Hillary Clinton’s campaign scrambled to check whether there was a gender pay gap at the Clinton Foundation following a Washington Free Beacon report that men made more money than women did while working in Clinton’s Senate office, according to leaked emails.
A day after the Free Beacon reported that women working in Clinton’s Senate office made just 72 cents for each dollar earned by men, the Clinton campaign was sent research by a private firm warning them that there was a "huge" gender pay discrepancy at the Clinton Foundation as well.
"Given the story yesterday about pay equity at the State Department, I wanted to flag something that came out of our research on pay equity at the Foundation," wrote Ian Mandel, a long-time Democratic operative who runs a political research firm, in a Feb. 24, 2015, email that mistakenly said the story referred to pay at the State Department.
"There are huge discrepancies, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they went here next," Mandel wrote in an email to campaign manager Robby Mook and research director Tony Carrk.
Mandel forwarded along research showing that the average salary of the highest paid men was $112,000 higher than the average salary of the highest paid women. When calculated using the median figures instead, the gap shot up to a staggering $161,000 difference. The email mistakenly calculated the difference to be $190,000 with the numbers provided.
Emails also show that Mandel did the research on the foundation at the direction of top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, who sent the Free Beacon report to the research firm.
"I sent the story to Ian and flagged it for them as this was where they needed to look next," Mills told Mook after being forwarded the new research.
The Free Beacon also reported that there was a gender pay gap at the State Department during Clinton’s tenure, with men paid $16,000 more than women.