FINAL proof that Donna Brazile is lying.

[JCannon]

Few have noticed that Donna Brazile's "damning" document -- the agreement between the Clinton campaign and the DNC -- is not online. We have to rely purely on her word that the thing exists and that it reads the way she says it reads.

This absence is suspicious. Why no link to a pdf?

The same thought may have occurred to you that occurred to me: If this document is real, then why didn't we see it when the Russians hacked the DNC? This morning, Josh Marshall published a fascinating find...

There is what at least appears to be a draft of the agreement in the Wikileaks Podesta cache of all places and from what I can tell it doesn’t include any of this.

By "this," Marshall refers to the parts of the agreement that are not "kosher." We know about these parts only from Brazile; we have no other evidence that this material exists. Everything in the document we have is, in fact, perfectly "kosher" and innocent.

Marshall goes on to offer these caveats:

Again, that version is just a draft. The final copy could definitely have included other codicils or side agreements. It’s possible I’m misinterpreting the document. I’d ask campaign types to take a look.

You can find the Wikileaks version of the agreement here. It's a Word document. It doesn't look like a draft to me. Absolutely nothing about it indicates a draft. It's very detailed and well-formatted, with a codicil and spaces for signatures.

Moreover: The file is not labeled "DRAFT." It is labeled "FINAL."

It seems obvious that either the Russians or stateside Trump supporters found this FINAL agreement in the DNC cache and decided to use a falsified version to whip up some Hillary-hate just when things were looking bleak for Trump. By washing the falsifications through Brazile, they don't have to show an actual document. She can function as the fall guy if and when the whole thing is shown to be bogus.

I've signed a few agreements in my time. I have never seen a draft agreement labeled "FINAL" -- and neither, I'm pretty sure, have you. Lawyers are very careful about such things.

Let us suppose, hypothetically, that the Wikileaks document really did bear the label "DRAFT." Have you ever seen so drastic a rewrite between the draft and the final version? Offhand, I cannot recall reading about a legal agreement which was drafted to say one thing and then massively re-worded to say something extremely different.

Why did Brazile go along with the plan? I don't know, but I suspect that she had an encounter with some James-Spader-as-Raymond-Reddington type. I don't know the carrot and I don't know the stick, but I do know that nearly everyone can be manipulated and pressured.

[shenmue]

1. Oooh shit

[onit2day]

26. Title is misleading. There is no "Final Proof" here

Wanting it to be so does not make it so.

[virtualobserver]

2. it isn't the signed document

it would be SO EASY to show the actual signed document.

But they aren't showing that, because it would confirm what Donna saw.

[JCannon]

5. I'd like to see a scan of the signed document...

...but it is up to Donna Brazile to provide proof. She's the one making the claim.

[virtualobserver]

6. She was head of the DNC when she reviewed the document.

She would not have the right to copy and remove the document.

The DNC could release it, and so could Hillary.

[onit2day]

21. Thank you for making that clear.What we want to be true doesn't make it so

[More_Cowbell]

31. I'm not sure that's true

My area of law isn't libel, but in general, you can't make an accusation and then hide behind some kind of "I can't show you the document" language. If nothing else, she should have had to show the JFA to her publisher during fact-checking.

Any agreement that she signed to not copy and remove the JFA should also have covered her *talking* about it. If it's confidential, it's confidential.

I agree that it would be good for the DNC or Hillary to release it or at least talk about it.

[robersl]

24. Wow

I have yet to hear anyone from the Clinton campaign deny that this relationship with the DNC existed.

If there was nothing inappropriate about the relationship, why was it a secret?

[Capn Sunshine]

22. Thisis as good a place as any to insert this thread:

This thing right here

[joshcryer]

3. Donna Brazille tried, poorly, to create a controversey.

If the book gets published without a serious retraction of her bullshit it's a straight up libel.

[virtualobserver]

7. easy to prove that it is wrong....Hillary or the DNC could release the document

[More_Cowbell]

13. Or Brazile could, or Politico, or her publisher Hatchette

Instead, today Brazile's claiming that she didn't say it was rigged:

Link to tweet

[onit2day]

23. You've judged it before reading it. Says more about you than it

She ran Gore's campaign too and I doubt she has ulterior motives to harm anyone. She recognized a problem that now can be fixed without need to cover it up or lie. I want to keep an open mind about it but now that it's outed the accusations can stop and we can not only correct the problem we can move on and see it doesn't happen again. In other words it's a done deal, fixed and now we can let go of it.

[joshcryer]

25. The exerpt alone is libel.

I don't have to judge anything here. This will all sort itself out.

[aikoaiko]

4. Far from final proof, but I, like most, really want to see the signed 2015 doc.

[Hekate]

15. FYI: DU standard doesn't usually permit use of the P-word except in relation to Trump's behavior...

...that he boasted about. Otherwise, it's sexist/misogynistic.

Welcome to DU, Pepsidog. You'll get the hang of it.

[whathehell]

19. Thank you. n/t.

[Pepsidog]

33. Makes sense- sorry know for next time

[BigmanPigman]

16. Ditto!

[onit2day]

27. I can't believe you said that.We should never suppress the truth

and I don't want to act like republican sociopaths. If people can accept "grab em by the P". then this is no big deal at all and will have no impact.

[Texin]

10. Just what is Brazile up to here?

If this does turn out to be verified, why did she keep working for the DNC if she found this so reprehensible? Clinton isn't going to run in 2020. Why continue to stir the pot about this? And, if I'm not mistaken, Brazile has been involved with the DNC previously, and from my recollection, the Clintons going back all the way to the '90s have been very involved in the DNC and another of its governing-steering committees for a very long time. I seem to recall infighting between the wings back in the day. There's been longstanding infighting within factions of the party. Was this written just to stir up a controversy to stoke book sales? How does it benefit Sanders? If one side of the party is being shredded by the other, how overall does it benefit anyone within the party or progressives in general?

[Jim Lane]

11. From personal knowledge I can contradict you on one point

You write:

I've signed a few agreements in my time. I have never seen a draft agreement labeled "FINAL" -- and neither, I'm pretty sure, have you. Lawyers are very careful about such things.

I'm a lawyer and I've seen more than one draft labeled "FINAL". I distinctly remember seeing one document labeled "FINAL FINAL FINAL FINAL FINAL" to distinguish it from the earlier supposedly final versions that had been superseded.

Even aside from the possibility of further revisions, a "FINAL" agreement within the DNC could mean "We've been going through different drafts of our proposal to the Clinton campaign, and this is the final proposal, the one we're going to send to the campaign." That would be consistent with "The campaign came back and said it was unacceptable; the campaign counteroffered with a version that included the control provisions recently described by Brazile."

This is of course speculation on my part. I wasn't privy to the negotiations. All I'm saying is that the word "FINAL" on the top of a document doesn't prove that that version was the final agreement that was signed.

I don't know if there's more than one WikiLeaks release at issue. The one that I saw, linked by multiple other posters here, was manifestly, on its face, not the final version that was signed. There were numerous blank spaces where specific terms remained to be filled in. As a lawyer, I can be extremely confident that both the campaign and the DNC had lawyers who were sufficiently competent to know that an agreement in that form would essentially have been no agreement at all (unenforceable in court). Therefore, there were definitely subsequent changes to that supposedly final version. Whether those changes included the provisions described by Brazile is a question not answered by the WikiLeaks release.

[R B Garr]

30. LOL, all that and it's still complete conspiracy to get to your conclusions.

Lawyers don't usually invest in conspiracies, so it's interesting to see the process.

[OilemFirchen]

35. I've known some crackpot attorneys over the years.

Most confined themselves to slip-and-fall cases, if they ever saw the inside of a courtroom.

[R B Garr]

38. Yeah, and look how the "facts" are applied based on who harms their favorite

target(s). The email leaks that supposedly hurt or exposed Clinton are all true and accurate, but a leak that shows Donna is the one lying is all of a sudden suspect and can't possibly true. Somewhere out there is the true and "final" document that surely will prove their agenda, lol.

Actually, anyone in law knows that agreements like that are mostly boiler-plate with language generic to the industry. The way it's presented here is that it's all a huge conspiracy and they're just sure there is some other document out there showing that a crowd of lawyers put in language that means Hillary "stole" something. LOL, the conspiracies are just so inanely absurd.

I saw someone else post that Brazile is doing her first interview on FOX, so "follow the money" indeed!

[Ms. Toad]

36. As another attorney - I was about to say the same thing about the FINAL comment

I've written more agreements than I can count in which we thought we had everything resolved, I (or the other party) wrote it up and labeled it FINAL - but when we read it, we realized there was still more work to do & back to the drawing board.

Nothing is final until it is signed.

[Madam45for2923]

12. People know that HRC won't get in the mud with them. She is too resilient for that.

[calimary]

14. Welcome to DU, JCannon!

ONCE AGAIN, I find myself wondering "whose side are you on, Donna Brazile?"

She's been one of my - well, let's just say NON-favorites for a long time. I have been so unimpressed with her for so damn long, ever since she "managed" the Gore campaign into nothingness and gave us eight years of bush/cheney. Now she wants to sabotage all things Hillary and DNC - so we maybe get eight years of trump/pence? And of course her new book HAS TO come out on the eve of a very important election in Virginia.

I used to tear my hair every time I saw, on CNN in particular, the usual idiotic panel of "fair and balanced" talking heads. There'd be four people. They'd have a GOP Congressperson or other elected official, a representative from some wrong-wing "think" tank like Heritage Foundation or American Enterprise Institute, and a wrong-wing blogger or talk show host - and Donna Brazile. A woman who could, and can, always be counted on to arrive on the battlefield armed with her trusty feather duster that she can always be counted on to bring to any and every gun or knife or sword fight.

She is by far the WORST, most milquetoast, most flaccid, most fucking USELESS individual to speak for, or represent, ANYTHING involving the Democrats. Her idea of debating some oppositional person is to answer "oh, okay" or "well, I see your point and..." or some spineless, meaningless, and spectacularly worthless verbal Jello about some vague principle or generalized statement of whatever-the-hell. If you ever have the misfortune to go into battle with her at your side, be sure to have your surrender papers and kneepads with you, because that's what you'll need when it's over. You want somebody with teeth on your side? Hell, she doesn't even have gums.

[Hekate]

17. Wowza, tell us how you really feel, calimary

That's a pretty comprehensive assessment. I, too, wonder: Why this? Why now?

[Mr.Bill]

20. She's trying to sell books.

Same as almost every republican who ran in the primaries.

[Demit]

32. I always got the feeling she treasured her insider status above all else.

So she would chuckle good-naturedly, say boilerplate things, never be forceful or push back. She was just so darned COLLEGIATE.

[SCantiGOP]

18. Trashing another 2016 primary thread

[progressoid]

28. Well, I'm convinced.

[iluvtennis]

29. I want to directly hear from Donna herself on this. I have admired her as a Dem leader, CNN commen-

tator, interim head of DNC, super delegate, etc. I really don't want it to be true that she would say a thing like this to bring the Democratic party down in a time where we need to be UNITED to get the evil out of the oval office. If it is proven she said these things, I will no longer view her as one of my women dem icons.

[MaryMagdaline]

34. Easy

About as easy to get as one's tax returns. Maybe Hillary's husband is in charge of the paperwork. Once again, the burden's on Hillary to produce ever more documentation.

[StevieM]

37. And they just repeated the lies on Hardball as if they were fact.

The truth no longer seems to matter. Just the spin.