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Marco Rubio Warns GOP On WikiLeaks: 'Tomorrow, It Could Be Us'

Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is urging other Republicans not to use the WikiLeaks revelations given that U.S. intelligence officials say the emails are a product of a hack with foreign government influence.
John Raoux
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AP
Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is urging other Republicans not to use the WikiLeaks revelations given that U.S. intelligence officials say the emails are a product of a hack with foreign government influence.

Live by the leak, and you may die by the leak.

That's the message Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is sending to his fellow Republicans, as he swears off using campaign material that originates with WikiLeaks.

"Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow, it could be us," Rubio said in a statement.

"I will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of WikiLeaks," added Rubio, who is up for re-election. "As our intelligence agencies have said, these leaks are an effort by a foreign government to interfere with our electoral process, and I will not indulge in it."

The warning from the erstwhile presidential candidate comes as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are preparing for their final debate Wednesday night in Las Vegas.

WikiLeaks has published a cache of emails stolen from the personal Gmail account of Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta. Some of the emails have proved embarrassing to the Clinton campaign, and Trump has not been shy about using this ammunition.

After Bloomberg reported on an exchange among campaign staffers discussing Clinton's reliance on a private email server while she was secretary of state, Trump took to Twitter:

The Clinton campaign has refused to confirm the authenticity of the emails published by WikiLeaks. The FBI is investigating the hack on Podesta's account.

The director of national intelligence and the Homeland Security secretary have blamed earlier hacks of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations on the Russian government, calling it an attempt to influence the U.S. election.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Scott Horsley is NPR's Chief Economics Correspondent. He reports on ups and downs in the national economy as well as fault lines between booming and busting communities.