In her first public speech since she announced her resignation as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said that “sometimes you just have to take one for the team.”
“This has been a difficult week, there’s no question about it,” Wasserman Schultz said at a Thursday reception hosted by the National Jewish Democratic Council, according to The Hill.
“It has been a remarkable team effort, and you know sometimes you just have to take one for the team, and that’s OK, it’s OK,” she went on.
Emails hacked from the DNC’s servers and released by WikiLeaks just before the start of the convention indicated that Wasserman Schultz and other top committee officials had their thumbs on the scale for Hillary Clinton. The Florida congresswoman announced she would step down in response to the leaks after the convention ended on Thursday, but after she was shouted down by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at a Monday breakfast with the Florida delegation, she removed herself fully from the convention proceedings.
U.S. officials have said that Russian intelligence organizations were likely behind the hacks. Donald Trump suggested Wednesday that Russia or “any other country or person” also leak emails taken from Clinton’s personal server if they had them, sending off alarm bells among U.S. security experts and politicians who said his comments were an invitation to commit cyberattacks against a presidential candidate.
Trump has since said he was being “sarcastic,” but Wasserman Schultz told the National Jewish Democratic Council that his comments were irresponsible.
“I can personally attest to how not funny it is,” she said, according to The Hill. “We were hacked by Russian espionage organizations, and for a presidential candidate to encourage that to happen again, I mean, it’s treasonous, it’s seditious, it’s unacceptable.”
