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Bill and Melinda Gates, Tim Cook on list for Clinton's VP prospects

 
Published Oct. 19, 2016

WASHINGTON — Philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates made the list. So did Apple chief executive Tim Cook. They were among nearly 40 elected officials, military leaders and corporate CEOs that Hillary Clinton's campaign considered for vice president last spring. The list was included among hacked emails from Clinton's campaign chairman disclosed Tuesday by WikiLeaks.

The list emailed from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta to Hillary Clinton last March included several Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tim Kaine of Virginia, who was eventually picked by Clinton.

Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Clinton's opponent in the hotly contested Democratic primary, also made the list — at the very bottom.

Podesta organized the list into "rough food groups" including blacks, women and Hispanics such as Obama administration Cabinet members Julian Castro of Housing and Urban Development and Labor Secretary Tom Perez.

African-Americans who made the list included Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., former Attorney General Eric Holder and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Ex-FBI official speaks: A former FBI official at the center of the latest controversy over Clinton's private emails acknowledged on Tuesday that an offer to swap favors with a State Department counterpart on an email classification issue originated with him — until he realized the deal involved Clinton and the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya.

"When I found that out, all bets were off; it wasn't even negotiable," the former FBI official, Brian McCauley, said in a telephone interview.

Republicans have seized on the episode to accuse the State Department of trying to protect Clinton, but McCauley's account could undercut those attempts because he said he was the one who suggested the "quid pro quo," not the State Department.

Assange's internet: Ecuador announced Tuesday that it had cut off Julian Assange's access to the internet in his exile in the country's embassy in London, making it clear that it feared the tiny country was being sucked into an effort to "interfere in electoral processes" in the United States by the activities of the founder of WikiLeaks.

The announcement came a day after WikiLeaks said that Assange's connection to the internet had been severed shortly after the organization published speeches that Hillary Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs, the global investment firm.

Only hours before the Ecuador's announcement, Wiki­Leaks had charged that Secretary of State John Kerry had quietly urged the Ecuadorean government, in a meeting late last month, to stop Assange from publishing the emails or interfering in the election. The State Department issued a statement declaring that the reports were "simply untrue. Period."