Hillary Clinton is not ruling out the possibility of challenging the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election, the former presidential candidate said on NPR’s “Fresh Air” on Monday.
NPR’s Terry Gross asked if Clinton would challenge the election results should more evidence turns up that Russian interference had deeper impact than is currently known.
Gross pressed further, and Clinton said she would not completely rule out the possibility: “No, I wouldn’t rule it out,” she said, later agreeing with Gross’s statement that such action would be completely unprecedented.
“Basically I don’t believe there [is a way],” Clinton said. “There are scholars, academics, who have arguments that it would be [constitutional], but I don’t think they’re on strong ground. But people are making those arguments. I just don’t think we have a mechanism.”
She added: “I think you can raise questions. In fact, I think part of the reason Trump behaves the way he behaves is that he is a walking example of projection. Whatever he’s doing and whatever he thinks is happening he will accuse somebody else of. And there are examples during the campaign when he did just that, like when he called publicly on Russia to hack my personal emails.”
The Obama administration announced last year that an investigation led to the conclusion that the Russian government was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee and the leak of thousands of stolen emails. It also concluded that the actions were taken with the goal of electing Donald Trump.
Some members of the Trump campaign are currently subject to an investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, which is trying to determine whether the campaign colluded with the foreign government to unlawfully influence the election.