Neera Tanden, a senior Biden White House official, expressed outrage at what she called a “double standard” in the media response to a hack of the Trump campaign, after her communications were widely covered following a hack of the Clinton campaign in 2016.
Tanden, who leads the White House Domestic Policy Council, expressed frustration with the general lack of coverage of pirated Trump campaign materials, given the focus on pirated materials published by WikiLeaks in 2016.
“Seriously, the double standard here is incredible,” Tanden posted Tuesday on X. “Despite all the shouting in interviews, it would be great if the people making these decisions were accountable to the public. Do they now admit they were wrong in 2016 or is the rule that hacked materials are only used when they harm Democrats? There is no middle ground.”
Tanden said the New York Times used hacked emails published by WikiLeaks in 2019 stories, but did not use hacked materials from the Trump campaign in recent days.
In a subsequent post, Tanden rejected the suggestion that the WikiLeaks materials be covered more extensively because they were published in the public domain.
“The way the hacking made them cover a Russian psychological operation? This is not a justification. This is a rationalization,” Tanden wrote.
Tanden has led the Domestic Policy Council since May 2023. She was initially nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget, but her nomination was met with opposition in the Senate, in part because of old social media posts.
The FBI confirmed on Monday that it was launching an investigation after the Trump campaign said it was hacked and that some of its internal documents were leaked. A Friday report from Microsoft placed blame for the hack on Iran, declining at the time to identify the Trump campaign as the target.
As part of the hack, new media outlets were contacted by a figure who shared verification materials analyzing Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio).
The media have largely abstained to publish or report extensively on the hacked materials. It’s a notable difference from 2016, when Russia hacked Democratic campaign emails that were then published by WikiLeaks.
Those emails were widely publicized, with Tanden, then a Clinton campaign adviser, in the spotlight. ONE New York Times Story October 2016 focused specifically on Tanden’s emails, writing that the public release of her private, often profane comments showed her to be a “loyal but insistent, straight-talking and shrewd appraiser of stubbornness and Ms. Weaknesses
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