Hillary Clinton says she is ‘convinced’ Donald Trump’s campaign team colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.
In an interview with USA Today, Clinton said she believed Trump’s team communicated with the Russian government and had ‘an understanding of some sort.’
‘I’m convinced of it,’ Clinton said when asked directly if she thought there was collusion by Trump associates.
Hillary Clinton said she is ‘convinced’ Donald Trump’s campaign team colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election
‘I happen to believe in the rule of law and believe in evidence, so I’m not going to go off and make all kinds of outrageous claims. But if you look at what we’ve learned since (the election), it’s pretty troubling.’
She has been opening up about her campaign trail experiences and her loss to Trump ahead of the release of her new memoir What Happened.
‘There certainly was communication and there certainly was an understanding of some sort,’ the Democratic presidential candidate said in the interview.
‘Because there’s no doubt in my mind that Putin wanted me to lose and wanted Trump to win. And there’s no doubt in my mind that there are a tangle of financial relationships between Trump and his operation with Russian money.
Clinton said she believed Trump’s team communicated with the Russian government and had ‘an understanding of some sort.’
Clinton said there was no doubt that Valdimir Putin wanted her to lose the election
‘And there’s no doubt in my mind that the Trump campaign and other associates have worked really hard to hide their connections with Russians.’
In the interview, Clinton said she accepted the shortcomings of her campaign but doubled down on blaming some for her loss, including then-FBI director James Comey and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
She writes in her memoir that Comey ‘shivved’ her by releasing a trove of emails just 11 days before the election.
‘My first instinct was that my campaign should hit back hard and explain to the public that Comey had badly overstepped his bounds,’ she said.
New digs: The Democratic hopeful paid $1.6million for the property next door to the home she shared with husband Bill in August 2016 for secret service agents (new property above)
‘My team raised concerns with that kind of confrontational approach. In the end, we decided it would be better to just let it go and try to move on. Looking back, that was a mistake.’
Clinton wrote the majority of her memoir in the property next door to her home, which she bought for $1.6million prior to the election so her Secret Service agents would have somewhere to stay when she became President.
The Democratic hopeful had told Jane Pauley during an appearance on CBS Sunday Morning over the weekend that she plunked down the money to purchase her neighbor’s home back in August 2016 to make the transition easier come that November.
‘I know something about what it takes to move a president and I thought I was going to win,’ Hillary said.
Hillary said that she still very much enjoys her second home, despite losing the election just three months after she bought the property.