Trump In Cahoots With Russia

Podesta suggests Trump associates may have colluded with Russian hackers
By IAN KULLGREN 12/18/16 11:54 AM EST

Former Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta said Sunday he believes that Donald Trump's associates may have colluded with Russian hackers to win the election.

In his first TV interview since Hillary Clinton's loss, Podesta said he doesn't believe that the president-elect himself was part of the plan but suggested some of his associates may have gone off the reservation. The Electoral College electors, he said, have the right to know the extent of the Trump campaign's involvement before they cast their votes Monday.

"It's very much unknown whether there was collusion," Podesta said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"What did Trump Inc. know? When did they know it? Were they in touch with the Russians?" Podesta asked. "I think the electors have the right to know what the answers are."

"The Russians were trying to elect a lap dog," Podesta said, referring to a recent piece by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

Podesta also offered new details on the hacking of his private Gmail account, saying he wasn't contacted by the FBI until Oct. 9, two days after WikiLeaks started releasing his emails.

"The first thing the agent said to me is, 'I don't know if you're aware, but your email account might have been hacked,'" Podesta said. "I said, 'Yes, I was aware of that.'"

"That was the last time I talked to the FBI," Podesta added.

Podesta accepted a share of the blame for Clinton's loss, though, conceding the campaign wasn't aggressive enough in some Midwestern states. Democrats should put together a detailed postmortem report, he said, similar to what Republicans did after Mitt Romney's loss in 2012.

“We owe it to our supporters to say what we think we did right, what we think we did wrong," Podesta said. "I think [in] Wisconsin we could have done better. There’s no question about it.”

“At the end of the day, we also lost Pennsylvania, and there is nothing we left … undone there, and we still lost by 44,000 votes," he added.