NEW YORK — If Americans were to read all of Hillary Clinton’s emails “she would either win 49 states, or lose 49 states,” wrote Philippe I. Reines, Clinton’s longtime aide who served as her senior advisor while she was Secretary of State.

In the same email, Reines cryptically wrote about Clinton’s email scandal that “email retention = Benghazi.”

The March 3, 2015 correspondence was posted by Wikileaks after the email was ostensibly captured in John Podesta’s hacked gmail account.

The message was a response to a suggestion from Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, that Clinton make a joke about the email fiasco during a charity dinner later that day. This was two months before the State Department publicly released the first batch of Clinton’s emails, messages which had previously been provided to the House Select Committee on Benghazi .

“Greetings. I wanted to float idea of HRC making a joke about the email situation at the Emily’s List dinner tonight. What do folks think about that?” Palmieri asked, in an email to numerous Clinton confidantes, including Podesta and Reines.

“Margolis and I discussed,” replied Mandy Grunwald, a communications adviser to Clinton. “We don’t know what’s in the emails, so we are nervous about this. Might get a big laugh tonight and regret it when content of emails is disclosed.”

That’s when Reines chimed in with his remarks:

Trust me, most of the email themselves are funnier than any joke we can come up with. Read in total by America she would either win 49 states, or lose 49 states. I go back and forth. I’m not hard over either way, but I would not make a joke just for the sake of making a joke, because email retention = Benghazi. BUT, if we could get some business done in a light way it’s worth trying: signaling that she is more than fine with them making their way into the public domain. Because past the process stuff, next phase is content. And the assumption is that she did this secretly, hiding, etc. Simply not true. We can’t jam State to release them at this point, but if Dan can think of a light way to say “I am proud of the work we did at State and hopefully at some point everyone will be able to read what’s in them as a way to better understand that work, but until then, I want to talk about…” Doesn’t need to be at the top, could be at some natural point. That’s my strong vote since I think her expressing more than a willingness for them to be released into the wild is what’s most important.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

With research by Joshua Klein.