CHICAGO, IL - JUNE 13: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks to guests at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) on June 13, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. The CGI was established in 2005 by former President Bill Clinton with the intention of convening world leaders to address pressing global issues. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) | AP 
 
 CNN issued a statement Monday afternoon about the Republican National Committee's threat to block it from the 2016 debate process unless it canceled a planned film about Hillary Clinton. 
 
 RNC chair Reince Priebus vowed to ban both CNN and NBC News, whose sister division is making a mini-series about Clinton, if they went ahead with the projects. Priebus said the programs were akin to an "in-kind donation" for the Democrats. 
 
 In its statement, CNN predictably did not immediately agree to drop its documentary. Instead, it issued a challenge to the RNC, saying it should "reserve judgment" about the documentary and should avoid doing voters a "disservice" by limiting the debates: 

 NBC News said Monday that it is not involved in NBC's mini-series about Hillary Clinton. 
 
 NBC News communication director Erika Masonhall tweeted, 
 
 
 
 Stmt from @NBCNews re RNC/Clinton: "NBC News is completely independent of NBC Entertainment and has no involvement in this project." -- Erika Masonhall (@ErikaMasonhall) August 5, 2013 
 
 The statement came after RNC chairman Reince Priebus threatened to boycott NBC News and CNN during the 2016 debate season because of their planned productions about Hillary Clinton. NBC recently ordered a miniseries starring Diane Lane as the former secretary of state. 
 
 Priebus penned two letters to CNN's Jeff Zucker and NBC's Robert Greenblatt, accusing their networks of giving Clinton preferential treatment over other Democratic candidates. He also accused NBC of damaging its credibility through MSNBC and complained that employees at Comcast, NBC's parent company, have donated money to Clinton and the Democratic party. 
 
 Related on HuffPost:
– Reince Priebus may have had visions of killing two projects about Hillary Clinton at CNN and NBC, but it doesn't look like the threats by the head of the Republican National Committee are working. Both networks are still moving ahead with the projects, despite Preibus's warning that the GOP will blackball them in the next round of presidential debates. (Priebus thinks the Clinton programs—a miniseries in the case of NBC and a documentary in the case of CNN—will amount to free ads for Democrats.) The Huffington Post rounds up their responses: CNN: "Instead of making premature decisions about a project that is in the very early stages of development and months from completion, we would encourage the members of the Republican National Committee to reserve judgment until they know more." Keeping CNN out of the debates would be "curious, as limiting their debate participation seems to be the ultimate disservice to voters." Full post here. NBC: An exec from the network's news division tweets, "NBC News is completely independent of NBC Entertainment and has no involvement in this project." Full post here.