'If I were them, I would be a little freaked,' says Clinton ally David Brock.
CLEVELAND — A super PAC backing Hillary Clinton on Thursday night mysteriously obtained and leaked drafts of Donald Trump’s nomination speech — and those of several other convention speakers — hours before the night’s proceedings were set to kick off, sending the Trump campaign scrambling on the final night of what has been a chaotic convention.
The super PAC, Correct the Record, obtained a document containing the drafts from “a Republican source who had access to it and they sent it to us,” said Correct the Record founder David Brock, a close Clinton ally.
orrect the Record sent the text of Trump’s draft speech to its press list a little after 6 pm, gloating “as if this convention hasn't been enough of a failure for Trump, somehow he let US get a hold of his full remarks before the speech.”
About 15 minutes later, the Trump campaign sent out a press release containing excerpts of Trump’s speech that closely matched the draft released by Correct the Record.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a question about how the draft might have leaked.
But a senior Republican operative working behind the scenes at the convention called the leak " a disaster” that proved that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his team “just aren't ready for prime time.”
The drafts obtained by Correct the Record were in a single document formatted for a TelePrompTer, and were time-stamped from the early afternoon.
The document began circulating in political and journalism circles and POLITICO obtained a draft of it soon after 5 p.m., but refrained from publishing it until verifying its authenticity.
Brock said Correct the Record staff “took a little time to verify that it was real. We had a way of making sure that it wasn’t some James O’Keefe operation.”
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