Clinton spokesperson to reporter: ‘F*ck off’

The email exchange between Philippe Reines and Michael Hastings is the stuff of PR/journalism legend, and it’s been published on the Internet for all to see.

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That’s the clean and abbreviated version of longtime Hillary Clinton spokesperson Philippe Reines’ email conversation with BuzzFeed‘s Michael Hastings on Sunday.

BuzzFeed published the entire back and forth.

The conversation started with Hastings basically wanting to know what’s going on at the State Department. Three days after the fatal attack on Ambassador Christopher Stevens’ in Benghazi, Libya, CNN found his journal at the site of the incident. After returning the diary to his family, the news network published excerpts indicating that Stevens was worried about security threats. That seems to contradict the State Department’s position that it had no warning of the attack.

Officials at the State Department have criticized CNN for publishing portions of the diary, and Reines kept up the criticism in his emails to Hastings, who defended the news network in the name of good journalism.

After a couple of long and tense email exchanges, the conversation turned nasty when Reines wrote: “Why do you bother to ask questions you’ve already decided you know the answers to?”

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