Hillary Clinton says Russia and FBI cost her US election success

Hillary Clinton has said she was on the path to victory in the 2016 US presidential election until late interference by Russian hackers and FBI Director James Comey scared off some potential supporters.


In her most extensive public comments on the 8 November election, Mrs Clinton told a New York conference she was derailed by Mr Comey's 28 October letter informing Congress the FBI had reopened an inquiry of her use of a private email server and by the WikiLeaks release of campaign chairman John Podesta's emails, allegedly stolen by Russian hackers.

"If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president," she told a women's conference moderated by CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

"It wasn't a perfect campaign, but I was on the way to winning until a combination of Comey's letter and Russian WikiLeaks," the Democrat said of the loss to Republican Donald Trump.

"The reason why I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last ten days."

Mrs Clinton, who said she is going through the "painful process" of writing a book dealing in part with the election, also said misogyny played a role in her defeat.

Becoming the first female US president would have been "a really big deal," she said.
  [rte.ie]
3/5/17
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