Clinton blames FBI’s Comey & ‘Russian WikiLeaks’ for scaring off supporters
Hillary Clinton emerged from her relatively low profile since losing to President Donald Trump to claim she would have won the election were it not for FBI Director James Comey and “Russian WikiLeaks” creating doubt in her supporters’ minds.
Speaking at a Women on Women luncheon Tuesday, Clinton accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of interfering in the election and claimed, "If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president."
Clinton was asked whether she took any personal responsibility for her loss.
“I take absolute personal responsibility,” she said. “I was the candidate, I was the person who was on the ballot, and I am very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we had."
“It wasn’t a perfect campaign, there is no such thing,” she continued. “But 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 got scared off.”
Clinton was also asked whether misogyny played a role in her defeat, and why she thought she lost the majority of the white female vote. She responded by saying her book was coming out, and that “everyday we are learn more about some of the unprecedented interference, including from a foreign power whose leader is not a member of my fan club.”
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked Clinton about reports that Putin “hated” her.
“Well, he certainly interfered in our elections,” Clinton responded, “And it’s clear that he did that to hurt me and my opponent, and if you chart my opponent and his campaign’s statements, they quite coordinated with the goals that that leader who shall remain nameless had.”
“Ask yourself this,” she continued, “Within an hour or two of the Access Hollywood tapes being made public, the Russian theft of John Podesta’s emails hit WikiLeaks. What a coincidence.”
The Access Hollywood tapes of Trump lewdly boasting of sexual encounters with women to the host at the time, Billy Bush, were published by the Washington Post on October 7. Within an hour, WikiLeaks had tweeted about the Podesta emails.
However, WikiLeaks had previously promised it would release information about the election. In an October 4 press conference, Julian Assange was expected to announce WikiLeaks’ “October surprise,” but said it would release weekly document dumps for the following 10 weeks, with the first one to be published that week.
"The reason I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days," Clinton said.
