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WikiLeaks posts Clinton's Goldman Sachs speeches in full

The controversial site continues to publish what it says is leaked information gained from a breach of a Clinton aide's email account.

Edward Moyer Senior Editor
Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.
Credentials
  • Ed was a member of the CNET crew that won a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors for general excellence online. He's also edited pieces that've nabbed prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists and others.
Edward Moyer
3 min read
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The site has released more documents relating to Hillary Clinton.

Carl Court/Getty Images

A week ago WikiLeaks served up an appetizer; now it seems to have dished out the main course.

The controversial site tweeted Saturday that it had posted full transcripts of paid speeches Hillary Clinton gave to financial firm Goldman Sachs. On October 8, WikiLeaks had posted what it said were snippets from Clinton's Wall Street talks.

The site says both the excerpts and full transcripts were obtained from emails leaked after top Clinton aide John Podesta's private email account was breached. None of the info, however, has been verified as genuine.

The speeches have been an issue in the US presidential race, with critics saying they point to a too-cozy relationship between Democratic nominee Clinton and financial heavyweights. Onetime Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders had pushed during the primaries for the release of transcripts, and Clinton said during an April debate that she'd release them if Sanders and now-Republican nominee Donald Trump made their tax returns public.

One of the purported speeches published Saturday has Clinton mentioning WikiLeaks' 2010 publication of more than 250,000 leaked diplomatic cables.

"Okay," the alleged transcript reads, according to CNET sister site CBS News, "I was secretary of state when WikiLeaks happened. You remember that whole debacle. So out come hundreds of thousands of documents. And I have to go on an apology tour. And I had a jacket made like a rock star tour. The Clinton Apology Tour. I had to go and apologize to anybody who was in any way characterized in any of the cables in any way that might be considered less than flattering. And it was painful."

Clinton and WikiLeaks founder Assange have knocked heads previously, with Clinton saying that the post of confidential diplomatic messages had endangered lives and threatened responsible government, and Assange saying Clinton is a war hawk and a threat to freedom of the press.

According to CBS News, the purported transcripts also have Clinton saying that she'd like to see more successful businesspeople running for office, because they can't be bought -- an ironic remark given that Trump has positioned himself as just such a businessman.

When the earlier excerpts were published, the Clinton campaign said, "we are not going to confirm the authenticity of stolen documents released by Julian Assange," and on Saturday it said it was "still not authenticating any individual emails."

It also said Saturday, "we're witnessing another effort to steal private campaign documents in order to influence an election." The remark refers to the White House's October 8 claim that Russia is trying to interfere with the US election process through a number of hacks against the Democratic party. Russia has called that claim "nonsense."

WikiLeaks did not respond to a request for comment Saturday. Assange has said previously that the site does not favor any particular country, that it works to verify the information it publishes, and that it publishes as a service to the public.

During a press conference on October 4, Assange said that every week for the next 10 weeks WikiLeaks would be publishing new information related to Google, military operations, arms trading and mass surveillance. He also promised that all documents related to the US presidential election would be published before the vote on November 8.