WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton said “the most important factor” in her loss of the 2016 presidential election was former FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress a week before the vote about new information found in the investigation of her use of a private email server.
“The determining factor was the intervention by Comey on Oct 28,” the former secretary of state told NBC Wednesday in what was billed as her first live TV interview since the election. “It stopped my momentum. It drove voters from me.”
“I was just dumbfounded. I thought, what was he doing?” said Mrs Clinton, who is promoting “What Happened,” her memoir of the campaign that went on sale this week. “He went way beyond his role in doing what he did.”
Mrs Clinton also said that Mr Comey, who President Donald Trump has said he fired while thinking about the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russian meddling in the election, was terminated for the wrong reason.
“He should have been disciplined for the way he behaved on the email investigation,” she said, declining to say whether Mr Comey should have been fired.
Mrs Clinton said she took responsibility for her loss to Mr Trump. But she also blamed Russian interference, negative news coverage and misogyny. In the end, it was Mr Comey’s intervention that cost her the election, she said.
“Absent that, I believe and I think the evidence shows, I would’ve won,” she said. “Were there headwinds? Yes. Were there lots of other issues and this whole interference by Russia is still an issue. Absolutely. But the role that he played historically was determinative.”
WATCH: “He was fired for the wrong reason. He should not have been fired for Russia.” @hillaryclinton on Comey pic.twitter.com/ekFDQfKHzM
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) September 13, 2017
(Video Twitter/@TODAYshow)
The White House has slammed the book, with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders describing it as “sad”.
“I think it’s sad that after Hillary Clinton ran one of the most negative campaigns in history and lost, and the last chapter of her public life is going to be now defined by propping up book sales with false and reckless attacks,” Mrs Sanders told reporters on Tuesday.