On Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a statement, bracing for new revelations by — who else?— the Russians.
"The DNC is the victim of a crime – an illegal cyber attack by Russian state-sponsored agents who seek to harm the Democratic Party and progressive groups in an effort to influence the presidential election," the statement reads. "We would urge anyone attempting to access these documents to proceed with extreme caution given the potential malware risks."
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 13, 2016
Now that the documents have been released, the attempt to blame the "Russian boogeyman" for the hack has been revealed as a clear attempt to create a distraction from the damning information contained within the leaked documents.
According to the documents, top donors to the DNC have received various government positions. Most are ambassadorships, but several are departmental appointments.
Matthew Berzun, who reportedly raised $1,907,100 for the DNC, as well as $1,174,430 for President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action (OFA), was appointed as Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Kirk Wagar appears to have raised $825,000 for the DNC and $1,300,000 for the OFA before being appointed Ambassador to Singapore.
The documents show that Julius Genachowski raised $792,650 for the DNC and $2,628,169 for the OFA. Genachowski served as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair between 2009 and 2013. Frank Sanchez raised $3,415,000 for the DNC, OFA, and the Combined Federal Campaign and served as the US Under Secretary of Commerce.
"We have a political system which, unfortunately, encourages pay to play, and people who give big donations are often rewarded with positions in the government," former Congressman Dennis Kucinich told Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary. "It really illustrates the defects in our system, where money trumps everything and everything’s for sale."
"And don’t think for a moment that all of these corporate interests that are honeycombed now into positions in the government aren’t delivering to the corporate interests, from where they came, some form of benefit, in terms of reshaping government policy," he adds.
As long as we have the kind of campaign finance system we have, the system is going to be vulnerable to pay to play, and that’s what we’re seeing right now, and it happens in both political parties, so it’s a rotten system."
Kucinich pointed out that the problem isn’t limited to the Democratic Party.
"Both political parties are in trouble. There is an emerging force in America that doesn't rely on political parties for legitimacy, and the political parties — both Democrat and Republican — have become totally self-serving, captives of corporate interest, and unable to be able to address the practical aspirations of the American people for healthcare, for education, for jobs, for a clean environment, for protecting the globe, for peace," he said.
"And so we, today, learn a little bit more about the Democratic Party being for sale. Well, that’s nothing new, nor is it new that the same goes for the Republican Party."
