Clinton staff email attributes her loss to Comey's letters

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published 11 November 2016

In an email sent to Hillary Clinton's senior campaign staff and obtained by Politico, the campaign's head of opinion research Navin Nayak listed what he believes went wrong for Clinton's presidential bid — and a lot of the blame is being pinned on FBI Director James Comey.

"We believe that we lost this election in the last week," Nayak wrote in an email sent Thursday night. "Comey's letter in the last 11 days of the election both helped depress our turnout and also drove away some of our critical support among college-educated white voters — particularly in the suburbs. We also think Comey's second letter, which was intended to absolve Sec. Clinton, actually helped to bolster Trump's turnout." On Oct. 28, Comey sent a letter to Congress announcing more emails had been discovered that may be pertinent to the FBI's investigation of Clinton's private server; on Nov. 6, the Sunday before Election Day, Comey announced the FBI had reviewed the messages and concluded they offered no new information and would not change the bureau's decision not to charge Clinton with a crime.

While Nayak contended Comey's letters may have been the nail in the coffin, he acknowledged the campaign faced "a series of structural challenges," including "deep-seated anger at institutions," "the inherent desire for change after one party occupies the White House for two terms," the "unprecedented task" of getting the first woman elected president, and "the challenges of reassembling the coalition that elected President Obama twice." Though the campaign devised strategies to overcome those challenges — each of which Nayak outlined in the email — he wrote that the "late-breaking developments in the race proved one hurdle too many for us to overcome."