In mid-April 2019, a dated story from the Daily Caller website began circulating on social media for unclear reasons. The story, originally published on 24 October 2016, bore the headline, "LEAKED: Obama Team Kept List of Muslims For Top Jobs, Excluded Non-Muslims."
The story is based on the contents of a stolen email leaked by document-dumping platform WikiLeaks. It was part of a now-infamous trove of Democratic National Committee (DNC) messages that were hacked and spilled online in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. The Daily Caller in 2016 reported:
The newest batch of John Podesta’s hacked emails released by Wikileaks shows Obama’s transition team kept lists of Muslim and Asian candidates for jobs in the administration.
According to an email chain from 2008, John Podesta received lists of exclusively Muslims and Asians to be considered for jobs in the Obama administration. The email chain revealed that in this process, Middle Eastern Christians were purposefully excluded, or set aside in a separate list, with an aide writing,
"In the candidates for top jobs, I excluded those with some Arab American background but who are not Muslim (e.g., George Mitchell). Many Lebanese Americans, for example, are Christian. In the last list (of outside boards/commissions), most who are listed appear to be Muslim American, except that a handful (where noted) may be Arab American but of uncertain religion (esp. Christian)."
It is both true and unsurprising that per the leaked email, dated 17 October 2008, non-Muslims were excluded from a list of potential Muslim candidates to be considered for Obama administration posts. What the Daily Caller story failed to elucidate is whether lists of candidates from other demographic groups were compiled to promote general diversity in the Obama administration's ranks. Because agency heads during Obama's presidency came from various backgrounds, it's safe to say non-Muslims were not "excluded" from consideration for top posts.
Many took to social media in spring of 2019 to suggest that the information was both new, and that the effort to hire Muslim people to administration cabinet positions was somehow nefarious.
