Thursday, March 28, 2024

Colin Powell Calls Donald Trump a ‘National Disgrace’ in Hacked Emails

Former Gen. Colin Powell (Ret.) onstage at A Capitol Fourth concert at the U.S. Capitol, West Lawn, on July 4, 2016 in Washington, DC.
Former Gen. Colin Powell (Ret.) onstage at A Capitol Fourth concert at the U.S. Capitol, West Lawn, on July 4, 2016 in Washington, DC.

*Colin Powell, a retired four-star general who served under three Republican presidents, referred to current GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump as a “national disgrace” and an “international pariah” in a series of personal emails that were leaked by hackers, according to websites BuzzFeed and The Daily Caller.

In the same alleged June 17, 2016, email to Emily Miller, a journalist who was once Powell’s deputy press secretary at the State Department, Powell also said Trump “is in the process of destroying himself, no need for Dems to attack him. [Speaker of the House] Paul Ryan is calibrating his position again.”

Around 30,000 stolen Powell emails were given to the website DCLeaks.com by unnamed hackers, The Daily Caller reported. There is widespread speculation among some computer experts and Democratic politicians that DCLeaks has ties to Russian intelligence services, according to The Wall Street Journal. There is concern that leaks from the site are intended to influence the outcome of the upcoming presidential election.

Powell’s hacked emails are dated from between June 2014 to August 2016. The most recent are dated August 19, 2016.

Powell told BuzzFeed of the emails, “I have no further comment. I’m not denying it.”  The Daily Caller, however, reports that Powell declined to comment to BuzzFeed and has not verified their authenticity.

“I wasn’t aware of any infiltration of my Gmail account,” he told The Daily Caller. “If accurate my privacy has been violated.”

Meanwhile, Powell’s aide Peggy Cifrino told CNN, “The emails are accurate. No further comment at this time.”

In the emails, Powell went on to call Trump’s obsession with President Obama’s birth certificate “racist.”

“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist,” Powell wrote. “That’s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim.”

Powell also took issue with Trump’s attempts to win over black voters and for retaining former Fox News head Roger Ailes as a campaign adviser in the midst of his sexual harassment scandal, which eventually led to his departure.

“For [Trump] to say yesterday that within four years he would have 95% of blacks voting for him is schizo fantasy,” Powell wrote. “And Ailes as an adviser won’t heal with women.”

Powell’s criticism wasn’t just for the GOP candidate. He also took issue with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. “Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris,” Powell wrote in 2015, per The Intercept.

Additionally, Powell claimed in the emails that he told the Clinton camp not to try and blame him for her email scandal after he told her about his own use of a personal email account during his time at the State Department.

In an email BuzzFeed says Powell sent to NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell in August 2016, he said he sent Clinton a memo about his email habits at the State Department. “I told her how I was using my personal computer for [unclassified] emails. I said nothing about servers, basements, domains, Clinton foundation, government employees,” Powell wrote. “The Clintonistas have been trying for months to connect our usage.”

“I warned her staff three times over the past two years not to try to connect it to me,” he wrote. “I am not sure HRC even knew or understood what was going on in the basement.”

Powell wrote that he told Clinton’s “minions repeatedly that they are making a mistake trying to drag me in, yet they still try. The media isn’t fooled and she is getting crucified,” according to BuzzFeed. “The differences are profound and they know it.”

 

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