On the September 18 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh baselessly claimed that “Obama thugs” hacked into Gov. Sarah Palin's private email account. Limbaugh said: “Obama, folks, is showing who he really is. A community organizer, the street agitator, the Chicago thug, clear the playing field, is finally being -- it's on display for everybody to see. Sarah Palin's emails, personal emails, have been hacked, no doubt by Obama thugs. They dropped 30 people up there in Alaska trying to dig up dirt on her. Now they got some thugs that found her personal email address.”

Limbaugh offered no evidence for his claim that “Obama thugs” hacked into the email account. The Washington Post reported on September 18 that a “group of computer hackers said yesterday that they had accessed a Yahoo e-mail account of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin” and “posted what they said were personal photos, the contents of several messages, the subject lines of dozens of e-mails and Palin's e-mail contact list on a site called Wikileaks.org. That site said it received the electronic files from a group identifying itself only as 'Anonymous.' ”

Additionally, the Obama campaign has reportedly denied that it “dropped 30 people up there in Alaska” to investigate Palin. As Media Matters for America documented, in his September 9 column, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund wrote that “Democrats have airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers into Anchorage, the state capital Juneau and Mrs. Palin's hometown of Wasilla to dig into her record and background.” But, as Media Matters noted, the Democratic National Committee has reportedly called Fund's assertion a “flat-out absolute fabrication” and Fund's claim has also reportedly been “flatly denied by Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor, and unconfirmed elsewhere.”

From the September 18 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: And then of course, Obama, folks, is showing who he really is. A community organizer, the street agitator, the Chicago thug, clear the playing field, is finally being -- it's on display for everybody to see. Sarah Palin's emails, personal emails, have been hacked, no doubt by Obama thugs. They dropped 30 people up there in Alaska trying to dig up dirt on her. Now they got some thugs that found her personal email address. And the reaction to this is stunning. The drive-bys are not upset about this at all. In fact, ABC -- get this headline: “Palin's email habits echo worst practices of Bush administration, expert says.” So we have the vice-presidential candidate on the Republican ticket's personal email is hacked. They post screenshots on the Internet of her personal emails. She's now being criticized for using a personal account to conduct state business. This is why, by the way, presidents and vice presidents do not use email, be it personal or business. And now we've got people coming around saying that “Oh, she just -- she's irresponsible here in the way she” -- as though the hackers have uncovered some fraud on her part. Do we live in a sick era or what?