Hellary Clinton blames Comey, WikiLeaks for election loss to Trump
Hillary Clinton on Tuesday said she took “absolute personal responsibility” for her losing presidential campaign — but went on to blame FBI Director James Comey and Russian interference for aiding Republican rival Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency.
Clinton specifically cited the letter from Comey late in the campaign saying agents were looking into possible new information related to Clinton’s secret, homebrewed computer server. She was ultimately never charged with a crime, and Comey cleared Clinton on the Sunday before the election.
She also mentioned WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy website which some analysts believe to be connected to Russia and which posted the hacked emails of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta.
“I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but were scared off,” Clinton said at the Women for Women International Conference.
She added: “If the election were on October 27, I’d be your president.”
But those presidential aspirations seem to be a thing of the past for Clinton, who said, however, that she wasn’t getting out of politics entirely.
“I’m now back to being an activist citizen, and part of the resistance,” she said.
Clinton said she was writing a book about her experience as the 2016 Democratic nominee.
“It is a painful process reliving the campaign,” she said.
Clinton, the first female presidential candidate of a major party, said her election “would have been a really big deal.”
“There were important messages that could have sent,” Clinton said.
Taking a hit at Trump, Clinton said the president should worry less about the election “and my winning the popular vote.”
Moderator Christiane Amanpour at one point asked Clinton if she was a victim of misogyny, to which she replied, “Yes I do think it played a role. And I think as we learn more and more about unprecedented foreign interference from a foreign leader who is not in my fan club.”
