Former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile called Hillary Clinton’s fundraising practices “the cancer” of the Democratic Party in a fiery book excerpt published Thursday on Politico.
Brazile, who served as interim DNC chair leading up to the 2016 election, had promised former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) that she would investigate whether Clinton’s campaign rigged the nomination process ahead of the election. In the course of her research, she writes, she learned about a joint fundraising agreement among the DNC, Clinton’s campaign and the campaign’s fundraising arm.
Under the agreement, Brazile explained, Clinton’s campaign provided a $2 million loan to the debt-ridden DNC, and took advantage of a loophole in campaign finance law to use the party “as a fund-raising clearinghouse.” In essence, the deal allowed the Clinton campaign to control the party, and its finances, well before securing the Democratic nomination, or even officially entering the presidential race.
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Brazile, by her account, was “in agony” when she dialed Sanders to tell him what she had found. “Hello, senator,” she remembered saying. “I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer. But I will not kill the patient.”
You can read the full excerpt from Brazile’s book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, here.
