It was late February 2015, and Hillary Clinton’s aides were busy planning the details of her upcoming entry into the presidential race.
Between recruiting staffers for the nascent campaign and preparing a roadmap for the first few weeks of her early-state bus tour, Clinton’s team seemingly dismissed an inquiry from the New York Times about her private email server. On March 1, 2015, the Times broke news of her personal email use.
The next day, campaign chairman John Podesta privately admitted to Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, that he had been blindsided by the revelation.
“Did you have any idea of the depth of this story?” Podesta asked.
It’s a question that would find no answer in the 20 months that followed, as Clinton fought off twists and turns in the email controversy until the campaign’s bitter end.
Ultimately, the scandal may have cost Clinton the presidency.
Her surprising defeat Tuesday at the hands of a Republican nominee whose deep unpopularity rivaled her own came after months of intrigue over the Clinton Foundation, the FBI investigations of her inner circle, and a steady stream of leaked emails that pulled back the curtain on political calculations she made early in the race.
“I think it did take a chunk out of her vote. I think it did hurt her,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist, of Clinton’s email scandal. “I don’t think it was the thing that killed her or defeated her, but it certainly played a role.”
Pollsters, pundits and politicians on both sides of the aisle were stunned by Donald Trump’s victory Tuesday after virtually every election model predicted a decisive Clinton win.
Gianno Caldwell, a Republican strategist, said FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reopen his investigation of Clinton’s emails on Oct. 28 likely repelled some undecided voters who might have otherwise considered supporting her.
“The email scandal hurt her with two sets of voters. One group who believed she had honesty and integrity issues,” Caldwell said. “And the other group of voters who might have been on the fence and didn’t want to believe she was dishonest but capitulated to the idea because it was hard to ignore words from the FBI Director.”
In the wake of a disastrous few weeks for Trump this fall, Clinton enjoyed a comfortable lead both nationally and in key battleground states.
Trump had bungled responses to leaked footage of lewd comments he made in 2005 and a subsequent string of allegations from women who said he kissed or grabbed them without consent — all in the same four weeks as the three presidential debates, in which Clinton performed well.
But Comey’s letter scrambled the contest with just 11 days to go. Trump, already experiencing a late surge as Republican voters acquiesced to their party’s choice for president, erased many of Hillary Clinton’s gains.
Clinton headed into Election Day with a 3.3 point lead, according to the RealClearPolitics average of a four-way matchup that included Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein. It was a slimmer margin than many Democrats had predicted given her enormous financial and institutional advantage.
Beyond the reopened FBI investigation, which handed Clinton nine days of negative headlines until Comey closed it again on Sunday, other controversies hinted at brewing trouble for the Democratic nominee.
WikiLeaks stoked renewed interest in the Clinton Foundation over the past month by releasing a series of emails and memos that cast the philanthropy in an unflattering light.
The private correspondence suggested even the Clintons’ closest aides acknowledged the potential problems created by Bill Clinton’s intersecting personal and charitable work.
One longtime staffer, Doug Band, described the muddled flow of money as “Bill Clinton Inc.”
Hillary Clinton’s campaign failed to address nearly all of the questions raised by WikiLeaks emails in the run-up to Election Day.
Trump consistently hammered the Democratic nominee over her political baggage, charaterizing it as further evidence that she represented the “rigged” system his supporters were so eager to reject.
