Interim DNC chair to impose ‘tough standards’ after email leaks

Interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Donna Brazile said she would impose tougher standards on staff going forward after leaked emails showed that some party staffers plotted to undermine the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
{mosads}Specifically, she expressed disgust with an email from DNC CFO Brad Marshall, which outlined a plan to question Sanders’s religion.
“When I read Brad’s email, and I’ve known Brad now for 20 years, I called him, and I said ‘Brad, that was wrong. That’s inappropriate.’ I apologized to the Sanders people immediately on Saturday morning,” Brazile said in an interview with Katie Couric Thursday.
She said she was “disgusted” and “outraged” by some of the emails.
“I am going to set some tough standards. Not just for [the staff], but for all of us,” Brazile said.
“I will not tolerate this within the Democratic Party or any institution I’ve been involved with.”
Of the trove of emails dumped by WikiLeaks last week, Marshall wrote in early May that the DNC should get someone to ask Sanders about his religious beliefs in Kentucky or West Virginia.
“Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist,” he wrote.
Brazile took over as chairwoman after Debbie Wasserman Schultz stepped down in the wake of the leak.
“My job now is to start cleaning up and to begin to reform the party so that it is a political party that can help elect [Democratic presidential nominee] Hillary Clinton,” she said.
She said that the DNC, whose system breach has also compromised the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is bolstering its security.
“I’m confident that were going to have a very secure system that everything is being fixed, the glitches removed, the bugs destroyed,” she said.
Brazile said that while she understands concerns and accusations of unfairness from the Sanders campaign, Clinton won “fair and square.”
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