WASHINGTON • Top Democratic National Committee officials this spring vetted Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson to be a “young professional” surrogate for the party, but Mckesson says he has not acted in that capacity.
Mckesson was a leader in the protests after the police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson nearly two years ago. He has since left the St. Louis area, and finished sixth in the Baltimore Democratic mayoral primary in May. St. Louis County grand jury and U.S. Justice Department investigations determined that Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson acted reasonably and feared for his life.
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On May 16, according to internal DNC emails released by Wikileaks, the DNC’s African American Leadership Council Finance Director Jordan Vaughn asked other top party officials to vet Mckesson as a “surrogate for us” at a “young professional event” put on by the party. A series of following emails then disclosed that Mckesson had no criminal record, and that he had not declared bankruptcy.
The emails described Mckesson as a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, and said that he had been arrested during the Ferguson protests. His employer is listed as “self/activist,” although subsequently Mckesson has been hired as the head of human capital in the Baltimore Department of Education.
One top DNC official in the vetting emails pointed out that Mckesson had incorrectly retweeted, then deleted, that a white man had shot and killed a reporter and television news photographer on live television in Virginia last year. The shooter was black.
Several DNC officials signed off on using Mckesson as a surrogate, according to the emails.
Mckesson tweeted over the weekend that he had not acted as a surrogate for the DNC but that he had attended events sponsored by the DNC, and the presidential campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Attempts to reach Mckesson for further comment on Monday were unsuccessful. DNC officials did not respond to multiple requests for a response on the Mckesson vetting.
"I've never been a surrogate for Bernie, Hillary, or the DNC," he said. "I have attended events hosted by Bernie, Hillary & the DNC over the past year."
The Mckesson vetting emails are part of more than 19,000 internal DNC emails released over the weekend by Wikileaks, which led to the resignation Monday of Democratic National Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Some of the emails show top DNC officials appearing to favor former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Independent-turned-Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders. One exchange suggests helping Clinton by questioning Sanders’s religious faith.
Another email, written May 21 from DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach to the party’s communications director, Luis Miranda, suggested pushing out a story that the Sanders campaign was a”mess” and “Bernie never had his act together.” However, that story did not get pushed out to friendly media, according to the Wikileaks emails. Wasserman Schultz “has been advised not to engage,” Miranda writes back. “So we’ll have to leave it alone.”
The emails angered Sanders supporters and roiled the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz, D-Fla, the chair of the DNC, announced her resignation in the wake of the email revelations. She had publicly said for months that the DNC under her chairmanship did not play favorites in the Clinton-Sanders primary.
