Former President Bill Clinton cast his ballot for his wife, failed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, at Monday’s Electoral College meeting in Albany. As Capitol Correspondent Karen DeWitt reports, Clinton blames the loss on the Russians and the FBI.
Former President Bill Clinton, serving as one of 29 electors in New York, says it was the “proudest vote he ever cast.” He says his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, was undone by events late in the campaign, even after she successfully overcame what Clinton said were “bogus” charges about her private email server.
“In the end we had the Russians and the FBI deal, which she couldn’t prevail against that,” Clinton told reporters after the vote. “She did everything else, and still won by 2.8 million votes.”
The CIA and FBI say the Russians meddled in the elections, by hacking Democratic National Committee emails and other files to help President-elect Donald Trump in the campaign. FBI director James Comey, in late October, said he might reopen the case again Clinton’s emails. He did not fully clear Hillary Clinton until three days before the elections.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, who worked under former President Clinton as HUD Secretary, delivered a kind of eulogy for the Clintons, as he presided over the event in the Senate chamber, which included a choral group from Albany High School, who sang “God Bless America.”
Cuomo says Secretary Clinton has been a “great friend” to New York, and has accomplished “tremendous good,” citing her efforts to get federal funds after 9/11 when she was U.S. Senator from New York, and helping capture Osama bin Laden, when she served under President Obama.
Afterward, Cuomo said the moment was “bittersweet,” and that it could not have been easy for the former president.
Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins says she also found the day painful. But Stewart-Cousins, the first female legislative leader in New York, says she expects to see a woman president in her lifetime.
“There are still tremendous glass ceilings to break,” said Stewart Cousins. “But we will break those ceilings, there’s no question about it.”
Senator Stewart Cousins, who is also African American, says many, even in her own family, never thought they’d see a black president, yet Barack Obama was elected in 2008.
In a final gesture that seemed aimed at the person who won the election, President-elect Donald Trump, the electors announced that they were donating their fees for the day to the New York Immigration Coalition.
