Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said her defeat in the 8 November election was due to a series of “unprecedented” events – Russian cyberattacks and new FBI accusations about her handling of e-mails containing classified government information.
According to an audio reported on Friday by The New York Times, Clinton, who lost the election to Republican Donald Trump, said her defeat was in part due to Putin's “personal beef against me”.
The former First Lady indicated that Putin knew all about what was going on and personally directed “the covert cyberattacks against our electoral system, against our democracy”.
‘FBI Letter Revived Controversy’
Clinton said the letter from FBI Director James Comey just a week before the election, which revived the controversy over her supposedly improper use of her personal server for classified government communications, was one of the factors that switched the vote against her in key states like Florida, North Carolina, and those in the Midwestern rust belt.
“Swing-state voters made their decisions in the final days breaking against me because of the FBI letter from Director Comey,” Clinton said in the audio obtained by the The New York Times.
‘The Russians Can’t Weaken Us’
Outgoing President Barack Obama, on Friday, said that Clinton wasn’t “treated fairly” during the US polls when asked about the latter losing to Trump due to Russian hacking.
“I think she’s worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people and I don't think she was treated fairly during the election, I think the coverage of her – and the issues – was troubling,” he said.
Obama, on Friday, said that the “most effective way” of ensuring that there would be no tampering with the electoral process was by “confronting him (Putin) directly and telling him to cut it out or there would be some serious consequences”.
“The Russians can’t change us or weaken us. They are a smaller and a weaker country. Their economy doesn’t produce anything,” he further said.
Obama said he has “great confidence” in intelligence reports he has seen shown that Russians hacked into e-mails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and to Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.
(With inputs from ABC News, Reuters and IANS.)
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