Says the cyber attacks were a result of 'personal beef' between her and Russian President Vladimir Putin
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton
Washington: Defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has blamed her presidential election loss on the "unprecedented" events of Russian cyber hacking and the FBI's probe into her use of her personal email server.
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The cyber attacks — which US intelligence believe were approved by Vladimir Putin — were the result of a "personal beef" the Russian leader had with her, Hillary told the gathering of fundraisers, who had given a total of about $1 billion to her campaign.
She attributed the Russian president's vendetta to her harsh criticism of the country's 2011 parliamentary elections, which she called "so flawed, so illegitimate that it was embarrassing," CBS News reported.
"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," she said, according to audio obtained by the New York Times.
Hillary said the cyber hacks were "not just an attack against me and my campaign".
"This is an attack against our country," Hillary said. Hillary also attributed her defeat in battleground states to the 11th-hour letter sent by FBI Director James Comey to lawmakers, where he once again raised the spectre of finding more emails from her private server, months after the agency concluded its investigation, just days before the election.