Democratic megadonor Jeffrey Leeds said a Democratic senator told him that Hillary Clinton struggled to climb podium steps at a joint event they did, Mediaite reported Wednesday, citing leaked emails.
The hacker group D.C. Leaks, which anonymously manages a website that provides the public hacked emails of political and U.S. military officials, released emails from former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s private Gmail account on Tuesday.
In one of the emails from 2015, Leeds, who has donated multiple times to the Clinton Foundation, wrote to his business partner Powell that a Democratic senator who once was a colleague of Clinton’s said he was concerned about her health.
Investigative journalist Lee Fang of the Intercept tweeted the email exchange between Leeds and Powell, which indicated that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) noticed Clinton "could barely climb the podium steps" at an event they held together.
Also back in 2015, Leeds & Powell discussed Hillary's health pic.twitter.com/dm4G1WJvus
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) September 14, 2016
Powell responded he had not heard anything specific regarding Clinton’s health but did believe something may be wrong.
"On HD tv she doesn’t look good. She is working herself to death," Powell wrote.
Powell also pointed out later in his email that Clinton will be 70 in her first year in office.
Clinton’s health has become a campaign issue this week, following her nearly collapsing Sunday as she was leaving a Sept. 11 memorial event. Her campaign originally said she was "overheated" but hours later announced that she had previously been diagnosed with pneumonia. On Wednesday, Morning Consult released a poll that said half of potential voters believe Hillary Clinton has given false information about her health to the public.