Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta internally promoted warnings that primary rival Bernie Sanders might steer ineligible voters to the polls, and that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign had done the same thing in 2008.
Podesta forwarded the concerns to top Clinton operatives in an email released this week by Wikileaks. The email was obtained by hackers accused by the U.S. government of taking direction from top Russian government officials.
Podesta flagged the email as "High importance."
The message relayed the concerns of two Denver attorneys whom Podesta described as "old friends of the Clintons" that the Sanders campaign would attempt to rig the Colorado Democratic caucus. They believed Obama had done the same thing in 2008, Podesta noted.
"They are reliving the 08 caucuses where they believe the Obama forces flooded the caucuses with ineligible voters," he wrote to Marlon Marshall, Clinton’s top state-level political operative, Marc Elias, the campaign’s general counsel, and Brynne Craig, its deputy political director.
"They want to organize lawyers for caucus protection, election protection and to raise hard $. They are not just Colorado focused and have good contacts in the region," Podesta wrote.
He directed campaign staff to assist them in efforts to defend against potential voter fraud.
"Marlon and Brynne, can you respond to the org chart request and give them some points of contact," Podesta wrote. "Marc can you reach out to them on the lawyer election protection issues."
"Will do," Elias replied.
"This is done," Craig wrote.
The Clinton campaign and the Denver lawyers involved in the effort, Mike Driver of Squire Patton Boggs and James Lyons of Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie, did not respond to questions about their work in Colorado.
Sanders outperformed polling in the state’s March 1 "Super Tuesday" caucus by a large margin, winning by more than 18 points and taking 41 delegates to Clinton’s 25. Ten of the state’s 12 "superdelegates" announced their support for Clinton.
Obama’s 34-point victory in the 2008 Colorado Democratic caucus also outperformed his polling in the state.