Leaked email: Clinton’s Palin joke withheld from article

Hillary Clinton joked about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin during a 2015 interview for The New York Times Magazine that Clinton’s presidential campaign later tried to amend, according to a leaked email.

In an interview with Times Magazine journalist Mark Leibovich last July, Clinton reminisced about spending time in Alaska during one summer in college, where she came face to face with “a huge moose.” 

{mosads}“I’ve eaten moose, too. I’ve had moose stew,” Clinton told the magazine, according to a transcript made public from the hacked email account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

“In Alaska, moose stew. So that’s why I always got a big kick out of Sarah Palin with all of her, ‘We’re cooking up some moose stew here,’” she added, with a laugh.

Clinton’s presidential campaign later asked Leibovich not to include the reference to Palin. 

“Fine to use the moose, but appreciate leaving the mention of Sarah Palin out,” Clinton spokesperson Jennifer Palmieri told the journalist in a July email made public on Tuesday.

Leibovich eventually did include the moose anecdote in his story, which was published a week later. He did not mention Clinton’s joke about Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee.

It’s unclear what the terms of the interview were, though journalistic ethics usually discourage reporters from allowing interview subjects to edit or keep private portions of on-the-record interviews after the fact.

In the emails, Leibovich suggests that he allowed the campaign to reserve the right to kill bits of the interview.

The journalist “wanted the option to use all — and you could veto what you didn’t want,” he wrote to Palmieri.

A new batch of roughly 1,000 Podesta emails were released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday, the third such publication of messages allegedly from the longtime Clinton ally this month.

U.S. officials have suggested that the anti-secrecy organization is being used by the Russian government to spread stolen information or, potentially, doctored materials in an effort to undermine the American presidential election. Clinton’s presidential campaign has more explicitly condemned the releases as Kremlin-orchestrated propaganda.