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In March 2016, the personal Gmail account of John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff and chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, was compromised in a data breach accomplished via a spear-phishing attack, and some of his emails, many of which were work-related, were hacked. Cybersecurity researchers as well as the United States government attributed responsibility for the breach to the Russian cyber spying group Fancy Bear, allegedly two units of a Russian military intelligence agency.[1]
Some or all of the Podesta emails were subsequently obtained by WikiLeaks, which published over 20,000 pages of emails, allegedly from Podesta, in October and November 2016.[2] Podesta and the Clinton campaign have declined to authenticate the emails.[3] Cybersecurity experts interviewed by PolitiFact believe the majority of emails are probably unaltered, while stating it is possible that the hackers inserted at least some doctored or fabricated emails. The article then attests that the Clinton campaign, however, has yet to produce any evidence that any specific emails in the latest leak were fraudulent.[4] A subsequent investigation by U.S. intelligence agencies also reported that the files obtained by WikiLeaks during the U.S. election contained no "evident forgeries".[5]
Podesta's emails, once released by WikiLeaks, shed light on the inner workings of the Clinton campaign, suggested that CNN commentator Donna Brazile had shared audience questions with the Clinton campaign in advance of town hall meetings, and contained excerpts from Hillary Clinton's speeches to Wall Street firms. Proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory falsely claimed the emails contained coded messages which supported their conspiracy theory.[6][7]
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Motherboardwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Stein, Jeff. "What 20,000 pages of hacked WikiLeaks emails teach us about Hillary Clinton". Vox. Retrieved October 21, 2016.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
CBS slogans tppwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Carroll, Lauren (October 23, 2016). "Are the Clinton WikiLeaks emails doctored, or are they authentic?". PolitiFact. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
- ^ Miller, Greg; Entous, Adam (January 6, 2017). "Declassified report says Putin 'ordered' effort to undermine faith in U.S. election and help Trump". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 8, 2017.
- ^ Huang, Gregor Aisch, Jon; Kang, Cecilia (December 10, 2016). "Dissecting the #PizzaGate Conspiracy Theories". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 10, 2016.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Samuelson, Kate (December 5, 2016). "What to Know About Pizzagate, the Fake News Story With Real Consequences". Time. Archived from the original on December 7, 2016.