Hillary Clinton said on Thursday that the hacking attacks carried out by Russia
against her campaign and the Democratic National Committee were
intended “to undermine our democracy” and were ordered by about Vladimir
V. Putin “because he has a personal beef against me.”
Speaking to a group of donors in
Manhattan, Mrs. Clinton said that Mr. Putin, the Russian president, had
never forgiven her for the accusation she made in 2011, when she was
secretary of state, that parliamentary elections his country held that
year were rigged.
“Putin publicly blamed me for the
outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line
between what he said back then and what he did in this election,” Mrs.
Clinton said.
It is the first time Mrs. Clinton has
publicly addressed the impact of the hacks since the intelligence
community concluded that they were specifically aimed at harming her
campaign.
“Make no mistake, as the press is
finally catching up to the facts, which we desperately tried to present
to them during the last months of the campaign,” Mrs. Clinton told the
group, which collectively poured roughly $1 billion into her effort.
“This is not just an attack on me and my campaign, although that may
have added fuel to it. This is an attack against our country. We are
well beyond normal political concerns here. This is about the integrity
of our democracy and the security of our nation.”
In her remarks, she endorsed the
proposal of a bipartisan group of senators to investigate the hacking
and said the inquiry should be modeled on the commission set up after
the Sept. 11 attacks. “The public deserves to know exactly what
happened, and why, in order for us to prevent future attacks on our
systems, including our electoral system,” she said.
Mrs. Clinton said the hacking was one of two “unprecedented” events that led to her defeat. The other was the release of a letter by James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director,
shortly before the election disclosing new questions about emails
handled by her private server. The letter, she said, cost her close
races in several battleground states.
“Swing-state voters made their decisions
in the final days breaking against me because of the letter from
Director Comey,” she said.
Mrs. Clinton first talked about
the impact of Mr. Comey’s letters in a conference call with donors a
few days after the election. Since the election she has kept a low
profile, mostly appearing on social media in photographs by passers-by
who have spotted her walking her dogs near her home in Chappaqua, N.Y.
Russia’s unprecedented intervention in
the United States election came amid more than United States-Russia
tension and Donald J. Trump’s praise of Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian
president. It also coincided with a growing belief, in Moscow, that
Russia faced an imminent threat in Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.
Mrs. Clinton is viewed in Moscow as
innately hostile to Russia. Widely held conspiracy theories portray her
as seeking to foment unrest that will return Russia to the chaos and
depression of the 1990s. Even many government technocrats view her with
suspicion that at times verges on paranoia.
Read full report at The New York Times
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