“I’m not denying it”, Powell told BuzzFeed News about the emails.
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“No need to debate it with you now, but Trump is a national disgrace and an global pariah”, Mr Powell wrote in June, noting the criticism of Mr Trump by several prominent conservatives. That’s what the 99 per cent believe.
Powell wrote in another email that Trump’s attempts to win over black voters is a “schizo fantasy” because of “what he tried to do to Obama with his search for the birth certificate”.
In an email to Reuters on Wednesday, Powell confirmed the authenticity of the thousands of hacked messages but declined further comment.
In the 2014 e-mail, Mr Powell, though offering no independent knowledge, alluded in graphic language to coverage in The New York Post suggesting that Mr Clinton had continued to cheat on his wife.
In hacked emails, Powell wrote: “Everything (Hillary Clinton) touches she kind of screws up with hubris”, blunt comments that the the Bush administration secretary of state did not intend to go public. I have to say, I’m increasingly concerned about Donald Trump’s alarming closeness with the Kremlin over the course of this campaign.
In another note to the same colleague, Powell called out Trump for his “birther” movement, which he deemed racially offensive.
In a hacked email exchange with his successor Condoleezza Rice, the December 2015 correspondence, first reported by BuzzFeed News, revealed that Rice agreed with Powell’s assessment.
The emails were published on the website dcleaks.com, which is suspected to be run by the Russians. Despite his harsh language, Powell’s reflection on Clinton’s weak points as a presidential candidate have proved to be mostly true.
That’s where the niceties end, however, as the retired four-star general and former secretary of state appears to criticize the Democratic nominee’s “unbridled ambition” and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, for having extramarital affairs. At that time, with Trump’s chances of winning the Republican nomination on a rapid rise, Powell pointed out that the negative coverage on Trump was doing him more good than bad.
However, Powell did write Clinton an email memo “describing his use of his personal AOL email account for unclassified messages and how it vastly improved communications within the State Department”, according to an early statement by Powell’s office.
Last month, Powell wrote that the Clinton camp largely ignored him when he advised them to knock off that line of defense.
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Powell also attacked Trump, calling him “national disgrace and an worldwide pariah” who led a witch hunt against President Obama in search of his birth certificate.
