Peggy Cifrino, an aide to Powell, told CNN: “The emails are accurate”.
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Based on his correspondence, Powell holds a deep disdain for Donald Trump (whom he calls “a national disgrace and an worldwide pariah”), but isn’t that insane about the real estate mogul’s opponent, either.
When the FBI started investigating Clinton’s handling of confidential emails, Clinton had indicated that her practices of using a private email server had been used by Powell before her. Powell had publicly dismissed these claims, claiming that she was trying to pin the blame on him.
In May, Powell messaged with a former colleague as the State Department’s inspector general prepared to release a report critical of both his and Clinton’s use of private email to conduct government business. They are the latest in a series of leaks that appear aimed at influencing the 2016 presidential election. “US has not made a formal determination in public about who may or may not be responsible”, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters during a daily briefing. The exchange was uncovered, along with countless others, by hackers thought to be working with Russian intelligence. Some committee documents were leaked in July.
Powell has confirmed to multiple outlets that the leaked emails are authentic.
“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist”, the email read. And now decades later Trump wants to see his transcripts to see if he should have been admitted.
Mr Powell suggested in another email that even critical coverage of Mr Trump didn’t really work: “To go on and call him an idiot just emboldens him”.
Powell wrote in 2015, “Everything HRC (Hillary Rodham Clinton) touches she kind of screws up with hubris”.
“A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still dicking bimbos at home”, he wrote. Despite his harsh language, Powell’s reflection on Clinton’s weak points as a presidential candidate have proved to be mostly true.
“I have told Hilleary’s [sic] minions repeatedly that they are making a mistake trying to drag me in”, Powell wrote.
Mr Powell, who has confirmed the authenticity of the emails, was sharply critical of the attempts by Mrs Clinton and her staff to draw him into the long-running controversy around her use of a private email to conduct government business when she ran the U.S. state department. What did not change is the advice and the stern messages that he gave Hillary and her camp regarding her email server. “Trump folks having fun with her”.
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Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka at a campaign event in Aston, Pennsylvania.
