On November 2, former DNC Interim Chair Donna Brazile published an excerpt from her upcoming book exposing the existence of an August 2015 memo that outlined exclusive concessions the DNC provided the Clinton Campaign as part of its joint fundraising agreement, the Hillary Victory Fund. Democratic Party establishment and Clinton partisan hacks have been reeling to spin and gaslight the revelation ever since.
Two days later, NBC News published the memo, which showed that the Clinton campaign had oversight of DNC hiring decisions. The article originally pushed the claim that the memo only pertained to the general election, a narrative likely reinforced by the Clinton partisans who gave NBC the memo for controlled publication rather than releasing it publicly.
The memo noted:
Agreement by the DNC that HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research. The DNC will provide HFA advance opportunity to review on-line or mass email, communications that features a particular Democratic primary candidate.
As Brazile claimed, the Clinton Campaign was indeed granted authority over the DNC and use of its communications operations That included oversight of every other primary candidate, including Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb.
This memo’s key points were ignored by establishment hacks, who mischaracterized a legal disclaimer at the bottom of the document that claimed, “Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC’s obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary. Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates.” This disclaimer is contradicted by the memo itself.
“How does anybody believe the DNC-HFA memo only applied to the general?” tweeted Brendan Fischer, Federal & FEC reform program director at the Campaign Legal Center. “Clinton controlled every communication mentioning a primary candidate. The throwaway claim that the memo is ‘focused exclusively on preparations for the General’ is contradicted by the rest of the agreement.”
Former DNC Chair Howard Dean, who now works for Hillary Clinton’s PAC, Onward Together, tweeted, “Turns out the memo Donna spoke about applied only to the general election. If so then this memo is standard operating procedure for 15 years.” Its been retweeted over 12,000 times so far without correction. Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, the DNC’s lead attorney Marc Elias, Los Angeles Times Contributing Writer Jamil Smith, all perpetuated the general election lie and have yet to issue corrections after it was debunked.
The Hill published a false headline repeating this general election frame, but later corrected it. The Hill at least did report earlier in the week that three major news networks blacked out the Donna Brazile story, writing, “‘ABC’s World News Tonight,’ ‘NBC Nightly News’ and ‘CBS Evening News’ all didn’t report the allegations by Brazile on Thursday evening despite it receiving considerable coverage on cable news and in print and online media.”
This was after several establishment media hacks, like Joy Reid, gaslit the story by claiming Bernie Sanders received the same agreement. This was debunked by the memo and the Sanders campaign. Reid also flip-flopped on the rigged primaries claim, switching from previous arguments that it was a conspiracy theory that the DNC favored Clinton, but it had no effect.
Power covers for power. The mainstream media’s efforts to regurgitate whatever narrative is fed to them by establishment leaders while ignoring stories that put them in a bad light are symptoms of the gasping industry of journalism. The propagated myth that the DNC wasn’t an extension of the Clinton Campaign simultaneously omits that the Hillary Victory Fund circumvented campaign finance laws to funnel money to the Clinton Campaign, despite the gravity of these facts and their implications.
Even Brazile — a long time party hack who is now being portrayed as a hero for writing about the memo but whose primary motivation is surely selling her book and making money — has pushed back against the obvious conclusions from the memo, retweeting a claim that the Clinton Campaign cheating during the primaries didn’t enhance Hillary’s performance at all.
The cheating was clearly done to get Clinton more voters in the primaries and stave off other candidates. There was no other reason to do it.
The gaslighting claim that Clinton did it to help save the DNC financially is also baseless. The DNC could easily have raised the money it received from the Clinton Campaign from TV contracts for more debates, scheduled at times to maximize exposure of the candidates. Instead it limited the schedule to only six debates — down from 26 during the 2008 primaries.
Accepting these truths would force the DNC and Democratic Party establishment into introspection. Instead, the Clinton machine and establishment are gaslighting the story to avoid accepting blame or responsibility for the corruption and authoritarian manner in which the Democratic Party continues to operate.
