Brazile denies Democratic primary was rigged

Former Democratic National Committee (DNC) interim chairwoman Donna Brazile said she found “no evidence” that the 2016 Democratic presidential primary process was fixed, taking issue with the use of the word “rigged” by others.

“I found no evidence, none, whatsoever,” Brazile told ABC’s “This Week.”

“The only thing I found, which I said, I found the cancer, but I’m not killing the patient, was this memorandum that prevented the DNC from running its own operation,” she said. 

{mosads}The remarks from Brazile follow last week’s release of an explosive excerpt from her upcoming book, where Brazile described a memo she discovered between Clinton’s presidential campaign, the DNC and Clinton’s joint fundraising committee Hillary for America (HFA) that said the campaign would “control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised.”

“The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical,” Brazile wrote in the excerpt.

“If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity,” she wrote.

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The revelations from Brazile caused both Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), a former vice chairwoman of the DNC, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to say the Democratic primary process was rigged in favor of Clinton.

“I don’t think she meant the word ‘rigged,’ ” Brazile said Sunday of Warren.

In the excerpt published in Politico, Brazile said she was tasked with searching for proof that Clinton’s team had fixed the nomination process in her favor.

“By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart,” Brazile wrote, referring to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who ran an ultimately unsuccessful bid against Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

She wrote in the book that she “lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music” before calling Sanders to tell him the news in what she “knew would be an emotional phone call.”

But in the interview, Brazile said she told Sanders she found “no evidence” that the primary was fixed against him.

Former staffers on Clinton’s campaign have pushed back on Brazile’s account, saying they “do not recognize the campaign she portrays in the book.”