Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager John Podesta penned an op-ed in the Washington Post on Friday, calling “the failure of the FBI to adequately respond” to Russian hacking “shocking.”
“What takes this from baffling to downright infuriating is that at nearly the exact same time that no one at the FBI could be bothered to drive 10 minutes to raise the alarm at DNC headquarters, two agents accompanied by attorneys from the Justice Department were in Denver visiting a tech firm that had helped maintain Clinton’s email server,” Podesta wrote.
He continued: “Comparing the FBI’s massive response to the overblown email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI.”
Podesta rips FBI Director James Comey throughout the op-ed, for both breaking “long-established precedent and disregarded strong guidance from the Justice Department with his infamous letter just 11 days before the election” and “ignoring the intelligence community.”
“There are now reports that Vladimir Putin personally directed the covert campaign to elect Trump,” Podesta writes before asking, “So are teams of FBI agents busy looking into the reported meeting in Moscow this summer between Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy adviser, and the Putin aide in charge of Russian intelligence on the U.S. election?”
Podesta’s op-ed concludes: “The election is over and the damage is done, but the threat from Russia and other potential aggressors remains urgent and demands a serious and sustained response.”
2020 Presidential Candidates, Ranked by Vegas Odds (Photos)
Donald Trump won't take office until Jan. 20, but gambling site Bovada is already thinking about the next election. Here are its top candidates to win the presidency in 2020, ranked from worst odds to best.
John Kasich 40/1 odds
Bovada ranks several Republicans, which means they would have to replace Trump as the Republican nominee. Ohio's governor famously skipped the GOP convention there because he didn’t support Donald Trump. Maybe Bovada thinks he could take on Trump in the 2020 Republican primary?
Note that several people are tied at 33-to-1 odds. Rubio, a Florida senator, famously feuded with Trump during the 2016 primaries, earning the nickname “little Marco.” Bovada has longshot odds on him replacing Trump.
The first Democrat on our list, she was just elected as a California senator after previously serving as the state’s attorney general. She'll only have four years of experience in 2020, but President Obama only had four years.
The Democratic senator-elect from Nevada will be the first Latina senator. Like Harris, she will only have had four years of Senate experience in 2020.
The outgoing vice president considered running against Hillary Clinton in 2016 but decided not to after the 2015 death of his son Beau. Biden is popular, particularly with working-class voters whom Trump lured from the Democrats. He'll be 77 in 2o20, which would make him the oldest person to win the presidency, if he won.
After coming losing the Democratic nomination in 2008 to Obama and coming so close in 2016, does the former secretary of state have it in her to try again? She'll turn 73 in 2020, but Trump is eight months older.
The New Jersey senator is a talented campaigner and speaker and one of the most prominent African-American Democrats. The New Jersey senator is also popular among his peers.
The Massachusetts senator could pick up supporters of the Sanders movement. She has feuded with Trump, but also expressed a willingness to work with him on certain issues.
The House Speaker is a star among traditional conservatives, but it will take a TV drama worth of surprises for him to somehow replace Trump as the presidential nominee, but that's true of every other Republican on this list, too.
Gambling site Bovada is already thinking about the next election
Donald Trump won't take office until Jan. 20, but gambling site Bovada is already thinking about the next election. Here are its top candidates to win the presidency in 2020, ranked from worst odds to best.