Americans continue to underestimate the effect Team Hillary’s cozy relationship with the media will have on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

And the Clinton gang will use all tools at it’s disposal to forge that relationship, even blackmail.

Gawker reported Tuesday that a Clinton staffer all but blackmailed a reporter by demanding favorable coverage in exchange for information.

Marc Ambinder, a writer for The Atlantic magazine, contacted Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines in July 2009 and asked for an advance copy of a speech Clinton was to deliver at the Council on Foreign Relations, according to the website.

The email exchange was obtained by Gawker through the Freedom of Information Act.

Reines sent Ambinder this reply: “On two conditions.”

This is where one might expect journalistic integrity to kick in and for Ambinder to flatly reject the preconditions — except he didn’t.

After the writer agreed to the demand, Reines then sent his two conditions, plus one:

1) You in your own voice describe them [Clinton’s remarks] as ‘muscular’ 2) You note that a look at the CFR seating plan shows that all the envoys — from Holbrooke to Mitchell to Ross — will be arrayed in front of her, which in your own clever way you can say [is] certainly not a coincidence and meant to convey something 3) You don’t say you were blackmailed!”

“Got it,” Ambinder dutifully replied, letting Reines know that he was on board. And the reporter posted a piece later that day that delivered on the precise instructions he was given, Gawker reported.

In another email exchange Gawker highlighted, it showed Reines instructing the then-ABC News reporter Dana Hughes to “add a line taking a small poke at ‘BuzzFeed and others’ for getting this wrong” in a story about an alleged bee attack on Clinton in Malawi.

Reines told Hughes he would be “very appreciative” for the favor.