Daily Times

WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton has held Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James B Comey responsible for her unexpected defeat in the November 8 presidential elections.

“Our analysis is that Comey’s letter raised doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum,” she told top Democratic donors via conference call.

The FBI director wrote a letter to the US lawmakers just 11 days before the elections, which stated that, in the light of new evidence, inquiry into her use of a private email server would be reopened. Though, the director sent another letter two days before the election, saying the evidence they got against Clinton could not require a fresh inquiry, Clinton said the second letter had been even more damaging.

Presidential candidates often blame outside forces after their defeat. In 2004, John Kerry linked his defeat to a videotape of Osama bin Laden which created panic among American voters.

“There is a special place in hell for Clinton staff, allegedly including Cheryl Mills, that okayed the email server setup,” Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist, wrote on Sidewire, a social media site.

Clinton’s campaign was so confident in her victory that her aides started celebrating early Tuesday, when the polling was underway.

Conducted by Edison Research, the Exit Polls found that among people who said they had decided whom to vote in the final week before Election Day, 47 percent voted for Trump and 42 percent for Clinton.

Democratic pollsters observed that Trump’s thin victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – states that President Obama had won – were largely because of drifting of college-educated suburban women to the Republican nominee at the last minute.

After the first FBI announcement, an ABC-Washington Post survey poll found that majority of Americans believed that Trump was more honest than Clinton. Several average Americans whom Daily Times interacted with over the past 15 days, shared the same opinion. They said though Trump was an unusual character and might have done some serious things, but he was not a ‘corrupt politician’.

The entire Trump campaign was anti-politicians. He accused them of plaguing the country for too long for their petty personal interests.

Meanwhile, senior US intelligence officials are expected to start a series of secret briefings to president-elect Donald Trump from next week. According to renowned American journalist, Bob Woodward, first briefing is about a detailed look at technical and human intelligence sources and methods. The second briefing will be on the covert actions undertaken by the CIA that are designed to change events abroad without the hand of the United States being revealed publicly. The president-elect would also receive information on domestic counterterrorism overseen by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.

He would get third and probably the most sensitive briefing on ‘Football’. The ‘Football’ is a briefcase carried by the military aide to the president that includes authentication of nuclear codes. Only the commander-in-chief has the authority to launch nuclear weapons against the enemies.

“Officials who have dealt with nuclear-war options said that learning the details can be horrifying and that there is a ‘Dr Strangelove’ feel to the whole enterprise,” Woodward wrote.