Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., VT.) said Monday on CBS This Morning that FBI Director James Comey's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her time at the State Department did not cost her the election.
Co-host Charlie Rose told Sanders that Clinton believes Comey's letter to Congress days before the presidential election announcing that the FBI was relaunching its email probe is the reason she lost.
"That's a minor look at–it's not a question of what happens in the last week," Sanders said. "The question is why it is that millions of white working class people who voted for Obama turned their backs on the Democratic Party, and I think a lot of people do not think the Democratic Party is standing with them. That has got to change."
Clinton had cast blame on Comey for reopening the investigation into her private email server just days before the election, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
Still, Mrs. Clinton's instinct to shun any personal responsibility angered some Democrats. Several donors on the call, while deeply bitter about Mr. Comey's actions, said they believed that Mrs. Clinton and her campaign had suffered avoidable missteps that handed the election to an unacceptable opponent. They pointed to the campaign's lack of a compelling message for white working-class voters and to decisions years ago by Mrs. Clinton to use a private email address at the State Department and to accept millions of dollars for speeches to Wall Street.
In a call to a small group of donors, Clinton said that the doubt raised by Comey's letter to Congress were groundless, baseless, and stopped the campaign's momentum.