Hillary Clinton: Putin Targeted My Presidential Run Because "He Has A Personal Beef With Me"

Speaking to a group of donors in New York City yesterday, Hillary Clinton acknowledged the effect Russian cyber-hacking had on her campaign saying Russian President Putin targeted her “because he has a personal beef against me.”

Via the New York Times:

“Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election,” Mrs. Clinton said.

It is the first time Mrs. Clinton has publicly addressed the impact of the hacks since the intelligence community concluded that they were specifically aimed at harming her campaign.

“Make no mistake, as the press is finally catching up to the facts, which we desperately tried to present to them during the last months of the campaign,” Mrs. Clinton told the group, which collectively poured roughly $1 billion into her effort. “This is not just an attack on me and my campaign, although that may have added fuel to it. This is an attack against our country. We are well beyond normal political concerns here. This is about the integrity of our democracy and the security of our nation.”

In her remarks, she endorsed the proposal of a bipartisan group of senators to investigate the hacking and said the inquiry should be modeled on the commission set up after the Sept. 11 attacks. “The public deserves to know exactly what happened, and why, in order for us to prevent future attacks on our systems, including our electoral system,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton said the hacking was one of two “unprecedented” events that led to her defeat. The other was the release of a letter by James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, shortly before the election disclosing new questions about emails handled by her private server. The letter, she said, cost her close races in several battleground states.

“Swing-state voters made their decisions in the final days breaking against me because of the F.B.I. letter from Director Comey,” she said.

I agree with Hillary 100% on the two "events." While the trickle-out of the DNC email hacking had a slow burn effect, Comey's letter at the end was like a surgical coup de grâce which sliced off just the right degree of swing voters at the end of the race.

Clinton says FBI's 2 letters in election's last days had big impact; data shows they drove more scandal coverage of her than any other time: pic.twitter.com/vbTCTOf0Zh

— Ari Melber (@AriMelber) December 16, 2016