Hillary Clinton blamed FBI director James Comey for her stunning defeat in Tuesday’s presidential election in a conference call with her top campaign funders on Saturday, according to two participants who were on the call.
Mrs Clinton
was projected by nearly every national public opinion poll as the heavy
favorite going into Tuesday‘s race. Instead, Republican Donald Trump won the election, shocking many throughout the nation and prompting widespread protests.
Mrs Clinton has kept a low profile since her defeat after delivering her concession speech on Wednesday morning.
Mrs
Clinton told her supporters on Saturday that her team had drafted a
memo that looked at the changing opinion polls leading up to the
election and that the letter from Mr Comey proved to be a turning point.
She said Mr Comey’s decision to go public with
the renewed examination of her email server had caused an erosion of
support in the upper Midwest, according to three people familiar with
the call.
Mrs Clinton lost in Wisconsin,
the first time since 1984 that the state favored the Republican
candidate in a presidential election. Although the final result in Michigan has still not been tallied, it is leaning Republican, in a state that last favored the Republican nominee in 1988.
Mr Comey sent a letter to Congress
only days before the election announcing that he was reinstating an
investigation into whether Mrs Clinton mishandled classified information
when she used a private email server while secretary of state from 2009
to 2012.
Mr Comey announced a week later that he
had reviewed emails and continued to believe she should not be
prosecuted, but the political damage was already done.
Mrs
Clinton told donors that Mr Trump was able to seize on both of Mr
Comey’s announcements and use them to attack her, according to two
participants on the call.
While the second letter
cleared her of wrongdoing, Mrs Clinton said that it reinforced to Mr
Trump’s supporters that the system was rigged in her favour and
motivated them to mobilise on Election Day.
The
memo prepared by Mrs Clinton’s campaign, a copy of which was seen by
Reuters, said voters who decided which candidate to support in the last
week were more likely to support Mr Trump than Mrs Clinton.
“In the end, late breaking developments in the race proved one hurdle too many for us to overcome,” the memo concludes.
A spokesperson for the FBI could not immediately be reached for comment.
On
the phone call, Dennis Chang, who served as Mrs Clinton’s finance
chair, said her campaign and the national party had raised more than
$900 million from more than 3 million individual donors, according to
the two participants who spoke to Reuters.
As
Mrs Clinton gave her account to donors, Mr Trump hunkered down at Trump
Tower with members of the transition team announced on Friday and tasked
with selecting the 15 Cabinet posts and thousands of political
appointment jobs.
Kellyanne Conway, who served as
his campaign manager, said on Saturday that the an announcement of a
new chief of staff is “imminent.”
Two candidates
whose names have surfaced as contenders for the top White House job are
campaign CEO Steve Bannon and Republican National Committee Chairman
Reince Priebus.
Mr Trump will deliver a speech
about his plans moving forward in the coming days and may undertake a
national victory tour, Ms Conway said, without providing further
details.
He will be sworn in on January 20th.
The president-elect plans to keep his communication channels open. In
an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that will air on Sunday, Mr Trump
said he isn’t ready to give up his Twitter account, where he routinely
posted controversial statements during the campaign that unleashed harsh
criticism.
“I’m going to be very restrained, if I use it at all, I’m going to be very restrained,” Mr Trump said.
Reuters
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