US Democrats scramble to contain scandal

US Democrats scrambled Sunday to contain damaging revelations of an insider effort to hobble Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign, with the party boss abruptly announcing her resignation on the eve of the convention to officially nominate Hillary Clinton.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz said she would step down at the end of the convention, a move that aimed to put an end to the scandal threatening an uneasy truce within the fractured party.

Thousands of Democratic delegates were converging on Philadelphia, the "City of Brotherly Love," to elevate Clinton as the party's nominee who will battle Republican Donald Trump in the November election.

After a hard-fought primary campaign, the party had been heading to the Democratic National Convention seeming far more unified than the Republicans, whose fissures were laid bare last week as they confirmed brash billionaire Trump as their flagbearer.

Now the Democrats are struggling with the fallout from a scandal that threatened to mushroom into a major crisis just as the party was supposed to coalesce around its nominee.

A cache of leaked emails from Democratic Party leaders' accounts includes at least two messages suggesting an insider effort to wound the upstart Sanders campaign that had competed with Clinton - including by seeking to present him as an atheist in deeply religious states.

Bowing to rapidly building pressure, Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee's embattled chair, announced Sunday she was stepping down at the end of the convention.

In a statement, Wasserman Schultz described Clinton as "a friend I have always believed in and know will be a great president."

Her announcement came after Sanders on Sunday repeated calls for her to go, with her leadership already under fire and impartiality called into question by the leaks.

Shortly after she resigned, Sanders said in a statement that Wasserman Schultz "has made the right decision for the future of the Democratic Party."

He called for new leadership that would "always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race."

Wasserman Schultz said she would still open and close the convention.

Despite the swirling political chaos, Sanders made clear he would not make an insurgent bid for the nomination.

"We've got to elect secretary Clinton," he told NBC's "Meet the Press."

More emails are expected to be released in coming days, and in an ominous sign for the party, DNC interim chair Donna Brazile indicated the drama was not yet over.

"I don't know the substance but I do know there are lots of stuff that we might have to apologize for and that's why I say you got to own it, take full responsibility and work with the staff to create a different culture at the DNC," she told CNN.

Brazile said there are likely "many thousands" of leaked emails still to come.

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