“He’s supportive, but new to this so I think we shouldn’t come on too strong.”
More than a year before Tim Cook thrust himself into the 2016 Presidential campaign—snubbing the Republican convention that nominated Donald Trump and hosting a matched pair of Silicon Valley fundraisers for Paul Ryan and Hillary Clinton—the CEO of Apple held a secret one-on-one meeting with Clinton campaign chairman and media pointman John Podesta, Wikileaks revealed last week.
The meeting came up in a hacked e-mail exchange conducted in late June 2015 between Podesta, former Google executive and current Clinton CTO Stephanie Hannon, and chief fundraiser Lindsay Roitman. Also mentioned is Erika Rottenberg, former LinkedIn general counsel, who was hosting a fundraiser that week.
The text of the e-mail chain, reformatted for clarity:
June 20, 2015
From: Hannon
To: Podesta
Re: Tim Cook + Monday
Hey John:
Finance event + tech roundtable went very well today in SF.
I heard from Lindsay that you are visiting Tim Cook on Monday. I would love to (kill to) join you if appropriate. However, if better smaller, no problem at all. Just wanted to share that Ill be in town all Monday since we have our Erika event on Monday night.
See you soon,
Steph
June 21, 8:02 pm
From: Roitman
To: Hannon, Podesta
Tim’s office requested a 1:1 meeting today, which was a nice way of saying “no staff”. I think this is one we should proceed cautiously. He’s supportive but new to this so I think we shouldn’t come on too strong.
Steph, thanks for circling back, see you tomorrow night.
June, 21, 10:13 pm
From: Hannon
To: Roitman, Podesta
Understood, thanks for getting back to me! See you at Erika’s house!
The subject of the meeting is not discussed in this exchange, but a briefing Rottenberg supplied Podesta touched on what were the Valley’ hot topics that summer:
- surveillance and national security
- patent reform
- net neutrality, and, of course,
- e-mail issue
To see how the Clinton campaign framed the issues, see Rottenberg’s briefing memo here. Her characterization of Clinton’s e-mail problems (“smacks of acting above the law”) made news last week.
My emails are meant for the recipient, no one else.And the same is true of everyone else’s emails.
I’m not naive. I know this isn’t going to stop. Hackers will always be one step ahead of security experts. People love gossip, particularly salacious gossip. I have to accept it. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
The leaks we’re talking about here are not unveiling criminal activity. They’re just unveiling activity. Private activity that should remain private.
“First, a tiny dose of cognitive science. Our brains are really good at letting in information that agrees with our prior views – and we look for reasons to reject information that is disagreeable. In a complex media environment, this tendency is deadly. It probably underlies our deep political divisions: getting the agreeable information is very easy. Witness the echo chambers in which dumps of fairly anodyne email from Hillary Clinton take on sinister significance.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/10/16/doj-demands-mass-fingerprint-seizure-to-open-iphones/#709c160c8d9d
Regarding the DOJ forced fingerprint deal (see above):
My wife just had a really great idea that you should pass on ASAP to Tim Cook:
Have Apple modify their fingerprint setup so that you can use one of your fingerprints as a “cancel fingerprint” signal. When someone forces you to use your fingerprint to open your phone, use the fingerprint that resets the phone back to the pass code.
Genius!
Ha! “new to” having to pay obeisance to the power brokers in DC.