The Clinton campaign assembled opposition research in an attempt to paint Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as a bad boss and an unaccomplished lawmaker, according to emails recently made public by WikiLeaks and first reported by Politico.
The exchanges between Clinton staffers come from the recent hack of what is alleged to be Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails and totaled 1,022 pages.
Headings within the opposition files included “Not a good boss” to “Can’t work with other people to get things done” as ways to describe Sanders.
The files were sent to campaign staff on Nov. 5, 2015, several months before voting began in the Democratic primary. Sanders lost the Iowa caucuses to Clinton by a slim margin then won a landslide in the New Hampshire primary to kick off the voting.
The Clinton campaign discussed Sanders’s history on gun issues and his support for the 1994 crime bill as attack lines, both of which ultimately came to fruition later in the primary.
Despite the tough primary battle, Sanders endorsed Clinton and has stumped for her on the campaign trail in the general election as she takes on Donald Trump.
A spokesmen for Sanders did not provide Politico with a response to the emails, but referenced an old statement from Sanders.
“No matter what Secretary Clinton may have said years ago behind closed doors, what’s important today is that millions of people stand up and demand that the Democratic Party implement the most progressive platform in the history of our country,” Sanders previously said.
