Wednesday brought a new wave of WikiLeaks material – allegedly taken from the email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman. The data dump released over 1,000 damning emails from Podesta's Gmail account on to the controversial site for everyone to read.
It was the second time this week that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange made good on his pledge to release countless amounts of detrimental information on Clinton – fulfilling his promise to orchestrate an "October surprise" ahead of the November 8 election.
To date over 6,000 emails have been released and, while it is uncertain if there are more to come, the information revealed so far has blindsided the Democratic nominee, her message and her team.
"If the drip, drip, drip of emails continues it could have a negative cumulative effect on Clinton," said Michael Genovese, political scientist and president of the World Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University.
"The best thing she has going for her is that [Republican presidential nominee Donald] Trump keeps stealing the headlines with either his own often senseless attacks or leaked stories of his sordid past," he said.
The Clinton campaign to date has declined to confirm any of the information revealed in the material. The only response from the campaign is that the WikiLeaks is a front for the Russian government.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement last week saying, "The recent disclosures of alleged hacked emails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts."
Both Moscow and WikiLeaks tweeted Tuesday that the allegations were false.
Genovese says the possibly damaging information contained in the emails would get a lot more play if Trump would just give them some oxygen. "For now, the Hillary story is drowned out by Trump – as always – stealing the limelight," he said.
"So far, much of the damaging material — such as alleged excerpts from secret speeches Clinton gave to Wall Street or indications that the former secretary of State's presidential campaign received a debate question in advance — have been buried by an escalating divide within the Republican Party and explosive details about Donald Trump's past behavior toward women," he said.
While Trump intensified his attacks on House Speaker Paul Ryan Wednesday, he finally mentioned Clinton at a rally before thousands in Ocala, Florida, calling her "corrupt" and "unqualified for the presidency."
On Wednesday evening Trump faced fresh allegations in a New York Times story that he touched and kissed two females without their consent decades ago. Neither woman said they had spoken about their allegations publicly before they spoke to the newspaper.
In an email statement from Jason Miller, a Trump senior communications adviser, the campaign denounced the article as fiction. "[For] The New York Times to launch a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump on a topic like this is dangerous," he said.
Miller said to reach back decades in an attempt to smear Trump trivializes sexual assault and sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election.
Salena Zito covers national politics for Newsmax.
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