USC professor named as Clinton donor in disputed Foundation ‘hack’
Staff at UCSF, Stanford and Cal State Sacramento were also listed
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange may have disappointed with the postponement of his October Surprise, but hacker Guccifer 2.0 released what he claimed to be a trove of files from Clinton Foundation servers.
The alleged leak reveals the existence of a folder called “Pay to Play,” as well as a number of donor lists from Clinton presidential and Democratic Congressional PACs.
An Excel spreadsheet of donors claimed to reveal that USC’s own Associate Professor Wendy Smith Meyer paid $33,400 to the Democratic Congressional Committee, which is just under $2,000 of what deposed Coach Steve Sarkisian makes in a year as an analyst for Alabama.
Although the list was apparently acquired from the Clinton Foundation servers, Smith told The Tab: “I have never given anything to the Clinton Foundation. Apparently they list my husband and I as having contributed in 2009, but I have checked our records and this is not the case, so this is somebody’s error or misrepresentation.”
A screengrab of the ‘leak’, which appears to name a USC professor
Steven Eglash, Executive Director of Stanford University’s Data Sciences program, has given $5,000 according to the documents. The largest donation, $100,200, appears to have come from Kathryn Ann Taylor, CEO of One PacificCoast Bank, and her husband Tom Steyer, an environmental advisor to the Obama administration.
USC Professor Dora Kingsley Vertenten of the Price School of Public Policy explained as long as the list from the PAC was acquired either voluntarily or was already in the public domain. And if the list was not used to directly solicit donations for the Clinton Foundation, its presence on their servers is not illegal.
“Even if the [PAC donor] list wasn’t public, there would be no criminality if someone had access to it and gave it to the Foundation,” said Kingsley. “The question would be why did they feel some affinity to the groups in the lists. But having these groups alone is not illegal.”
Guccifer 2.0 also leaked what appears to be a list of Wall Street contributions to PACs, as well as their allocated TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program, otherwise known as the 2008 bailout) funds.
Nothing illegal has been sourced from the hack.
Guccifer added in his announcement: “Hillary Clinton and her staff don’t even bother about the information security. It was just a matter of time to gain access to the Clinton Foundation server.”
The Clinton Foundation denies the hacking claim, telling Fortune: “Once again, we still have no evidence Clinton Foundation systems were breached and have not been notified by law enforcement of an issue. None of the folders or files shown are from the Clinton Foundation.”