Clinton blames FBI director for defeat

(Image credit: Getty Images)

last updated 13 November 2016

In a call with donors Saturday, Hillary Clinton blamed her loss on FBI Director James Comey, who sent a letter to Congress 11 days before the election reopening his agency's investigation into her use of a private email server while secretary of state based on the discovery of new emails.

"There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful," Clinton said, and "our analysis is that Comey's letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum."

Worse than the initial letter, Clinton said, was the second letter Comey sent two days before the election saying no new evidence justifying prosecution had been found, news she argued undecided voters interpreted as evidence for Donald Trump's allegations of a rigged system. In the run-up to the election, conventional wisdom suggested the second letter — if it arrived in time — would be to Clinton's advantage, not her detriment.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.