No, Clinton aide John Podesta was not hacked because he used 'password' as his email password

John Podesta did not use &quot;password&quot; as his password

(Image credit: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 6 January 2017

One of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's more memorable lines in his interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity is that "a 14-year-old" could have hacked the gmail account of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta — it was the phrase Donald Trump used when he cited the Assange interview Wednesday morning to cast doubt on the U.S. intelligence community's consensus that Russia hacked Podesta's emails. Trump fans in the conservative media have latched on to Assange's evidence to back up the claim: "We published several Podesta emails which shows Podesta responding to a phishing email. Now, how did they respond? Podesta gave out that his password was the word 'password.'" It's a good anecdote — Trump boosters ran with it:

But Podesta's password was not "password," according to the emails published by WikiLeaks. One stolen 2015 email from Podesta's assistant did list "p@ssw0rd" as the login for his Windows 8 computer, but the only password tied to his gmail account was a more-respectable combination of the word "runner" and four digits. The actual way hackers broke into Podesta's email account is bad enough — an unfortunate typo by Clinton's tech adviser and Podesta's decision to use the corrupt link in the phishing email instead of the legitimate one sent by Clinton tech support. There's no need to make stuff up. Or as Sen. Lindsey Graham puts it:

Assange's steady release of Podesta's emails in the campaign's final months kept "Clinton" and "email" in the news, and while there were no bombshells, the emails did lead to a gunman shooting up a D.C. pizza restaurant. WikiLeaks did not publish any emails from Trump's campaign or the Republican Party.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.