Clinton blames Russia, FBI chief for her election loss

Hillary Clinton emerged from political hibernation on Tuesday by declaring herself "part of the resistance" to Donald Trump's presidency — and spreading blame for why it is not her sitting in the Oval Office.

Making a rare public appearance, Clinton attributed her surprise loss in the 2016 election to interference by Russian hackers and the actions of FBI Director James B Comey in the campaign's homestretch.

"If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president," Clinton told moderator Christiane Amanpour, the CNN anchor, at a Women for Women International event in New York.

Clinton stated broadly that she takes "absolute personal responsibility" for her failure to win the White House. Yet the Democratic nominee declined to fault her strategy or message, nor did she acknowledge her own weak¬nesses as a campaigner or the struggles by her and her advisers to at first comprehend and then respond to the angry mood of broad swaths of the electorate.

Instead, Clinton attributed her defeat to a range of external ¬forces, including saying she was a victim of misogyny and of "false equivalency" in the news media.

Clinton said she was confident that she was on track to winning the election until two things reversed her momentum: the release of campaign chairman John Podesta's emails, which were allegedly stolen by Russian hackers, and Comey's Oct. 28 letter to Congress that he had reopened the bureau's investigation into her use of a private email server.

"I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey's letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off — and the evidence for that intervening event is, I think, compelling [and] persuasive," Clinton said.

On Nov. 6, two days before the election, Comey wrote again to Congress saying that the FBI had found no new evidence to change its conclusion that Clinton should not face criminal charges.

Clinton talked about "the unprecedented interference, including from a foreign power whose leader is not a member of my fan club" — referring to Russian President Vladi¬mir Putin, with whom she tangled as secretary of state. In a pair of tweets on Tuesday evening, Trump responded to Clinton's claim that Comey's statements had a role in her defeat, writing that the FBI director "was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!"

"The phony … Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election," the president wrote, before posing a rhetorical question: "Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?" When Amanpour asked whether Clinton thought misogyny contributed to her loss as the first female presidential nominee, Clinton said, "Yes, I do think it played a role." She added that sexism "is very much a part of the landscape politically and socially and economically."