In Hacked Emails, Colin Powell Asks Hillary Clinton to Leave Him Out of Email Scandal

Colin Powell. (Dod News / CC-BY-2.0)

Emails leaked from Colin Powell’s Gmail account show the former secretary of state attempting to discourage Hillary Clinton from using him as an excuse for her private email-server problems.

“Sad thing,” Powell wrote to one confidant, “HRC could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me to it.

“I told her staff three times not to try that gambit. I had to throw a mini tantrum at a Hampton’s [sic] party to get their attention. She keeps tripping into these ‘character’ minefields,” Powell continued.

Lee Fang and Naomi LaChance write at The Intercept:

Powell’s private messages were leaked by DCLeaks.com, an anonymously managed website that shares hacked emails from U.S. military and political figures. DCLeaks has a relationship with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker that many allege to have ties with Russian intelligence. DCLeaks provided access to Powell’s emails to a number of reporters on Tuesday.

The emails show Powell regularly corresponding with reporters and friends about the Clinton email server scandal, explaining that his situation was different. When Powell arrived at the State Department, the information technology system was badly dated, he argued. And unlike Clinton, Powell never set up a private server. Instead, he used his personal AOL account, on a server maintained by AOL, and used a government computer for classified communications.

The emails also contained what can only be understood as an unequivocal nonendorsement. “They are going to dick up the legitimate and necessary use of emails with friggin record rules. I saw email more like a telephone than a cable machine,” Powell wrote last year to his business partner Jeffrey Leeds. “As long as the stuff is unclassified. I had a secure State.gov machine. Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.”

Powell added another complaint: “I told you about the gig I lost at a University because she so overcharged them they came under heat and couldn’t any [sic] fees for awhile. I should send her a bill.”