Hillary Clinton, in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, said James Comey permanently changed history by getting involved in the 2016 election, effectively claiming that the former FBI director’s actions led to her loss to Donald Trump.
Clinton gave a wide-ranging and at times personal interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper — set to air in full Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m. during “Anderson Cooper 360.”
The former secretary of state said she couldn’t understand why Comey stepped into the election to discuss the investigation into her emails but did not disclose an FBI investigation into Trump’s campaign and Russian meddling.
“He, I think, forever changed history,” Clinton said bluntly of Comey, echoing the sentiment of her new memoir, “What Happened” and leaving the door open to the possibility that the former FBI director harbored an animus towards her.
The former Democratic nominee blames the fired FBI director — who she describes as “rash” in her book — for mishandling the investigation into her use of a private email server.
“I think it is important to focus on what happened because lessons can be learned,” she said. “What is important is the fact that the Russians are still going at us. He himself admitted that before Congress.”
Clinton, speaking hypothetically, said if she had won the presidency under similar circumstances to Trump, she would have “said on the first day in office, ‘We’re going to launch the most thorough investigation.’ ”
“No nation, particularly an adversarial nation can mess with our democracy,” she said. “I would have had an independent commission. I would have done everything I could to get to the bottom of it because it’s not going to stop. That’s what I’m worried about.”
