New Details on Clinton's 'Plant' Problem

The college student who was fed a question to ask Sen. Hillary Clinton by Clinton campaign staffers at a campaign stop in Iowa has spoken to CNN. Her comments shed more light on the controversy and call into question aspects of the Clinton campaign's explanation for the incident.

Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff was approached by a campaign staffer at an event in Newton, Iowa, last week. She said that the staffer asked her if she would like to ask a question to Sen. Clinton. Gallo-Chasanoff agreed and asked the staffer if she could ask about Clinton's energy plan. The staffer reportedly didn't think that her question was a good one and suggested that she ask a question about global warming instead. Gallo-Chasanoff asked the question later in the event providing the following exchange.

Question: As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?

Clinton: Well, you should be worried. You know, I find as I travel around Iowa that it's usually young people that ask me about global warming.

The Clinton campaign issued a statement soon after the incident was first reported that claimed the campaign did not regularly provide questions at campaign events. But, Gallo-Chasanoff has provided new details that cast doubt on the veracity of that official statement.




Gallo-Chasanoff tells CNN that the question she was provided came from a sheet full of questions targeted for specific types of audience members. "The top one was planned specifically for a college student. It said 'college student' in brackets and then the question," she said. Gallo-Chasanoff goes on to allege that another questioner at the same event was provided a question by the Clinton campaign. She describes overhearing a man who had asked a question about jobs for the middle class saying after the event that the campaign had asked him to pose the question. That question may have seemed out of place at an event focusing on energy policy, but it did highlight an issue specific to the locality. Newton, Iowa, recently lost a Maytag manufacturing plant. Both questions suggest a level of planning within the campaign that contradicts the campaign's original statement which claimed that providing questions was "not standard policy."

Gallo-Chasanoff's statements also call into question the Clinton's campaign's statement that Sen. Clinton did not know which audience members to call on. However, Gallo-Chasanoff states that everyone at the event had their hands up to ask a question and she was the only college aged student in the area she was standing during the event. "I don't know whether Hillary knew what my question was going to be, but it seemed like she knew to call on me because there were so many people, and ... I was the only college student in that area," she said.

Perhaps most damaging to the campaign, however, is Gallo-Chasanoff's allegation that the Clinton campaign asked her not to speak to the press without speaking to them first. She says that when she reported the incident to the Grinnell College newspaper, she insisted that the campaign be informed as a courtesy. That courtesy led to a Clinton campaign intern contacting Gallo-Chasanoff and asking that she "not talk about" the story until checking in with the campaign. However, Gallo-Chasanoff said she felt under no obligation to check with the campaign before speaking out.

I'm not under any real obligation to do that, and I haven't talked to [the campaign] anymore.

If what I do is come and just be totally truthful, then that's all anyone can ask of me, and that's all I can ask of myself. So I'll feel good with what I've done. I'll feel like I've done the right thing.

The planted question story is spinning out of control for the Clinton campaign. Last week, it looked as if the campaign had moved quickly to defuse the controversy by admitting its mistake and not making excuses. These new details, however, seem to indicate that the campaign was not entirely truthful in its initial statements and instead sought to minimize the damage from the incident. Now, coverage of this incident is likely to focus on the attempted cover-up, causing reporters to look for more incidents from Sen. Clinton's past. What seemed like a sign of the campaign's maturation a few short days ago, has turned into just another in a string of bad news cycles for the Clinton campaign.