New Email Suggests CNN Town Hall Questions Were Fed to Clinton Campaign

by Micah J. Fleck

Back when Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were still neck-in-neck for the Democratic Party nomination, a town hall event was held in which both candidates were asked a variety of questions on both their fiscal and social policy positions. Hillary performed very well that night and shined above Sanders in her ability to handle the questions, and it marked one of the first times she gained a clear advantage over Sanders.

However, POLITICO has obtained a WikiLeaked email that seems to suggest the DNC chair somehow got ahold of these questions ahead of time and fed them to Clinton prior to the event so she could prepare her answers in advance.

According to the new report:

A new email obtained by POLITICO is shedding more light on the mystery of whether and how interim DNC chair Donna Brazile might have obtained the text of a proposed question from a town hall between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in advance, and possibly shared it with the Clinton campaign. 

And now CNN, which co-hosted the town hall with cable network TV One, is pointing the finger at its media partner for what appears to be a breach of the traditional secrecy surrounding the questions for such events.

The email obtained by POLITICO was written by town hall co-moderator Roland Martin on the day of the town hall to CNN producers. But it shows him using word for word the language of a question that Brazile appeared to have sent to the Clinton campaign a day earlier. That email, from Brazile to the campaign, was included in yesterday’s release of hacked emails by Wikileaks of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta.

The text of the email itself is as follows:

Here’s one that worries me about HRC. 

DEATH PENALTY 

19 states and the District of Columbia have banned the death penalty. 31 states, including Ohio, still have the death penalty. According to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, since 1973, 156 people have been on death row and later set free. Since 1976, 1,414 people have been executed in the U.S. That’s 11% of Americans who were sentenced to die, but later exonerated and freed. Should Ohio and the 30 other states join the current list and abolish the death penalty?

A Clinton Campaign communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, wrote back:

Hi. Yes, it is one she gets asked about.

Based just on this information alone, there already seems to be foreknowledge of this information in the Clinton campaign, and constant communication between said campaign and the DNC to make sure Clinton is adequately prepped. However, POLITICO’s report then continues to put the pieces together and reveal the situation as even more suspect:

The next day, Roland Martin, a host on the TV One cable network who was co-hosting the town hall with CNN’s Jake Tapper, sent an email to CNN producers with three questions, the third of which dealt with the death penalty. POLITICO obtained that email, and here’s the text of the third question:

“DEATH PENALTY

19 states and the District of Columbia have banned the death penalty. 31 states, including Ohio, still have the death penalty. According to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, since 1973, 156 people have been on death row and later set free. Since 1976, 1,414 people have been executed in the U.S. That’s 11% of Americans who were sentenced to die, but later exonerated and freed. Should Ohio and the 30 other states join the current list and abolish the death penalty?”

The wording, spacing, capitalization are identical.

At the town hall later on the same day Martin sent the question to CNN producers, Martin introduced an audience member who asked Clinton about the death penalty with similar language.

“Secretary Clinton, since 1976, we have executed 1,414 people in this country. Since 1973, 156 who were convicted have been exonerated from the death row. This gentleman here is one of them. This is Ricky Jackson, wrongfully convicted of murder in 1975, he spent 39 years in prison. He is undecided. Ricky, what is your question?” Martin said before introducing questioner Ricky Jackson.

Martin initially said in an interview on Tuesday that he did not “share my questions with anybody. Literally. My executive producer wasn’t even aware of what I was going to ask.” 

In a follow up interview on Tuesday, Martin said that he did send his questions to CNN via his producer and his TV One team.

Fishy correlations, identical language between the prior email and the actual question, and subsequent flip-flopping of those involved on what exactly happened to lead to this. It seems very likely that rigging was afoot. Will this new revelation harm Clinton? Not a chance.