And now we have a sense of why.

Because we already have a totally hosed election season, Wikileaks made good on its threat to provide e-mail and other files ostensibly hacked from the Democratic National Committee regarding the Hillary Clinton campaign. In the end, over 20,000 emails were dumped including some 8,000+ attached files. Some show that the DNC was ALWAYS pushing for Clinton over Sanders. The Daily News reported that DNC Chief Financial officer Brad Marshall tried to bring up Sanders’ faith in the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries, hoping that the evangelical base would reject Sanders (link includes Marshall’s apology for same). It’s also clear that the DNC organized anti-Trump protests hoping to blame violence or bad visuals on Sanders–one such volley has DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda threatening to draft DNC interns to fill in the ranks of an anti-Trump protest. There’s a fairly comprehensive list of the revelations of the emails here. And one problem in putting this post together is that the revelations keep coming. As reporters sort through the e-mails, new stories appear.

Meanwhile, the effect on the Clinton campaign is growing. A new CNN poll shows that Clinton vs Trump is now 44% Trump to 39% Clinton, with third parties claiming a number of others. While it’s customary for candidates to pick up a post-convention bounce, it’s also clear that the polling happened before the DNC email dump became topic A on the radar for news organizations. As a result of the email dump, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC head who was obviously putting a heavy finger on the scale for Hillary in what was supposed to be a fair process, has resigned as head. She was replaced by vice-chair Donna Brazile, who had to step down within a matter of hours over HER statements regarding Sanders and her lack of objectivity. The DNC chair is now congresswoman Marcia Fudge, who probably doesn’t have a key to her office yet. This on the opening day of  the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

But one of the documents I was intrigued by was an Excel spreadsheet, allegedly about the hum-drum topic of Hillary’s disbursements for the campaign. It was leaked on a site called Progressive Party, and the site was down for much of Saturday and Sunday. The site make the claim that one of the Excel attachments shows disbursements to several individuals in the Trump campaign, implying that Clinton was paying for Trump’s campaign in some way. There’s a series of disbursements for ‘in kind’ services made to seven people who are identifiably part of Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns. For example, there are some seven checks for in-kind services paid out to one Matthew Ciepielowski. If you check out Mr. Ciepielowski’s LinkedIn profile, he is currently NH State Director at Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. Prior to that, he worked for Americans for Prosperity, a Koch Brothers-funded Tea Party Group; before that, he worked for Ron Paul 2012. The spreadsheet shows a total of $18,667.18 paid to Mr. Cielielowski during the month of May 2016.

Why?

First, is this a spreadsheet belonging to the DNC? If so, were they paying Mr Matt and his other named friends for insider info from the Trump campaign? If so, why would they put it on an electronic file? Did the DNC inadvertently ‘out’ Mr.Ciepielowski’s status as a mole in the GOP? 

Or is this a document the DNC managed to swipe from the Trump campaign? I looked up a couple of the other names on the spreadsheet, and they’re TRUMP donors (the money is cash-in, and I went to a couple of FB profiles to confirm that they’re Trump supporters). Is this a RNC spreadsheet that the DNC managed to swipe? If not, how did they end up with it? And how did it end up in the WikiLeaks dump of material stolen from the DNC? Conspiracy theorists, get yourself a big tub of popcorn and the extra large soda–this show might be playing for awhile.

Everything about the data that Wikileaks has put out in this dump reinforces the meme of Hillary as inept and careless about the handling of e-mail. I strongly suspect this meme will dove-tail with the strong possibility (I think it’s certain) that Trey Gowdy is going to indict Clinton for contempt of Congress and lying under oath. You can see the underpinnings of that argument in a confrontation between Gowdy and FBI director James Comey with the video here. Gowdy came up empty in his witch-hunt over Benghazi, but he just got Comey to admit that several of the statements Clinton made to Congress were lies.

Larger point: Hillary supporters, do you have a Plan B? As in ‘Biden’ or ‘Bernie’? Hillary seems to be on a sinking ship here, and someone needs to act before she takes down the entire Democratic Party with her.

And as always. I am the simple artist. I could be wrong.