Skip to main content

Clinton says the Russians had to be ‘guided by Americans’ in how they weaponized information

Clinton says the Russians had to be ‘guided by Americans’ in how they weaponized information

Share this story

Asa Mathat/Recode

Hillary Clinton, in an interview at Recode’s Code Conference earlier today, said she believes that Russia was “guided by Americans” in the way that it weaponized information during the final days of her presidential campaign against Donald Trump.

“Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, concluded with high confidence that the Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign to influence voters in the election,” Clinton said. She went on to say that, in her opinion and based on intelligence, Russia could not have known how to weaponize that information “unless they had been guided by Americans.”

Clinton noted that within one hour of the leak of the infamous Access Hollywood tapes — in which now-President Donald Trump spoke crudely about his nonconsensual sexual assault against women — “the Russians or say WikiLeaks — same thing — dumped the John Podesta emails."

Russia’s potential meddling in the November 2016 US presidential election is still being investigated by government agencies, with attention focused most recently on Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law who reportedly suggested opening a communications channel with Russian officials last year. It has been reported that other advisors and members of Trump’s campaign staff may have had indirect ties to Russian officials as well.

Clinton, who lost the electoral vote to Trump, has been reemerging to make more public appearances in recent weeks, giving a commencement speech at Wellesley College and granting access to New York magazine for a candid profile. She has mentioned a variety of factors that may have contributed to her loss, including Russia’s involvement, targeted fake news stories, persistent sexism, and a lack of inherited data from the Democratic National Committee, which has led some critics to say that Clinton has not expressed enough self-blame for the loss.