Advisers to Hillary Clinton privately rejected the Democratic nominee’s excuse that Bill Clinton backed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act as a defensive measure to prevent anti-gay activists from "going further" in barring same-sex couples from getting married, according to emails published by WikiLeaks on Monday.
Clinton told MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow last year that her husband signed DOMA into law to stop those opposed to gay marriage from passing a constitutional amendment that would bar the action.
Less than two days after the interview, Clinton speechwriter Dan Schwerin emailed the senior campaign staff urging them to avoid repeating the comments, BuzzFeed News reported.
"I think everyone agrees we shouldn’t restate her argument," Schwerin wrote in an email. "Question is whether she’s going to agree to explicitly disavow it. And I doubt it."
WikiLeaks released 2,000 documents Monday from the email account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. The email dump came three days after the U.S. government formally accused the Russian government of hacking into political networks to influence the 2016 election.
While the Clinton campaign said it would not confirm every single leaked document, Podesta said his account was breached.
In October of last year, Clinton told Maddow that evidence leading up to DOMA’s passage had shown "there was enough political momentum to amend the Constitution," hence his support for the anti-gay legislation.
Longtime Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan emailed staff two days after the interview aired noting that he had directed staff to look into the claim in 2008 when the former secretary of state first raised the argument, but those looking into the issue "did not turn up much to support idea that alternative was a constitutional amendment."
Former Bill Clinton staffer Richard Socarides also wrote to a senior campaign adviser that the "effort to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage came some years later."
The campaign’s LGBT liaison, Dominic Lowell, soon after remarked, "There aren’t many friends who will back us up on the point. That’s why I’m urging us to back off as much as we can there."
"I’m not saying double down or ever say it again. I’m just saying that she’s not going to want to say she was wrong about that, given she and her husband believe it and have repeated it many times," Schwerin replied.
Clinton has long tried to distance herself from her husband’s 1996 support of DOMA, which infamously enforced the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy among servicemen and women.
Though Clinton never publicly disavowed the argument, she told Maddow on Nov. 6 that she had "private conversations" where the prospect of a constitutional amendment was discussed.
"[I]f I’m wrong about the public debate, I obviously take responsibility for that," she said at the time.