President Donald Trump urged the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department to investigate his political rivals Friday following allegations that Hillary Clinton’s campaign effectively controlled the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential primary, which the party was supposed to impartially referee.
The president in recent days has seized on former interim DNC chair Donna Brazile’s account, which appears in her new book and was excerpted in Politico, of a fundraising deal that allowed Clinton’s campaign to influence the party’s finances before she won the nomination.
“The real story on Collusion is in Donna B’s new book. Crooked Hillary bought the DNC & then stole the Democratic Primary from Crazy Bernie!,” the president tweeted Friday morning.
“Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets go FBI & Justice Dept.,” he added, using a racially-charged epithet for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Brazile, in her excerpt, described the DNC’s deal with the Clinton campaign as a “cancer.”
“I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any,” she wrote, saying she had undertaken the review in response to concerns from Clinton’s insurgent primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Then I found this agreement.”
According to Brazile, the victory fund agreement — a deal between the DNC under the leadership of former chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, dozens of state parties and Clinton’s campaign that divided money between state parties and the campaign — had been signed in August 2015. That was four months after she announced her candidacy and a year before she won the nomination.
“The funding arrangement…was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical,”� Brazile said in her excerpt.
Brazile was careful not to claim the primary was “rigged,” though she did feel it was unfair. But there was little room for nuance for many Sanders supporters who felt vindication after more than year of vocal complaining about the DNC’s handling of the process.
News reports published during the election outlined the agreement, such as a May 2016 report in Politico that revealed “less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised” by Clinton went to state parties. Politico also reported in July 2016 on the DNC’s attempts to conceal the deal.
“I think this just validates what many of us already knew about what was happening,” Jeff Weaver, the former campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid, said on MSNBC Friday. “I think in many states, the outcome would’ve been different… If Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic nomination, he would be in the White House right now and Donald Trump would not.”
Keith Ellison, the current deputy chair of the DNC, said in a statement that Brazile’s account cannot be dismissed and many in the party “still feel hurt and betrayed” by the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.
“We must heed the call for our party to enact real reforms that ensure a fair, open, and impartial nominating process in elections to come,” he said.
Tom Perez, the current DNC chair, also said he wants a “culture change” in the committee in a letter to DNC members this week after Brazile’s story published and noted, “even a perception of impropriety — whether real or not— is detrimental to the DNC as an institution.”
Trump’s cries of collusion between Clinton and the DNC come just days after two former top aides were charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe investigating his campaign’s ties to Russia. Another former campaign adviser pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
“Bernie Sanders supporters have every right to be apoplectic of the complete theft of the Dem primary by Crooked Hillary!,” the president, who signed a joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee two months before he was officially selected as the nominee, tweeted. “I always felt I would be running and winning against Bernie Sanders, not Crooked H, without cheating, I was right.”
Warren responded to Trump in a series of tweets calling the president’s remarks desperate.
“I understand your desperation to change the subject,@realDonaldTrump. Your campaign mgr was just indicted for conspiracy against the US.,” she wrote. “The DNC shouldn’t play favorites. But that’s a whole lot different from illegally conspiring with Russia. The FBI knows the difference.”
Brazile also pushed back against Trump’s interpretation of her excerpt.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s spokesperson, Nick Merrill, said on Twitter that it was “simply not true” that the fundraising agreement gave Clinton an advantage not afforded to Sanders.
He noted that Sanders’ campaign was offered, and eventually signed, a similar agreement, which the campaign chose not to use.