Clinton: Putin has a personal beef against me

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has said the alleged Russian interference in the recent US election was motivated by a personal vendetta on the part of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who “has a personal beef against me.”

The FBI said Friday it supported the CIA’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the presidential election with the goal of supporting Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Clinton, in a meeting with campaign donors in New York, said the Russian leader had harbored a grudge against her since she said in 2011 that parliamentary elections in Moscow had been rigged.

“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,” she said, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times. “We are well beyond normal political concerns here. This is about the integrity of our democracy and the security of our nation.”

Clinton added that a letter to congress by FBI Director James Comey days before the November 8 election, in which he said the bureau was once again examining her email use, had also contributed to her loss.

“Swing-state voters made their decisions in the final days breaking against me because of the FBI letter from Director Comey,” she said.

President Barack Obama promised that the US will retaliate against Russia for its suspected meddling in America’s election process, an accusation the Kremlin has vehemently denied.

As the White House grew more bullish about suggesting Putin was personally involved, Obama said he’d spoken directly to Putin about his concerns about Russian meddling. He said whenever a foreign government tries to interfere in US elections, the nation must take action “and we will at a time and place of our own choosing.”

 

White House officials said it was “fact” that Russian hacking helped Trump’s campaign against Clinton. White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Thursday also assailed Trump himself over his refusal to acknowledge the hacking and his attacks on the US intelligence community.

The tough talk from the White House fell flat in Moscow, where Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the accusations baseless and inappropriate.

“They should either stop talking about that, or produce some proof at last,” Peskov told reporters Friday. “Otherwise it all begins to look unseemly.”

There has been no specific, persuasive evidence shared publicly about the extent of Putin’s role or knowledge of the hackings. That lack of proof undercuts Democrats’ strategy to portray Putin’s involvement as irrefutable evidence of a directed Russian government plot to undermine America’s democratic system.

But the White House pointed to a US intelligence assessment released publicly in October that asserted “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.” And Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, connected the dots further, saying Thursday Putin was responsible for the Russian government’s actions.

“I don’t think things happen in the Russian government of this consequence without Vladimir Putin knowing about it,” he told MSNBC.

Trump has been under increasing pressure from both parties to acknowledge Russia’s actions, despite his insistence that he doesn’t believe Moscow was meddling. Trump has rejected the CIA’s assessment that Russia’s aim was to help him win and argued on Twitter that “these are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”