Hillary Clinton tossed around blame for her loss in the 2016 presidential election on Tuesday — topping the list was a certain FBI director who twice launched public investigations into Clinton’s use of a private email server while working as secretary of state.
President Donald Trump didn’t like that.
In a series of late-night tweets Tuesday, Trump said Clinton should be thanking Director James Comey for letting her off the hook.
“FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!” Trump tweeted just before 11 p.m.
FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017
Earlier in the day, Clinton discussed her 2016 election loss with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at a Women for Women International event in New York. Clinton also blamed Russian intervention and the Wikileaks dump of hacked Democratic National Committee emails as ruining her chances for the presidency.
Trump had some choice words for those assertions as well.
“The phony Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign,” he tweeted.
…Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017
Amanpour predicted the Trump tweet storm hours before it happened, warning Clinton the president was likely to respond via Twitter.
“Fine. Better than interfering in foreign affairs,” Clinton said. “If he wants to tweet about me then I am happy to be the diversion because we have a lot of things to worry about.”
As for Comey, he told Congress on Wednesday he was “mildly nauseous” at the notion his decisions to disclose the Clinton email probe might have swayed the 2016 election. Comey, however, stuck by his decision to notify Congress of new emails related to the Clinton email probe less than two weeks before Election Day.
“Concealment, in my view, would have been catastrophic,” he said, noting he knew the decision would be “disastrous for me personally.”
