Many Democrats and even Hillary Clinton herself have blamed FBI director James Comey for helping to turn the US presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor. One of Trump’s closest advisors during the race seems to agree.
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski says that Comey’s decision to announce that his agency would be reviewing more communications from the already closed investigation into Clinton’s emails just 11 days before the election helped the Trump campaign put a “spring in their step” and double down on last-minute campaign efforts.
“With eleven days to go, something amazing happened,” Lewandowski said Wednesday evening (Nov. 16) at the Oxford Union debating society, according to The Telegraph.
With the wind at their back from the FBI developments, the campaign organized more rallies in a last-ditch push before the election, and Trump himself was prompted to work 18 hours a day with little apparent effort, Lewandowski said.
“In those last last eleven days Mr. Trump was exceptionally disciplined. He used a teleprompter, and he did less media. The team used social media like no campaign in history,” the UK paper quoted him as saying.
Lewandowski emerged as a controversial star of the Trump campaign. One of Trump’s earliest staffers, he was a divisive, combative figure and was eventually fired as campaign manager. Despite the ouster, he remained Trump’s adviser and stumped for the candidate on CNN, and is now being considered for a top White House or Republican party post.
Clinton called out Comey’s decision as a contributing factor in her loss during a post-election conference call with her national finance committee. “There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” she said on the call. “But our analysis is that Jim Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless [and] baseless—and proven to be—stopped our momentum.”