2016 Democratic National Committee Email Leak

Overview

2016 Democratic National Committee Email Leak is an ongoing political scandal surrounding a series of internal correspondences among the staff members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in which they discuss various tactics to undermine the campaign of Bernie Sanders in order to secure Hillary Clinton’s victory in the primaries. While the source of the leak remains unknown, the emails were published by the online whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks in late July 2016.

Background

On July 22nd, 2016, Wikileaks^[9] published a collection of nearly 20,000 e-mails exchanged among key staff members within the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the governing body of the United States Democratic Party, as well as unofficial correspondences with members of the press, between January 2015 and May 2016. Among other findings, the leaked emails detail how several officials within the DNC, which is supposed to remain neutral during the primary electoral process, had attempted to sabotage Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in order to secure the victory of Hillary Clinton.

Developments

DNC Chairperson’s Resignation

On July 24th, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, United States congresswoman and the chairwoman of the DNC, announced her immediate resignation from the position in the aftermath of the leak. In addition, Schultz’ scheduled appearances at the Democratic National Convention on the following week were cancelled.

Official Responses

In response to the revelation, Bernie Sanders expressed that he was “disappointed” by the leak, though “not shocked,” and urged Schultz to resign from the chair, while Terry McAuliffe, Governor of Virginia who previously served as the DNC chairman, slammed the findings from the emails as “totally unacceptable behavior.” On July 24th, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook publicly alleged that the leak was orchestrated by Russian hackers in an effort to help Donald Trump win the election.

Source of Origin

Although WikiLeaks has not disclosed any information regarding the identity of its source, several Democratic party officials have alleged that Russian hackers were behind the breach of the DNC email servers, while a lone hacker who goes by the handle “Guccifer 2.0,” a tribute to the pseudonym used by the convicted Romanian hacker Marcel Lazar Lehel, has claimed responsibility for providing The Hill and WikiLeaks with the emails, in addition to a string of smaller-scale leaks of DNC internal documents that have been released via Twitter between late June and early July.

FBI Investigation

On July 25th, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a statement confirming its investigation of a Russian hack into the DNC’s email servers that had occurred on June 14th, an incident that quickly became implicated as a possible origin of the leak by major news outlets over the weekend. However, the agency did not officially confirm the involvement of the Russian cyber attacks as the source of the leak.