Neera Tanden, focus of 2016 hack, rips ‘double standard’ in coverage of Trump campaign’s hacked materials

Neera Tanden, a top official in the Biden White House, expressed outrage over what she called a “double standard” in the media’s response to a hack of the Trump campaign after her communications were extensively covered following a 2016 hack of the Clinton campaign.

Tanden, who leads the White House Domestic Policy Council, aired her frustration with the general lack of coverage of the hacked materials from the Trump campaign, given the focus on hacked materials published by WikiLeaks in 2016.

“Seriously the double standard here is incredible,” Tanden posted Tuesday on the social platform X. “For all the yapping on interviews, it would be great for people making these decisions to be accountable to the public. Do they now admit they were wrong in 2016 or is the rule hacked materials are only used when it hurts Dems? There’s no in between.”

Tanden said The New York Times used hacked emails published by WikiLeaks in 2019 stories but has not used hacked materials from the Trump campaign in recent days.

In a subsequent post, Tanden pushed back on the suggestion that the WikiLeaks materials were covered more extensively because they were published in the public domain.

“The manner of the hacking made them cover a Russian psyop? That is not a justification. That’s a rationalization,” Tanden wrote.

Tanden has led the Domestic Policy Council since May 2023. She was initially nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget, but her nomination ran into opposition in the Senate in part because of old social media posts.

The FBI confirmed Monday it was launching an investigation after the Trump campaign said it was hacked and some of its internal documents were leaked. A Friday report from Microsoft pinned the blame for the hack on Iran, declining at the time to identify the Trump campaign as the target.

As part of the hack, new outlets were contacted by a figure who shared vetting materials reviewing former President Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

News outlets have largely refrained from publishing or reporting extensively on the hacked materials. It is a notable difference from 2016, when Russia hacked Democratic campaign emails that were then published by WikiLeaks.

Those emails were widely reported on, with Tanden, then an adviser to the Clinton campaign, prominently featured. A New York Times story from October 2016 focused specifically on Tanden’s emails, writing that the public airing of her often profane private commentary showed her to be a “loyal but insistent straight-talker and acute assessor of Mrs. Clinton’s stubbornness and weaknesses.”