Fact Check

Did Hillary Clinton Trash Michelle Obama in a Leaked E-Mail?

An online image falsely claimed Hillary Clinton insulted the First Lady in an e-mail message purportedly published by WikiLeaks.

Published Jan. 9, 2017

 (Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com)
Image Via Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com
Claim:
Hillary Clinton said several insulting things about Michelle Obama in a leaked 20 October 2016 e-mail.

On 4 January 2017 the Facebook page "Powdered Wig Society" published the above-reproduced image macro, claiming that Hillary Clinton had insulted First Lady Michelle Obama in a 20 October 2016 e-mail (published by WikiLeaks), as captioned by that image:

"DO WE REALLY NEED THAT MICHELLE BITCH TO BE AT THE SAME EVENTS?

ITS ENOUGH TO HAVE HER DUMB ASS PIMP STINKING UP THE WORKS.

THESE SHIT FOR BRAINS VOTERS NEED TO JUST VOTE ALREADY."

WIKILEAKS

HILLARY CLINTON EMAIL TO CHELSEA CLINTON
OCTOBER 20, 2016

This claim would have made waves if it were true, but no other news outlet reported on what would have been an easily accessed e-mail. We searched WikiLeaks first by keyword and then for all e-mails published by WikiLeaks with a send date between 19 and 21 October 2016, but both searches similarly returned zero results. In short, the quote was fabricated and the e-mail in question does not exist.

Powdered Wig Society was not the first source to advance a fabricated Hillary Clinton quote based on a non-existent WikiLeaks document. A high-profile example of a forgery that was claimed to be a WikiLeaks publication was the widespread "bucket of losers" comment widely (and falsely) attributed to Clinton.

Kim LaCapria is a former writer for Snopes.