Hillary Clinton's campaign admitted she was "hypocritical" on the issue of equal pay, according to new emails released by Wikileaks.
The Washington Free Beacon has reported extensively on the gender pay gap for Clinton's staff while she was a senator, secretary of state, and in her current campaign. Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook acknowledged paying women less was problematic for his candidate who has continued to make the issue central to her campaign.
"This is the problem with having big chunks of research locked away...we just don't know what's going to be coming at us," Mook wrote John Podesta in the aftermath of the New York Times story revealing Clinton's use of a private email account.
"I worry we're going to get out on a limb on certain issues (perfect example: equal pay) and not realize how hypocritical we might look later," he said.
"I hate to sound like we're trying to get into all her dirty laundry and I completely understand all the sensitivities, but this is the big leagues and we need comms and reserach experts preparing us [sic]," Mook added. "Consultants are all a flutter as you can imagine! But I know that this is a special world we live in..."
Mook's comments appeared on the same email chain where he said he believed "everything was taken care of" in the summer of 2014 regarding Clinton's private email server.
Other emails revealed the Clinton team's concern about reports that she paid women just 72 cents on the dollar paid to men, causing the campaign to poll test whether the issue hurt her image in Iowa.
The campaign has confirmed the accuracy of the Free Beacon's report that Clinton's male senate staffers received a median salary $15,708.38 higher than women.
The gender pay gap continued when Clinton became secretary of state, where men earned on average $16,000 a year more than women.
Early in her presidential campaign a Free Beacon analysis found that female staffers were earning 87 cents for each dollar that was earned by a man.
The U.S. director of national intelligence and the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security have accused "Russia’s senior-most officials" of hacking and leaking emails posted to Wikileaks and other sites in order to influence the 2016 election.