Former Secretary of State Colin Powell offered up his unfiltered view of the Clintons in newly leaked emails from Powell’s personal account that were dumped online in a password protected database that was accessed by TPM on Wednesday.
“I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect,” the retired four-star general wrote of Hillary Clinton in a July 24, 2014 email to business partner Jeffrey Leeds, published by the anonymous site DC Leaks. “A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still dicking bimbos at home (according to the NYP).”
Asked about the authenticity of that email, Powell wrote to the New York Post, “Jeez, don’t remember this one. Best to ignore., [sic] don’t you think?”
Peggy Cifrino, a Powell aide, confirmed to Vice News he was hacked and “these are his emails,” but declined further comment.
Powell also took more substantive issue with Clinton dragging him into the ongoing saga over her use of a private email server. The statesman frequently emailed with reporters and personal contacts about Clinton’s ongoing efforts to erase any distinction between her handling of State Department email with Powell’s.
In another email to Leeds dated Aug. 18, 2015, Powell observed, “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.”
“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,” he also wrote.
Last month, Powell wrote that the Clinton camp largely ignored him when he advised them to knock off that line of defense.
“HRC could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me into it. I told her three times not to try that gambit,” he said. “I had to throw a mini tantrum at a Hampton’s [sic] party to get their attention.”
Powell was far more unsparing in his views of Donald Trump, who he called a “national disgrace and an international pariah.”
While it has been reported that DC Leaks, along with the WordPress site purportedly run by the hacker Guccifer 2.0, are linked to Russian intelligence agencies, no such link has been substantiated yet.
