In a new interview promoting her campaign tell-all, Hillary Clinton said former President Barack Obama didn’t announced what he knew about Russian meddling in the 2016 election partially because of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Clinton said she is “very understanding” of the position that Obama found himself in when deciding how much to tell the public about the investigation, saying she knew he “struggled” with the decision and found himself “facing some pretty difficult headwinds,” like McConnell’s “unpatriotic” threats.
“Mitch McConnell, in what I think of as a not only unpatriotic but despicable act of partisan politics, made it clear that if the Obama administration spoke publicly about what they knew, he would accuse them of partisan politics, of trying to tip the balance toward me,” she told the New Yorker’s David Remnick. “Even though, as you point out, the President thought I was going to win—thought that all the way up until the night before the election.”
She said the role that McConnell played in that discussion and the role that former FBI Director James Comey played, “in refusing to acknowledge in any way” that there was an investigation made for some high political stakes for the President.
But she still thinks Obama should have said something.
“I would have, in retrospect now, wished that he had said something because I think the American people deserved to know.”
The interview with the New Yorker is just the latest in a string of interviews Clinton has given on the 2016 election as part of a book tour. Her new memoir on the campaign and subsequent defeat is called “What Happened.”
Listen to the full interview below:
