Podesta: FBI contacted me just once about hacked emails

Former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta says the Democratic nominee and her staff “bear responsibility for the outcome” of the 2016 presidential election. But so does FBI Director James Comey, whose decision to alert Congress about a review of newly discovered Clinton emails 11 days before the Nov. 8 vote, Podesta believes, was one of the daggers that took down Clinton.

“I think he had a big effect on this election,” Podesta said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday in his first interview since Clinton’s loss.

Comey, Podesta argued, went to great lengths to investigate Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state but did little, by comparison, to investigate the Russian plot to “sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign and elect Donald Trump.”

“The first time I was contacted by the FBI was two days after WikiLeaks started dropping my emails,” Podesta said. “The first thing the agent said to me was, ‘I don’t know if you’re aware, but your email account might’ve been hacked.’ I said, ‘Yes, I was aware of that.'”

According to Podesta, the FBI has not followed up with him since.

“That was the first and last time I talked to the FBI,” Podesta said.

Podesta noted that WikiLeaks’ publication of emails, obtained through a hack of his email account and the Democratic National Committee, came “one hour” after the Washington Post published the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape on which Donald Trump was heard bragging about assaulting women.

“One could say those things might not have been a coincidence,” Podesta said.

Podesta refused to say Trump’s win was the result of a “free and fair election.”

“It was distorted by the Russian intervention,” he said.

Still, Podesta did not publicly criticize President Obama’s response to the Russian hacking, as others have.

“The Obama administration is doing what it thinks is the right thing to do,” he said.

But Podesta also said it’s “very much unknown” whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow during the election.

Last month, Russian officials said that they were in contact with members of the Trump campaign during the election.

Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to the Trump transition, said Team Trump was never in communication with the Kremlin.

“Absolutely not,” Conway said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday. “Those conversations never happened.”

On Monday, 538 members of the Electoral College are scheduled to vote to officially elect the president, and Podesta says the electors have the right to know “the extent and manner of Russia’s interference in our election” before their votes are cast.

Last week, the office of the director of national Intelligence said that it would not brief the electors, citing the ongoing investigation that was ordered by Obama earlier this month.

“Once the review is complete in the coming weeks, the intelligence community stands ready to brief Congress,” the office said.

On Nov. 8, Trump collected 306 electoral votes, 36 more than the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Podesta didn’t sound hopeful that there are 37 Republican electors willing to flip their votes away from Trump and send the election to the House of Representatives.

Regardless of the outcome, Podesta said he wants to see a separate, independent investigation so Americans can learn “what actually happened.”

Interim Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile does, too.

“As Chair of the Democratic National Committee — one of the main victims of the Russian attacks — I ask that you support and provide any needed assistance to an independent, bipartisan investigation of the attacks that includes public hearings,” Brazile wrote in a letter to Congress Sunday. “What we do know is that these intrusions were not just ‘hacks’ — they were attacks on the United States by a foreign power, and they must be treated as such.”