The Clinton Campaign Should Stop Denying That The Wikileaks Emails Are Valid; They Are And They're Real

from the and-they-are dept

Look, it's getting ridiculous that Hillary Clinton defenders keep insisting that the John Podesta emails released by Wikileaks are full of fakes and doctored content. With most other leaks, including the one of Colin Powell's emails, the victims (and, yes, they are victims) eventually admit that the leaked content is legit. Not so with the Podesta emails. But that's dumb. As Robert Graham points out, it's totally possible to validate many of the emails. And they do validate.

Whether you like or dislike Wikileaks, whether you think Julian Assange is a wonderful or horrible person, whether you think Wikileaks is just a propaganda tool of Russia or a powerful force for transparency -- one thing you cannot say is that the organization has been caught releasing fake or doctored information. It (and Assange) do have a history of overhyping releases, or misrepresenting their significance. And Assange does seem to be pretty quick to jump on conspiracy theories that don't hold up under much basic scrutiny. But, to date, pretty much everything that Wikileaks has actually leaked has checked out as legit.

So it's been a bit bizarre watching people try to insist that the troves of John Podesta emails that Wikileaks has been releasing are somehow fake, doctored or manipulated. We recently wrote about Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald going crazy insisting that he had proved that Wikileaks and the Russians teamed up to "manipulate" an email. Of course, the reality turned out to be that a young American part-time reporter for a Russian-owned news site, had simply misread a tweet and turned it into an article. No big conspiracy. No manipulation. And, certainly, none of that has anything to do with Wikileaks (amusingly, Eichenwald then deleted all his tweets claiming proof that Wikileaks was a part of this conspiracy, and apparently tried to silence the young reporter by telling him he'd try to get him a job elsewhere).

Perhaps even more ridiculous is DNC chair Donna Brazile trying to deny any information from any email released by Wikileaks, including one specific one that she sent, apparently revealing a CNN primary debate question to the Clinton campaign prior to the debate (Brazile worked as a commentator on CNN at the time). This video is absolutely cringeworthy, starting at about five and a half minutes into this video. Brazile tries to avoid answering the question about sending debate questions to the Clinton campaign, first barely feigning ignorance of the issue, and then insisting multiple times that the emails are fake/doctored/not verified, and insisting that she did not send the email in question. Being interviewed by Megyn Kelly, here's how Brazile tries to claim that the emails are not real, but basically comes out with a word salad of nothing, rather than simply admitting that the email is legit.

MEGYN KELLY: You're accused of receiving a debate question whether a CNN town hall where they partnered with TV One that you had this question on March 12th, that verbatim, verbatim was provided by Roland Martin to CNN the next day. How did you get that question, Donna?

DONNA BRAZILE: Well, Kelly, as I play straight up and with you, I did not receive any questions from CNN.

KELLY: Where did you get it?

BRAZILE: First of all, what information are you providing to me that will allow me to see what you're talking about? Everybody's....

KELLY: You've got the Wikileaks showing you messaging the Clinton campaign with the exact wording of a question asked at the March 13th CNN TV One Townhall debate.

BRAZILE: Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. You know, as a Christian woman, I understand persecution, but I will not sit here and be persecuted. Because your information is totally false.

KELLY: I'm getting it from Podesta's email.

BRAZILE: What you're -- well, Podesta's e-mails were stolen. You're so interested and talking about stolen material, you're like a thief that wants to bring into the night the things that you found that was in the gutter. I'm not...

KELLY: Donna. CNN's Jake Tapper came out and said this was unethical. "Someone was unethically helping the Clinton campaign." He said "I love Donna Brazile, but this is very, very upsetting. My understanding is that the email..."

BRAZILE: I love CNN

KELLY: This is Jake Tapper: 'My understanding is that the e-mails came from Roland Martin or someone around Roland Martin." He said "this is very upsetting and troubling." That's your own colleague at CNN. It's not Megyn Kelly. Who gave you that question?

BRAZILE: Megyn, once again, I said it and I said it on the record and I'll say it on the record and I'll keep saying it on the record. I am not going to try to validate falsified information. I have my documents. I have my files. Thank God I have not had my personal e-mails ripped off from me and stolen and given to some criminals to come back altered. I have my records and files. And as i said repeatedly, CNN, in the 14 years I was associated with CNN, I've never received anything. If I had a blank piece of paper, that would basically be the end of this conversation. I never get documents from CNN. Period.

KELLY (eye roll): Your email to the Clinton campaign said 'sometimes I get the questions in advance.'

BRAZILE: Uh, ma'am. Y'know. You know what...

KELLY: And CNN is saying Roland Martin gave them to you. Or someone at TV One. And they were provided to Hillary before that town hall.

BRAZILE: Well anybody who knows me... and... and... and there are a number of your colleagues as well. They know me very well. I know how I play it. I know what I do before every debate. I know what I do before every show -- even this show. I do my homework. I communicate. I talk.

KELLY: I understand.

BRAZILE: But I just, once again, let you know that... as far as I know that... that... that CNN has never provided me with questions. Absolutely. Ever. Nada. Sorry.

KELLY: Well, when you said "from time to time I get the questions in advance," what were you referring to? Because in that email you offered the exact question that one of the moderators, Roland Martin, then proposed the next day.

BRAZILE: So. So. My, my, my reference back to you, ma'am, with all respect -- and I respect you greatly --

KELLY: And I respect you too.

BRAZILE: The... the... the validity of those emails -- if I can only tell you one things, because you know, this whole episode is under criminal investigation -- but I can just tell you one thing: a lot of those emails, I would not give them the time of the day. I've seen so many doctored emails. I've seen things that come from me at two in the morning, that I don't even send. There are several email addresses that I once used, and I'm so sorry that we... these have not been verified. This is... nobody will. This is...

KELLY: I got it.

BRAZILE: This is under investigation. And let me just tell you something. If there's anything that I have, I will share. I don't have an agenda to smear anybody...

KELLY: Alright. I've got to run because we have another guest waiting...

Okay, so, here's the problem. She did send the email. And it's verified. Graham proves it in his post. The trick is DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) signatures. DKIM was a system set up a while back to try to fight spam by cryptographically proving that the account that says it sent the mail actually sent the email in question. Not all email systems use DKIM, but hillaryclinton.com does use it, which is great for transparency, but bad for Donna Brazile.

Graham looked up that email in particular and found that it validates, using a Thunderbird add-on to check these things:

Downloading the raw email from WikiLeaks and opening in Thunderbird, with the addon, I get the following verification that the email is valid. Specifically, it validates that the HillaryClinton.com sent precisely this content, with this subject, on that date.

Let's see what happens when somebody tries to doctor the email. In the following, I added "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" to the top of the email.

As you can see, we've proven that DKIM will indeed detect if anybody has "doctored" or "falsified" this email.

Graham also offered one whole bitcoin to anyone who can forge an email that still validates correctly under this method to show his confidence that the emails are verified as actually sent as is, despite Brazile's wacky performance.

Of course, the Clinton campaign keeps insisting that the emails are doctored, but fails to show any proof. Here's the campaign's Chief Strategist, Joel Benenson, saying many are not authentic: Here's what he says:

BENENSON: Well, first of all, I'll tell you something, I haven't spent a lot of time reading through WikiLeaks e-mails.

But I will tell you this, what we know is that many are not authentic. We know that this is a hack, 17 of Russians -- no, because these e-mails, we have no idea whether they are authentic or not or whether they've been tampered with once the Russians, which 17 American intelligence agencies say are responsible for these hackings, have been manipulated. I have seen things -- I'm not going to go into details --

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you're not suggesting that those are --

BENENSON: They may well be. I don't know. I know I've seen things that aren't authentic, that we know aren't authentic. And it's not surprising. What's ridiculous about this whole conversation is that 17 intelligence agencies have said the Russians are responsible for this. Donald Trump refuses to accept it, refuses to condemn them.

Benenson is full of shit. Again, whether or not you like or dislike Wikileaks, or question Assange's motives, there's a simple fact here: the documents it's released have not been shown to be false, faked, doctored or inauthentic at all. And it's possible to verify many of them, and some have even written scripts to verify them in bulk.

The Clinton campaign, as it so often does, is making things worse for itself by being stupid. It's trying to cover up legitimate information, and the coverup always comes across worse than the original actions. Just admit that these emails are legit and move on. Lying about it is not a good look, even if that's just the way things go these days in politics.

Filed Under: dkim, donna brazile, emails, hillary clinton, joel benenson, john podesta, megyn kelly, robert graham, verification
Companies: wikileaks