Hillary: ‘I Was on the Way to Winning,’ Until Comey Letter and WikiLeaks ‘Scared Off’ Voters

During an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton stated, “I was on the way to winning, until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28th, and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me, but got scared off.”

Amanpour asked Clinton, “Do you take any personal responsibility?

Clinton answered, “Oh, of course. I take absolute personal responsibility. I was the candidate. I was the person who was on the ballot, and I am very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we had.”

She added, “I was on the way to winning, until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28th, 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, persuasive. And so, we overcame a lot in the campaign. We overcame an enormous barrage of negativity, of false equivalency, and so much else, but, as Nate Silver, who doesn’t work for me, he’s an independent analyst, but one considered to be very reliable, has concluded if the election had been on October 27th, I’d be your president, and it wasn’t. … And ask yourself this, within an hour or two of the [‘Access Hollywood’] tape being made public, the Russian theft of John Podesta’s emails hit WikiLeaks. What a coincidence.”

Hillary concluded, “So, did we make mistakes? Of course we did. Did I make mistakes? Oh my gosh, yes. … But the reason why I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last ten days. And I think you can see, I was leading in the early vote. I had a very strong — and not just our polling and data analysis, but a very strong assessment going on across the country about where I was, in terms of the necessary — both votes and electoral votes.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett