(left) in 2013 Palmieri served as
White House Communications Director for
U.S. President Barack Obama. Before her service at the White House, she served as the Senior Vice President of Communications for the
Center for American Progress and the President of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Earlier, Palmieri was the National Press Secretary for the
2004 John Edwards presidential campaign and for the
Democratic National Committee in 2002, after a brief time at the advocacy group
Americans for Gun Safety. She served in the
Clinton Administration as Special Assistant to White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, then deputy director of Scheduling and Advance, and finally as a Deputy
White House Press Secretary the last three years of Clinton's presidency.
WikiLeaks 2016 email hack Palmieri attracted controversy when an email chain allegedly showing Clinton aides joking about
Catholics and
evangelicals in 2011 was released by
WikiLeaks. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that individuals with connections to the Russian government had conducted a
spear-phishing attack against Clinton campaign chair
John Podesta as part of an operation to prevent
Hillary Clinton from winning the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Palmieri, herself a Catholic, purportedly responded that she believes Murdoch, Thomson, and many other conservatives are Catholic because they think it is "the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion ... Their rich friends wouldn't understand if they became evangelicals", she wrote. saying: Everyone has a unique faith journey, and it's just insulting to make blanket statements maligning people's motives for converting to another faith tradition. Had Palmieri spoken this way about other groups she would be dismissed. Palmieri must resign immediately or be fired. Podesta did not respond in the email thread. Palmieri said she "didn't recognize (the email) ... [but] we are not going to fact check each of the emails that were stolen, hacked by Russian-led efforts in an effort to hurt our campaign."
Hillary Clinton presidential campaign 2016 At a
Harvard University forum held on December 1, 2016, to define the Clinton Campaign for the historical record, Palmieri ascribed the loss to (1) alleged white supremacists within the Trump campaign, (2) the e-mail scandal (which she believed reporters should not have covered), and (3) claimed "[that] many political journalists had a personal dislike for the Democratic nominee." Palmieri's role in the campaign is described in the book by Donna Brazile,
Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House and ''
Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign''.
The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth Palmieri joined the
Showtime documentary series,
The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, as guest host, beginning October 13, 2019, with season four episode twelve,
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures. Palmieri was announced to be a permanent co-host beginning on January 10, 2021, with the premiere of season 6. She remained with the series until its end in 2023. Palmieri is a contributing editor to
Vanity Fair.
2024 Kamala Harris presidential campaign In August 2024, campaign officials for the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris announced that Palmieri will be a senior adviser to Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman. ==References==