House Speaker Paul Ryan said Sunday that the explosive disclosure about Hillary Clinton’s behind-the-scenes authority over the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 primary “takes the cake.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that. We all said that the Clintons thought they lived above the rules, but this takes the cake,” Mr. Ryan said on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is pretty amazing.”
.@SpeakerRyan reacts to DNC news: “It’s amazing to me how the Clintons, just lived above the law or above the rules in this thing.” #FNS pic.twitter.com/ogcU6JM6Nm
— Pat Ward (@WardDPatrick) November 5, 2017
Former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile said in excerpts from her soon-to-be-released book that the Clinton campaign and DNC had a joint fundraising agreement even before Mrs. Clinton won the party’s presidential nomination in 2016.
“For them to basically be running the DNC in a primary — to see such a deck-stack is really pretty jaw-dropping to me,” Mr. Ryan said. “No wonder the Democrats are ticked off. I would be, too.”
Supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders, Mrs. Clinton’s chief primary rival, have long complained that the primary process was weighted in the Clinton campaign’s favor, referring mainly to the party’s heavy reliance on super-delegates.
Asked Thursday on CNN whether she thought the primary had been “rigged,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, replied “Yes.”
Mr. Ryan said he didn’t foresee a legislative fix, and that any allegations of campaign finance violations would fall under the purview of the Federal Election Commission.
“We don’t legally regulate how the parties set up their bylaws,” said Mr. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican. “But to have a primary, they had one of the primary participants stacking the deck and running the party, I’ve never heard of that before. That just takes the cake in my mind.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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