It began as a relatively quiet day in the presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were each holed up with their aides on Friday, Oct. 7, 2016, preparing for the second presidential debate, scheduled for Sunday night. Hurricane Matthew, which was churning off the Florida coast, led the Friday-morning newscasts.
The Chicago Cubs were beginning a quest for their first World Series title in more than a century. But by midafternoon three separate bombshells, all coming within the span of roughly 90 minutes, threatened to throw the race into chaos.
First, the top intelligence officials of the Obama administration announced their belief that the Russian government was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee earlier in the year. Then the Washington Post published the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which Donald Trump bragged about forcing himself on women. And WikiLeaks dumped its trove of emails from the Clinton campaign, hacked from the account of campaign head John Podesta.
Yahoo News conducted nearly two dozen on-the-record interviews with top officials inside and outside the Clinton and Trump campaigns and the Obama administration, as well as major media figures in Washington, New York and beyond, to produce an exclusive oral history of the wildest 64 hours in modern political history.
The resulting documentary film and online feature present a firsthand account of three pivotal days in the campaign and paint a vivid picture of the behind-the-scenes drama that unfolded inside the Post newsroom, Trump Tower, Clinton campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, Clinton’s Westchester County, N.Y., hotel, and the debate site in St. Louis.
A leader of the conservative group Turning Point Action resigned from the organization Thursday and dropped...
