It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – S07E13 – AThe Gang’s Revenge (2)

The release of more than 20,000 pages of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee competed on Saturday with the big reveal of Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as the running mate of presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. On Friday, Wikileaks dropped a bombshell cache of DNC emails . Several weeks ago, Russian hackers were reported to have breached the DNC’s servers, but on Saturday Wikileaks refused to disclose where it had obtained the trove of data. Among other things, the documents purport to show the party apparatus favoring Clinton’s campaign over the insurgency of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. On a number of occasions, high level DNC officials liaised with counterparts on Clinton’s team to discuss ways to push back against stories that painted the Clinton campaign in a negative light. One pointedly worded missive dismissed Sanders’ campaign as “a mess” adding that his campaign apparatus “never had their act together.” The news took center stage on social media, threatening to upend the Democrats’ messaging and steal attention from a chaotic and divided Republican National Convention, which wrapped up on Thursday night. The email exchanges may reopen the wounds of a bitter Democratic primary season, just as the party kicks off its own national conference designed to highlight a unified, energized party. Jill Stein tweet The DNC did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment, but Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver told ABC News in an interview that “someone in the DNC needs to be held at least as accountable as the Trump campaign,” for a controversy involving Melania Trump’s speech earlier this week, Weaver said. Indeed, only half a day after Clinton announced Kaine as her vice presidential pick, news of the DNC leak was one of the top trending item on Twitter Saturday, despite the document dump fanning new allegations of bias. Opportunistically, GOP nominee Donald Trump leaped into the fray to blast Democrats for their perceived treatment of Sanders, calling it “really vicious.” Donald Tweet On Saturday, some users accused Twitter of censoring search results of the leak—an accusation Facebook faced several months ago when it came under fire for deliberately suppressing conservative-leaning commentary on its site. Wikileaks tweet Political observers and media focused largely on a series of incriminating emails that revealed in various instances, DNC officials spoke disparagingly about both Sanders and his supporters. In one series of messages on May 7 , several party staffers vetted a fundraising email from Clinton. One appeared to object to draft language that alluded to the possibility that Donald Trump could appoint “Scalia-like” judges to the Supreme Court, and removed the reference. The exchange was unusual, given that at the time Clinton was still locked in a primary battle with Sanders, and had not yet sewn up the delegates needed for nomination. In another lengthy exchange, party officials appeared to do damage control over reports that a Clinton-controlled fund was walking away with the lion’s share of money meant to be used for down-ballot candidates. At that time, DNC staffers discussed how to undercut the story, which at the time was being covered widely within the press, and appeared to coordinate talking points with the Clinton campaign. Several other emails suggested the national organization, run by embattled Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was trying to tilt the scales in favor of the former Secretary of State. Several communications showed DNC staffers collaborating with political journalists at key broadcast and print outlets to influence their coverage of both candidates. The DNC has repeatedly denied it favored any candidate in particular. However, a frequent refrain by Sanders throughout his insurgent campaign was that it was “rigged” by Democrats intent on handing the nomination to Clinton, the clear favorite of the Democratic establishment. In one message dated May 5 , an exchange involving the DNC’s finance chief asked a staffer to gather information on Sanders’ religious beliefs, suggesting that it could influence the decision of southern voters. Sanders has alluded to his Jewish ancestry, but hasn’t made much reference to religious beliefs during the campaign. For his part, the Vermont senator remained largely silent about the affair. He made no remarks about the controversy on Twitter, where early Saturday he made an innocuous statement about the minimum wage. Bernie tweet Several weeks ago, the senator’s supporters threatened a floor fight at the DNC convention in Philadelphia, but support for that was undercut by Sanders’ full-throated endorsement of Clinton after he dropped out of the race. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has a widely known antipathy toward Clinton. He’s been quoted as calling the former Secretary of State a “war hawk” —a disparaging term for someone eager for armed…