This is going to be a very quick diary because I have very little time and am writing on my phone. But I just want to raise this point for the purpose of discussion. Yesterday I wrote a diary in which I argued that the Russian espionage aspect of the Wikileaks story is being underreported and that Russian intervention in our election should be treated as a far bigger story than the leaked emails themselves.
Thus far the leaked emails have contained some material that is mildly embarrassing for the Clinton campaign but no truly shocking revelations. And thus far the media has reported the content of those emails as though they were a big story. And the Clinton campaign has not pushed back hard on the authenticity of any of the leaked emails.
But what happens if, in the very final days of the election. Perhaps even the day before the election, wikileaks releases a doctored email with a truly shocking revelation? The media has pretty much vouchsafed for the legitimacy of the Wikileaks email dumps. It would make good strategic sense or Wikileaks to release all authentic emails in order to build credibility and save the fake ones until the 11th hour when there is no time to debunk them right before the most critical voting day. If they dumped fakes too early, their credibility would be shot and it would actually work very much in Clinton’s favor. But a last minute dump could be disastrous. This truly has me worried.