John Podesta: My IT Guy Told Me Phishing Email Was Legit

John Podesta explained how his email account was hacked during the 2016 presidential election, saying his assistant clicked on a spear-phishing email from hackers with Russian ties.

Podesta, then the campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, told CNN Tuesday "the rest is history."

The rest, of course, was the publishing of 20,000 pages of those emails by WikiLeaks, including correspondence between Donna Brazile and Clinton communications staffer Jennifer Palmieri with questions from one of the upcoming town hall-style debates.

The spear-phishing email purported to come from Google informing Podesta that someone had used his password to try to access his account and included a link to a fake Google webpage that asked him to change it. Podesta's IT person told the assistant the email was legitimate when, in fact, he meant to say it was "illegitimate."

"It actually got managed by my assistant, who checked with our cybersecurity guy," Podesta told CNN. "And through a comedy of errors, I guess, he instructed her to go ahead and click on it and she did."

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