential campaign included some blunt and unguarded remarks to her private audiences, which collectively had paid her at least $26.1 million in speaking fees. Clinton had refused to release transcripts of the speeches, despite repeated calls to do so by her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders. The excerpts were included in emails exchanged among her political staff, including Campaign Chairman John Podesta, whose email account was hacked. The WikiLeaks organization posted what it said were thousands of Podesta’s emails. It wasn’t immediately clear who had hacked Podesta’s emails, though the breach appeared to cover years of messages, some sent as recently as last month.

I’m not happy about being hacked by the Russians in their quest to throw the election to Donald Trump.

John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chairman

Podesta posted a series of tweets on Friday night, calling the disclosures a Russian hack and raising questions about whether some of the documents could have been altered. Podesta’s comments came just hours after US officials publicly accused the Russian government of directing cyberattacks on political organizations and American citizens in an attempt to interfere with US elections. The joint statement from the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Homeland Security Department cited disclosures of “alleged hacked emails” on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks as being “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.” The statement didn’t refer by name to the affected political institutions, but federal authorities are investigating cyberattacks on the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Americas