The Political Insider

Hillary Clinton isn’t the only Democrat settling scores after her devastating loss to Donald Trump.

Donna Brazile, the ex-DNC head who took over the floundering organization after Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz left, just dropped the equivalent of a bunker buster bomb filled with juicy gossip about her tenure at the money-troubled organization.

In the pages of Politico Magazine, Brazile aired her grievances, calling Schultz “not a good manager” and blasting the former party head as being a spendthrift eager to give Hillary the reins over the party machine.

Then she got to Hillary. The Clinton campaign, Brazile alleges, had totally taken over the DNC, and left it struggling to raise money. Brazille writes: “The Saturday morning after the convention in July, I called Gary Gensler, the chief financial officer of Hillary’s campaign. He wasted no words. He told me the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt.”

Brazile was astounded by the lack of funds. She breaks down exactly where all the money went, and why the Clinton campaign was now calling all the shots at the DNC:

Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.

Then Brazile reveals what appears to be a byzantine method of funneling money meant for the DNC to Hillary’s campaign office in Brooklyn. She writes:

Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the thirty-two states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.

Brazile was, again, shocked at this arrangement. She asked Gensler, “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”

So, because the Clinton campaign shored up the DNC’s finances, it was basically running the show, lending credence to the assertion by Senator Bernie Sanders that the primary contests were rigged against him.

Then Brazile threw Obama under the bus, writing: “The party chair usually shrinks the staff between presidential election campaigns, but Debbie had chosen not to do that. She had stuck lots of consultants on the DNC payroll, and Obama’s consultants were being financed by the DNC, too.”

There you have it. Not only is Brazile practically admitting that Hillary took over the DNC, effectively using it to rig the primary contest, but also Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Barack Obama helped her do it by running the organization’s finances into a ditch.

Folks on Twitter were loving every bit of this vengeance trip:

Let’s remember: Brazile isn’t completely innocent in this whole affair. She fed Hillary debate question in advance in order to screw Bernie. Even so, this airing of dirty laundry sure is fun to read!

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