As more and more emails are released by Wikileaks from top Hillary Clinton aide John Podesta, the mountain of documents have become a rallying cry for Donald Trump, his supporters, and GOP critics of the news media, who believe the "mainstream media" is doing its best to ignore the subject, claiming an election year conspiracy.
"These Wikileaks emails confirm what those of us here today have known all along – Hillary Clinton is vessel for a corrupt global establishment," Trump said at a recent rally in Florida.
"Wikileaks has given us a window into the secret corridors of government power," Trump added.
And many Trump backers have been using social media to let reporters know that they want more attention on this story:
Here are a few of the emails leaked out by Wikileaks that have caught my eye over the last week:
1. How Team Clinton dealt with her emails. One missive that immediately brought about howls from Clinton critics is a cryptic email from John Podesta to Cheryl Mills, a longtime Clinton aide. In this email from March 4, 2015, Podesta asks Mills if emails to and from President Obama should be held back from Clinton's time as Secretary of State.
That date is significant, because the special U.S. House panel on the Benghazi attacks sent a subpoena that day for messages on Clinton's private email server. So far, nothing else has popped up in the Wikileaks releases about Obama emails to and from Clinton. Does Wikileaks have those?
2. Clinton tactics versus Obama in 2008. Some of the Podesta emails go back to Hillary Clinton's failed bid for the White House in 2008, and document some of the efforts to undermine Obama's candidacy. For example, there was a voter survey that asked people for their reactions about various possible attack lines against Obama. They include some items that in 2016 would seem very odd for a Democratic campaign to be testing in what can only be described as a push-poll:
3. Clinton's home email server. So far at least, there has not been any blockbuster revelations from Wikileaks about the investigation into Clinton's email server. There are emails involving top Clinton aides on what types of statements to put out, how best to deflect questions about the issue and more, but little in the way of detail about what's in those emails, or about any that were deleted by Clinton. If you go to the Wikileaks page and search for 'email server,' most of what comes up are daily "News Clips" for the campaign, which include a mention of that story.
4. The News Media & Clinton's campaign. It has been interesting to see how top Clinton aides have interacted with journalists in a number of these emails - but as a reporter - most of it seems fairly normal. This is where a lot of people who are not in my business will throw their laptop against the wall and scream that I am nothing but a liberal apologist, but until you've been a reporter, it's hard to understand the relationship between campaign aides and reporters. Critics say the emails show a "cozy relationship" with the liberal media - yes, obviously some of the Clinton aides are friends with some of these reporters. But one has to assume that there are more than a few media people who are friends with - and furiously emailing - Republican campaign staffers as well.
5. The Wikileaks links to Russia. One cannot go through these emails without asking the age old question that a reporter must think about, who has an axe to grind - and where the leak came from. The sixth batch of Podesta emails were announced, not by Wikileaks, but by RT.com, a news operation that is seen by many in the West as a propaganda arm of the Russian government. The Clinton campaign is trying very hard to highlight those links between Wikileaks and Russia, and one would expect them to continue to do so.
Have you taken any time yourself to read through some of the emails? I would urge you to spend some time doing exactly that, and pretend that you are a reporter digging into the subject.
You can find the emails on the Wikileaks website.
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