Hillary Clinton has blamed FBI director James Comey and Russian interference for her defeat in the last year’s Presidential elections, saying they “scared off” voters and deprived her of an otherwise expected victory.
The former Democratic Presidential nominee, speaking during a charity luncheon, said she takes “personal responsibility” for her loss to Donald Trump in the Presidential race.
In her most detailed comments about her defeat since the shock result last year, Clinton blamed Russian interference in the US election and the release of a letter by Comey pertaining to the investigation into her emails just before the polls, saying such factors deprived her of an otherwise expected victory.
“If the election had been on October 27th, I’d be your President. And it wasn’t, it was on October 28th and there was just a lot of funny business going on around that,” Clinton told CNN in an interview at Women for Women International Forum in New York.
“It wasn’t a perfect campaign. There is no such thing. But I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28th and Russian Wikileaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me, but got scared off,” she said.
“The evidence for that intervening event is, compelling, persuasive,” she said.
Clinton, 69, highlighted Russia’s role in hacking into her campaign’s internal emails and subsequently coordinating their release on Wikileaks.
“Ask yourself this, within an hour or two of the Hollywood Access tape being made public, the Russian theft of John Podesta’s emails hit Wikileaks. What a coincidence. So I mean you just can’t make this stuff up,” Clinton said.
“He (Russian President Vladimir Putin) certainly interfered in our election,” Clinton said. “And it’s clear he interfered to hurt me and help my opponent.”
Asked whether she was a victim of misogyny, she said, “Yes, I do think it played a role. Misogyny is very much a part of the landscape politically, socially and economically.”
Hours later, Trump attacked Clinton on Twitter, saying she used the “phony” Russian hacking story as a justification for her loss in the November 8 presidential elections.