A lot of ink, virtual and real, has been spilled examining the link between Russian intelligence, the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Convention, and alleged collusion by Republicans associated with the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
While the true picture of what happened is far from clear, former Clinton campaign National Spokesman Glenn Caplin appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” Friday to break down precisely what he believes happened during the election.
“The coverage was more about what was in the emails as opposed to why these emails existed” and who was distributing them, said Caplin.
Caplin, who joined the Clinton campaign in June 2016, detailed how very quickly his job became understanding the ins and outs of the DNC hack. As he described it, the information gained from the DNC hack was at first deployed in a “sloppy” manner via the obscure site DCLeaks.com. The large info dump, which Caplin said contained Russian metadata, was difficult to search and as a result, failed to make much of an impact on the campaign.
However, a month later, the hacked information began to be distributed by WikiLeaks in a much more “user-friendly” fashion. The information rollout was also better timed to cause maximum damage. Further, this is the period when available information suggested involvement by Russian intelligence acting in favor of Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton. As Caplin put it to Maddow, it was unprecedented how the hacked information was “weaponized.”
Maddow and Caplin were later joined by former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, who concurred with Caplin’s assessment of the events.
However, when asked if they thought, as many have suggested, that members of the Trump campaign were complicit in the way the hacked emails were used during the election, both were largely diplomatic.
Agreeing that the timing of Trump campaign behavior was somewhat coincidental, they stuck to the line that the American people “deserves to know” the full truth, with Mook calling for a bipartisan effort to do so.
The full video has not been posted online, but the first segment, featuring Caplin, can be watched above.