Latest WikiLeaks Dump Proves DNC Bias Against Bernie Sanders


In June a hacker who goes by the name Guccifer 2.0 — a different hacker than the original Guccifer — released some emails alleging collusion between the DNC and mainstream media to suppress the Bernie Sanders campaign. In June, the Inquisitr reported that Julian Assange promised a forthcoming document dump while releasing a “torrent insurance” file.

On Friday, MotherBoard reported that the hacker confirmed responsibility for a 20,000-email Wikileaks dump of DNC files, many of which clearly illustrate how the DNC attempted to mute the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Upon inspection of several emails, it is apparent that the DNC was working overtime to make Sanders and his supporters look as bad as possible. It’s apparent that while criticisms of Sanders were direct, officials were careful to never explicitly express support for Clinton, either.

The Inquisitr reported originally that the hacker claimed to have been “in the DNC’s networks” for nearly a year. The newly released emails appear to give this claim veracity, as many of them show direct collusion with media outlets such as Real Clear Politics to either correct stories or change them to make Sanders look bad.

[Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]
As The Intercept has already reported, Brad Marshall, CFO of the DNC, actually posited the possibility of using Sanders’ religion, or lack thereof, as a tool to use against him in places such as Kentucky and West Virginia (which he won).

“Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”

Although Marshall has denied he wrote this email, it begs the question of who Marshall was talking about then.

Aside from Marshall’s poor grasp of the written English language (“It’s these Jesus thing,” what?), he clearly crossed a line. As a top-level official of the Democratic Party, he and the Democratic National Committee are supposed to remain neutral on all fronts during presidential primaries. Instead, emails from top officials indicate disdain for Bernie, as they look for ways to smear him.

In a particularly contentious email, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz poses a number of “then what?” scenarios in an attempt to discredit Bernie Sanders and his movement.

“There are rumors about Sanders supporters preparing for civil disobedience and organized disruptions at the Democratic convention itself. Ok, but then what?”

She even acknowledged that convention protests can lead to “meaningful change,” but still plays dumb about how any successes on the part of Sanders activists could help him achieve his goals.

Wasserman-Schultz noted at the end of her email that the possibility of a disrupted convention could hurt the Democrats in the fall.

“There’s still time to avoid scenarios that could prove costly in the fall, but not a lot of time. Sanders believes, accurately, that he has some leverage: if he’s not satisfied with how the process unfolds in the coming weeks, the senator can sabotage the party’s ticket and elect President Trump. What’s less clear is what he’ll demand in exchange for his supp.”

In an email to Mark Paustenbach, Wasserman-Schultz’s claws came out in response to an April interview in Politico during which Bernie Sanders alleged that the Democratic Party had not been fair to him. The DNC chair’s sarcastic reply indicates her disdain for Sanders as a party crasher and usurper.

“Spoken like someone who has never been a member of the Democratic Party and has no understanding of what we do.”

Although not a full-fledged member of the party until last year, Bernie Sanders does intimately understand how the party works. As earlier reported in the Inquisitr, since becoming a senator, Bernie Sanders has helped the party fundraise prolifically, paid membership dues to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and has caucused with the Democrats during his two-decade career in Congress. Sanders clearly understands how the Democratic Party works.

Additionally, Bernie Sanders has been politically active since before Wasserman-Schultz was even born, and his political activism is driven by more than just fame and fortune. Where Wasserman-Schultz is driven by her love of politics, Bernie Sanders is driven by his love of people.

In a 2006 speech to the Model Harvard Congress, Wasserman-Schultz said, “I developed a love for politics and the political process.”

[Photo by John Locher/AP Images]
When the Nevada state convention chaos occurred, DNC officials circled the wagons in subsequent emails and continued to paint Bernie Sanders supporters as violent, and how Roberta Lange was a victim. In one note sent to Paustenbach, Wasserman-Schultz even called Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver “a damn liar.” Even when several delegates that were denied credentials proved they were, indeed, registered as Democrats, the DNC ignored those facts in favor of supporting a negative image of Sanders and his state delegates.

In May, I reported how several state delegates discovered that their registrations had mysteriously changed and were denied a seat at the convention. This gave Clinton an edge, and ultimately led to her winning the state. What is odd is how these same state delegates had been registered and participated in the county conventions, but when it came time to head to the state event, their registrations disappeared.

In April, DNC Vice Chair Donna Brazile forwarded an email from a Democratic supporter who was unhappy with apparent voter suppression within the party. The voter expressed dismay at apparent voter suppression in Arizona and New York. She ended her email with a resolve to never vote for Hillary Clinton and a desire to vote for Bernie Sanders. Brazile forwarded the message to several DNC officials claiming the problem with voters is how they don’t understand the process.

“What folks don’t understand is the process. And because of the ignorance, we get blamed.”

One has to wonder how the Democratic Party can’t be blamed for fewer polling locations, illegal voter purges, and and mysterious registration changes. Whether at the state level or the national level, the Democratic Party has continually suppressed votes. If at the state level, then the national organization should have taken steps to ensure that the party was conducting fair and clean elections, instead of shrugging its collective shoulders and blaming voters for not understanding “the process.”

More damning is an email from DNC official Luis Miranda to Mark Paustenbach. In it, he wonders if the DNC can somehow paint Bernie Sanders and his campaign as ineffective and chaotic.

“Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess.”

Miranda then cites the December data breach as proof of how the Sanders campaign didn’t have its act together. That’s a pretty biased tone to take for an organization that is required to maintain neutrality during the primaries.

If nothing else, the WikiLeaks DNC email dump proves beyond a doubt that Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and other top-level party officials were working against Bernie Sanders from the very beginning. And perhaps it will drive even more people to vote for a third party as a way to protest against the unfairness of the entire nomination process.

[Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images]

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