Editor’s Note: What follows is Donna Brazile’s account of the 2016 presidential election. More specifically, it is the story of how the Clinton campaign gained control of the DNC prior to Hillary even winning the nomination. That the DNC rigged the primary against Bernie was revealed by Wikileaks a while back; however, this Brazile’s candid account is likely evidence that the powers that be are done with our favorite pantsuit-wearing, email-deleting harpy.
Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.
I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.
So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent…