Hillary Clinton: Vladimir Putin ‘Has A Personal Beef With Me’

With Hillary Clinton spiraling to come up with an answer as to how she could have lost the U.S. Presidential election, the former Democratic front-runner emerged with a familiar accusation against her old foe, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“[Putin] has a personal beef against me,” said Clinton, per CNN.

The news also comes just days after the C.I.A. claimed to verify that Putin and Russian hackers exerted influence over the U.S. Presidential election proceedings, as documented by the Inquisitr.

Perhaps this latest excuse will stick for Hillary, whom many of her worshipers feel cannot and will not ever do wrong.

“Vladimir Putin himself directed the covert cyber attacks against our electoral system, against our democracy, apparently because he has a personal beef against [me],” said Clinton, per CNN, at a recent “Thank You Party” for her supporters at New York City’s The Plaza Hotel. One source, in particular, told CNN that Clinton reacted to the recent C.I.A. revelation by noting that she had been proud to have defended the U.S. democratic system in the past when it fell under attack by Putin while she served as Secretary of State under President Obama. Hillary had, after all, been a vocal critic of Russia’s 2011 Parliamentary elections, saying that they were not necessarily on the “up and up.”

“Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring our outrage for his own people. And that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election,” Hillary continued, also per CNN. “I want you to know this because he is determined not only to score a point against me, which he did, but also to undermine our democracy.”

Opponents of Clinton’s, however, believe that it is Hillary herself who is attempting to undermine the very democratic system that saw her beaten by President-elect Donald Trump last month.

Clinton’s comments were her first since the allegations of Putin’s involvement in the U.S. democratic process were first made.

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Meanwhile, Clinton’s equally controversial campaign chairman John Podesta made a series of aggressive comments against the F.B.I., noting in a Washington Post opinion piece that “something is deeply broken” with the agency. The F.B.I., of course, is the same group that drew criticism after apparently bowing to public pressure to not recommend charges be pressed against Hillary Clinton for her mishandling – and subsequent mass-deleting – of government e-mail correspondences from her time as Secretary.

The then-Presidential candidate Clinton, many feel, was able to avoid prosecution after what appeared to be a shady backroom handshake deal on an airplane tarmac between her husband Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

“Comparing the F.B.I.’s massive response to the overblown [Hillary Clinton] email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI,” wrote Podesta. “The election is over and the damage is done, but the threat from Russia and other potential aggressors remains urgent and demands a serious and sustained response.”

Aside from the op-ed, Podesta was also the author of large quantities of Democratic National Committee e-mails that were publicly released by WikiLeaks for more than a month leading up to the Presidential election in November, as documented by CNN and other news outlets.

An anonymous “U.S. official familiar with the election-related hacking,” meanwhile, told CNN that, while Putin could not be directly linked to the election-time hacks, that “the nature of the operation was such that this had to be approved by top levels of the Russian government.”

Despite Hillary’s seeming reluctance to let things go, Clinton did also take time to urge her supporters to not lose heart, and to continue to push for Democracy. That line, alone, many could find as humorous given the role that many feel the D.N.C. was shown to play in thwarting free democracy during the primary season.

After all, Clinton noted that Russia’s hacking was “part of a long term strategy to cause us to doubt ourselves and to create the circumstances in which Americans either wittingly or unwittingly will begin to cede their freedoms to a much more powerful state.”

Which, of course, would lead many to question whether it may actually be Hillary Clinton who is the one with the grudge.

[Featured Image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]