As uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon Thursday afternoon, Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook interned for ABC News chief anchor and former Bill Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos during his tenure at Columbia University and even thanked Mook in his 1999 book All Too Human.
In addition to praising Mook in his book, Stephanopoulos had some rather kind words for Mook on the April 12 edition of ABC’s This Week. Without disclosing his relationship to Mook, Stephanopoulos gushed how Mook is Clinton’s “young campaign manager” and that he’s “laying down the law” in wanting to prevent infighting within the Clinton camp.
Concerning his book, Stephanopoulos thanked Mook and 12 other interns in the acknowledgment section of All Too Human for working with his research assistant at Columbia in reviewing public records and fact-checking his story.
The Free Beacon’s Robert Scher has more:
Stephanopoulos’ book, described as “a new-generation political memoir” of a man “who got his hands on the levers of awesome power at an early age,” was written after he left the Clinton administration and returned to his alma mater Columbia to be a visiting professor.
Mook was an undergrad student at Columbia during Stephanopoulos’ brief tenure and was already politically active. He was a member of the College Democrats and was active in Democratic politics in his home state of Vermont.
Mook was also part of the team of interns who worked under Stephanopolous’ research assistant at Columbia, responsible for “reviewing thousands of pages of public records and making sure I got my facts straight,” wrote Stephanopolous.
Earlier on Thursday, it was revealed that Stephanopoulos had neglected to disclose tens of thousands of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation over the course of the last two years. After initially being reported to have given $50,000, the amount was later updated to have actually been $75,000.
>> Find all of NewsBusters‘ coverage of George Stephanopoulos here <<
Since then, Stephanopoulos issued a statement to Politico in which he apologized and hours later announced that he will not moderate ABC’s 2016 Republican presidential that is slated for February 2016 in New Hampshire.
As for Mook, he manages Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign after having worked for Virginia Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe’s winning 2011 campaign and Clinton’s previous presidential bid in 2008.
The relevant portion of the transcript from ABC’s This Week on April 12 can be found below.
ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos
April 12, 2015
10:02 a.m. Eastern
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: One of those mistakes, in past campaigns, team Hillary has kind of been racked by in-fighting. Her new campaign manager Robby Mook – young campaign manager, is laying down the law on that.
CECILIA VEGA: Yeah, that's right. He sent this memo to staffers yesterday and we got a hold of it. It essentially – this outlines some of the general principles of the campaign and the implication really is that there will be, they will try to have less infighting. I want to quote from a couple of the lines of the memo because, like I said, we got hold of it. So, Mook tells the staffers, “When we disagree, it's never personal. Once a decision is made, we execute it together.” He says, “this campaign is going to be about strategy and not one-offs,” George. So, I think it's pretty clear. Here we go. 2016.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Alright, lets’s see if they can hold to that. Cecilia, thanks very much.
