Let’s just all breathe a sigh of relief that we won’t have to live through yet another presidential debate, shall we? Even so, the debate was quite enlightening for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is how Hillary Clinton subtly confirmed the veracity of the WikiLeaks “Podesta Emails.”

Toward the end of the final debate, Moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News asked questions of both candidates regarding their fitness to be president. Trump brought up the issue of the WikiLeaks emails and the James O’Keefe video in which some Clinton surrogates were caught admitting to causing violence at Trump events.

Wallace then pivoted that into a question to Clinton regarding her time as Secretary of State.

“Secretary Clinton, during your 2009 Senate confirmation hearing, you promised to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest with your dealing with the Clinton Foundation … but emails show that donors got special access to you … Can you really say that you kept your pledge to that Senate committee … why isn’t it what Mr. Trump calls pay-to-play?”

Clinton avoided the question regarding the pay-to-play scenario, instead segueing into how her foundation has helped millions of people around the world. When pressed on the issue, Clinton claimed that there was no evidence of any pay-to-play scheme.

#DebateNight

Hillary's scandals made her unelectable so she colluded with the DNC and the press to elevate Mr. Trump. It's all in #Wikileaks pic.twitter.com/rGzKDPokuN — Pat the Berner (@SilERabbit) October 20, 2016

But the confirmation of the WikiLeaks emails actually came earlier in the debate, when the two candidates were hashing it out over immigration, open borders, and Donald Trump’s infamous wall. Wallace asked Clinton pointedly if what she said in a private speech to a Brazilian bank was true.

“Secretary Clinton, I want to clear up your position on this issue, because in a speech you gave to a Brazilian bank, for which you were paid $225,000, we’ve learned from the WikiLeaks, that you said … ‘My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.’ So that’s the question.”

Clinton’s answer about the WikiLeaks emails was smooth, and she urged voters to read the rest of the answer in the speech transcript.

“Well, if you went on the read the rest of the sentence, I was talking about energy. You know, we trade more energy with our neighbors than we trade with the rest of the world combined. And I do want us to have an electric grid, an energy system that crosses borders.”

While the fact that sharing an energy grid with two other countries is simply a bad idea, Clinton’s answer confirmed what people have been debating all along.

But then Clinton turned the conversation around to how WikiLeaks is an agent of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. She said 17 intelligence agencies have “confirmed” that Russian hackers committed cyber attacks on the U.S. government in order to try and influence the election. However, after much crosstalk by both candidates, Wallace pointed out that, although the top national security officials believe Russia is behind all of the hacks, they do not know for sure. Politico reports that while authorities suspect Putin, they can find no evidence of a Russian connection in the latest releases.

WikiLeaks has also implied that at least some of the emails they’ve received were not hacked, which could mean an inside job.

In other words, it’s still just speculation that Russia had anything to do with some or all cyber attacks and although Clinton would desperately love to paint WikiLeaks as an agent of a hostile nation, her argument that the emails were sourced from Russia is still rather weak. Furthermore, various internet forums like Reddit and 4Chan have been digging deeply into the recent accusations against Assange with implications of involvement by close associates of Hillary Clinton.

A supposed dating site called ToddandClare.com has accused Assange of taking $1 million from the Russian government. The site is also behind the accusations of internet sexual molestation of an unnamed eight-year-old girl in the Bahamas. But again, there is a circular path to all of these accusations, and somehow they manage to all lead back to Clinton in some way.

[Frank Augstein/AP Images]

I’ve already discussed the ToddandClare fiasco and linked to relevant sources so anyone interested can look it all up.

But, here’s where we stand right now. Clinton has verbally confirmed on national TV that the contents of the WikiLeaks emails are true. There is now no more question about their accuracy or provenance.

John Podesta really did call Bernie Sanders a “doofus.” Clinton’s campaign really did work in tandem with the DNC and the mainstream media to “throw Bernie a bone.” Neera Tanden really did say she’d do just about anything for Clinton. And Bill and Chelsea really did nearly drive a woman to suicide.

John Podesta did already say some of the emails were true but warned against the Russians planting some fake ones to undermine WikiLeaks’s credibility, which makes no sense at all. Why would Russia commit cyber attacks in order to influence the election, but then also plant fake emails in the mix to discredit them? So while pundits and social media mavens are up in arms over Trump’s refusal to say whether he’ll accept the results of the presidential election come November 8, everyone is overlooking the fact the veracity of WikiLeaks’s Podesta emails are no longer in doubt.

[Featured Image by Julio Cortez/AP Images]