Leaked email shows Clinton camp planning to engage Media Matters for 'hand-to-hand combat with press'

Brett T. | 6:14 PM on November 03, 2016

Every once in a while the media oversteps its bounds, and there’s no choice left but to go in search of some muscle to put the beast back in its pen.

Obviously the Hillary Clinton campaign is better staffed than poor Melissa Click, who had to wander around a college campus calling out for some muscle to clear a student reporter out of the “media-free zone” protesters had set up. And when the Clinton campaign staff foresees some “hand-to-hand” combat on the horizon, it’s good to have Correct the Record and Media Matters on speed dial.

Clinton campaign planned to "engage" @mmfa* to defend Huma Abedin.
*@mmfa is mostly a 501c3 org barred from politicshttps://t.co/F0zp79eW1u pic.twitter.com/wRbLQxIyO8

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) November 3, 2016

I'm sure the IRS will be VERY upset about this.

*crickets*

— Chris Hynes (@realchrishynes) November 3, 2016

Ken when you're exempt from the law, nothing is barred from your campaign..

— LeeTheBold (@Lee_the_Tweeter) November 3, 2016

It’s not clear from the email if the campaign ever did engage Media Matters to defend Huma Abedin from fringe alt-right hate site Vanity Fair, but the email certainly is telling when it came to exposing the campaign’s concerns.

There was apparently some real worry over “the Teneo/SGE stuff,” which could “make life a little more difficult” if exposed. In 2013, Fox News reported on the Teneo stuff, which involved Abedin collecting $355,000 as a consultant to Teneo, a firm co-founded by former Bill Clinton counselor Doug Band, while also earning $135,000 as a special government employee, or SGE, working part-time for the State Department.