Top Clinton aide blames loss on Comey letter

The former communications director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign argued that a letter from FBI Director James Comey was the main reason for the Democratic nominee’s loss last month.

Jennifer Palmieri acknowledged that the campaign could have spent more time in the Rust Belt states that President-elect Donald Trump surprisingly carried. She said in nearly all of the battleground states, Clinton performed anywhere from 2 points to 5 points lower than the campaign predicted. 

Palmieri said that while some of Green Party nominee Jill Stein’s votes in Wisconsin and other states could have helped them win, it was Comey’s letter to lawmakers in October about the discovery of new emails possibly related to the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server that ultimately doomed Clinton’s campaign. 

{mosads}“If her votes had gone to Clinton, we would have won,” Palmieri told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Monday night. “Maybe our travel schedule had been different, we could have won.”

“What we think accounts for the big dropoff … is the Comey letter,” she continued. “That isn’t to say that there’s not things our campaign could have done better or differently.” 

“There’s a lot more that we could have done, but we had accounted for all our challenges and our problems and we were positioned to win, and I think that Comey letter was one too many things to absorb.”

Palmieri said the letter had consequences that negatively affected her boss. 

“It was unprecedented, irresponsible and … regardless of what his intentions were, it had a devastating impact,” she said.

Comey’s letter came a month before voters headed to the polls and then days before the election, he announced the FBI had not changed its July conclusion to not recommend charges against Clinton.

Palmieri’s defense comes hours after outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) interview on CNN where he blamed Comey for Clinton’s defeat. He has previously accused the FBI director of being a “Republican operative.”