Former secretary of State and retired four-star general Colin Powell called Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump “a national disgrace” and “international pariah”, and said “Hillary’s mafia” was trying to drag him into Clinton’s email scandal in personal emails that were leaked by hackers, according to online news organizations BuzzFeed and The Daily Caller.
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In an an email published by the website DCLeaks.com-which reportedly may or may not be run by Russian intelligence-and provided to members of the media, Powell said he “would rather not have to vote for [Clinton], although she is a friend I respect”.
Congressional Democrats have seized on the use of a private email addresses by Powell and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a foil for Republican attacks on Clinton.
In another e-mail, the former secretary of state calls Trump’s theory that President Barack Obama was not really born in this country “racist”.
The Associated Press reported that in another leaked email, Powell, using Clinton’s initials, wrote that “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris”.
“That’s what the 99% believe”, Powell wrote. He also said Trump wanted to know if Obama was a Muslim. An aide of Powell’s has confirmed that the emails are his.
His comments were revealed following a leak of his emails by Buzzfeed.
In another exchange, Powell also criticized Clinton’s steps to handle her defense, saying that she should have merely told everyone “honestly what she had done and not tie me to it”. “I told her three times not to try that gambit”, he said.
After it was reported that Clinton had told FBI investigators that Powell had advised her to use a personal address, he lamented that what he called her “minions” were “making a mistake trying to drag me in”. “I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the department on their personal email accounts”.
Powell told the New York Post he did not recall that particular exchange when asked about its authenticity. Telemundo quoted Powell calling Trump a “national disgrace”.
“Back in February 2016, Powell stated to a reporter that he never “[told] Hillary to have a private server at home, connected to the Clinton Foundation, two contractors, [to take] away 60,000 emails, [and have] her own domain”.
In May, following Clinton’s first news conference explaining her use of a private email server, Powell wrote about her physical appearance. “I gave her written guidance on why and how I had been doing it”. She keeps tripping into these “character” minefields.
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In another email to Miller on August 21, Powell scoffs at Trump’s apparent effort to reach out to African Americans in recent weeks and says Trump takes them “for idiots”.
