Hilary Clinton Rigged her 2016 Presidential Nomination, Claims Ex-Party Chief

Donna Brazile, a former Democratic National Committee (DNC) interim chair, has claimed that the party organisation helped Hillary Clintons campaign "rig" the 2016 Democratic primary against Bernie Sanders.

In a Politico op-ed on Thursday titled "Inside Hillary Clinton's Secret Takeover of the DNC", Brazile claimed that Clinton was controlling the finances of the party before officially winning the 2016 Democratic nomination for President.

"This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party's integrity," Brazile said about the arrangement.

Last year, Brazile took over as DNC chair after Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced out of the role over leaked emails suggesting that Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. In her piece, Brazile reveals that the states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million that they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary’s campaign was holding. When the party was alleged to have been “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign, Hillary’s people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady.

"I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton's team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested," Brazile wrote.

"By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart," Brazile said

The proof, according to Brazile, was the Joint Fund-Raising agreement between DNC, Hillary Victory Fund and Hillary for America. It was signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of DNC, Robby Mook the campaign manager and specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign also had the right to refusal of who would be the party communications director, with the DNC having to consult her with every campaign about staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

It had been signed in August 2015, four months after the former Secretary of State announced she was running for President and a year before she officially became the Democratic nominee.

Brazile said joint fundraising committees were created between the DNC and both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns during the 2016 election cycle. However, Clinton was the only candidate who raised money for the party.