Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said on Monday that the Russian government succeeded in its attempt to interfere with the U.S. election.
“It’s helpful to have it out there that even the CIA has resolved that it was not just an effort to interfere in our election but to assist Donald Trump to become president. It’s soul-crushing because it’s a little late to be learning,” Palmieri told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow in her first TV interview since Nov. 8.
“I think that – yes. I mean, I think they certainly succeeded in interfering,” Palmieri said, adding that it was “hard to know” if Russia was the reason Trump won the election.
Maddow asked Palmieri if she believed FBI Director James Comey had been “trying to skew the vote toward Trump” by announcing 10 days before the election it was continuing an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.
“I don’t personally want to believe that and I don’t personally – I do not believe that. But it had that impact. I understand that it’s possible. I think that he was probably most likely just trying to cover himself with Republicans on Capitol Hill who had been giving him a lot of pressure if, you know, it – if after the election he was in a position of having to disclose more,” Palmieri said. “But it was, you know, unprecedented, irresponsible and it had – regardless of what his intentions were, had a devastating impact.”
The Clinton strategist also admitted her team failed to refocus the national conversation about the content of leaked emails from Democratic officials to how Russia was trying to fix the election because of a scandal involving President-elect Trump that broke the day of their PR blitz.
“During the month of October, the Clinton campaign tried a lot to get more attention paid, particularly during what we were dealing with WikiLeaks and John Podesta’s emails being released and tried to get more focus that the fact this was happening,” Palmieri told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.
“On October 7th, the director of national intelligence put out a statement saying Russia is interfering in our election. These hacks were done by the Russians and the likes are being done at the direction of the Russians. You know what else happened on October 7th? The ‘Access Hollywood’ tape.”
