Correspondences with Barack Obama over his personal account before he was president are among John Podesta’s emails in the latest document dump hack published by WikiLeaks on Thursday.
The email address listed — bobama@ameritech.net — is from the period immediately before Obama’s November 2008 election as president, when he still had his Blackberry. Podesta, who now serves as chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, was leading Obama’s transition team before he was inaugurated in his first term at the time of the emails.
All of the eight emails (plus attachments) are from October and November 2008. These emails were not hacked from White House servers, but part of a wider hack of Podesta’s emails published by WikiLeaks.
CNN cannot independently confirm the emails’ authenticity. But the Clinton campaign has not challenged any emails in other WikiLeaks releases.
One of the emails with the subject line “Diversity” to Obama is about potential cabinet choices for his new administration. The email is from Michael Froman, who at the time was a Citibank executive, and went on to serve as US trade representative in the Obama administration.
The email lists potential African American, Latino and Asian American candidates — as well as female candidate options — for Obama to consider appointing for his cabinet.
Clinton, who was Obama’s rival in the 2008 Democratic primary, is listed as a potential secretary candidate to head the State Department or the Department of Health and Human Services.
The White House did not immediately respond to CNN for a request to comment.