Since then, the mainstream media have created a climate of hysteria in which this unsubstantiated theory has been conjured into accepted truth. Thus was laid the cornerstone of the Trump-Russia-collusion conspiracy theory. Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton's public relations chief, said in a Washington Post essay in March that she worked assiduously during the Democratic nominating convention to "get the press to focus on … the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary." Clearly, the Clinton campaign needed to lessen the political damage. Much to the embarrassment of Hillary Clinton, the released files showed that the DNC had secretly collaborated with her campaign to promote her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination over that of Bernie Sanders. He then posted online DNC computer files that contained metadata that indicated Russian involvement in the hack. The next day, a self-described Romanian hacker, Guccifer 2.0, claimed he was a WikiLeaks source and had hacked the DNC's server. Two days later, CrowdStrike, a computer security company working for the Democratic National Committee, announced that it had detected Russian malware on the DNC's computer server. On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks announced that it would soon release stolen computer files that pertained to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.