In a statement, Clinton said she’s “grateful to Debbie for getting the Democratic Party to this year’s historic convention in Philadelphia, and I know that this week’s events will be a success thanks to her hard work and leadership”.
Advertisement
Also slated to speak on the first day of the convention is first lady Michelle Obama.
An immediate effect of the leak was Wasserman Schultz’s weekend decision not to speak at the convention.
Hillary Clinton and her vice-president pick Tim Kaine are about to be confirmed as the Democrats’ election candidates.
Mrs. Wasserman Schultz abruptly resigned Sunday, just as the Democratic National Convention was set to open here Monday to nominate Mrs. Clinton.
Earlier Sunday, David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Obama’s presidential campaigns and a CNN senior political commentator, said Wasserman Schultz should resign.
By late Saturday, opposition inside the party “spread like wildfire”, according to a Democratic source close to the matter.
The scandal is rocking the party on the eve of their convention, and the fall is a stunning one for the tough-talking Florida representative who became the first woman elected to chair the DNC.
“Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party”, he said.
He also said “party leadership must always remain impartial”, which he added was not the case in the 2016 Democratic primary race.
“Her leadership of the DNC has meant that we had someone who brought Democrats together not just for my re-election campaign, but for accomplishing the shared goals we have had for our country”.
Priebus, here Sunday to open the party’s rapid-response operation, said the controversy showed Democratic disarray. “This has needed to happen for a long time”.
Wasserman Schultz had already effectively lost control of the DNC after Clinton’s campaign inserted operative Brandon Davis to run operations on a day-to-day basis.
“Experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, took all these emails, and now are leaking them out through these websites”, campaign manager Robby Mook told ABC.
The Clinton camp questioned whether Russians may have had a hand in the hack attack on the party’s emails and were interested in helping Trump, who has exchanged words of praise with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The furor was a blow to a party keen on projecting stability in contrast to the volatility of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who was formally nominated at a raucous convention last week, and overshadowed preparations in Philadelphia for Clinton’s coronation as the nominee to face Trump in the November 8 US presidential election.
In one leaked email, a DNC official wondered whether Sanders’ religious beliefs could be used against him, questioning whether the candidate may be an atheist.
Pressure built on Sunday for the DNC Chair to step down from her position, in the wake of the embarrassing revelations exposed in the Wikileaks document dump.
Wasserman Schultz’s departure follows an uproar over the almost 20,000 emails released by Wikileaks that revealed efforts were discussed by party staffers to seemingly undermine the candidacy of Sanders, the Vermont senator who was runner-up to Clinton in the Democratic presidential campaign.
In a statement, Ms Wasserman Schultz described Mrs Clinton as “a friend I have always believed in and know will be a great president”.
Even some critics in the Clinton campaign and White House thought it would be better to keep Wasserman Schultz than to risk presenting an image of disunity by forcing her out.
Advertisement
On Sunday, critics passed around a tweet Wasserman Schultz sent last week to her counterpart at the Republican National Committee, Reince Preibus.
