The Twitter account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, was hacked on Wednesday, according to a campaign spokesman, prompting the campaign to inform the social media site of the breach.
The hack comes in the midst of the ongoing release of Podesta’s emails, which was stolen and are now being released by Wikileaks. The emails have been embarrassing for the Clinton campaign, bringing internal machinations of the campaign — and some off-color comments — into the public.
On Wednesday, as Clinton landed in Las Vegas, Podesta’s seemingly tweeted, “I’ve switched teams. Vote Trump 2016. Hi pol.”
The tweet was quickly identified as a hack. Podesta has been Clinton’s campaign chairman since the outset of her campaign and his ties to the family date back to the first Clinton White House.
“We can confirm that John’s Twitter account was hacked, which would explain that message. And we are working on fixing it,” said Nick Merrill, Clinton’s traveling press secretary.
Merrill said the campaign had informed Twitter and they were working to secure Podesta’s account. Merrill would not confirm or deny that the FBI has been informed.
Podesta said on Tuesday that the FBI has contacted him over the weekend as the “victim of a criminal hack” and that he was working with them to handle the issue.
“It doesn’t feel great,” Podesta said of the hack. “But I am kind of zen about it at this stage, personally.”
https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/786359329607737344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
