Nancy Pelosi claims Putin interfered in US elections because he 'feared' Hillary Clinton

During a recent event at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed global politics and national security. Pelosi claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election because he feared Clinton the most. Clinton, who is now a professor of practice at SIPA, served as Secretary of State under former President Barack Obama.

During the joint appearance with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Columbia School of International and Public Affairs on Monday, California Representative Nancy Pelosi also discussed the challenges facing American democracy. Pelosi thanked Clinton for her past service. "It was her clarity and position to [Putin] that made him turn around and ensure in an illegal way come out against her in her campaign," Pelosi said. "Interference in our democracy by Vladimir Putin, because Hillary Clinton was the person he feared most in terms of his lack of democracy in Russia," she said. 

A jog down the memory lane

In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, intelligence agencies discovered that Russian President Vladimir Putin had directed a campaign to interfere in the election and undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy against Donald Trump. Russian cyberattacks included infiltrating the servers of the Democratic National Committee to obtain emails and documents in an effort to generate negative press coverage against Democratic officials like Clinton.

Some experts have suggested that Putin's animosity towards Clinton may have been fueled by her prior criticisms of Russia's 2011 election, in which Putin was reelected. During her tenure as Secretary of State, Clinton had publicly denounced the vote as "neither free nor fair." In a 2016 report by Politico, Putin was quoted as blaming Clinton's attacks for the protests that erupted in Moscow following the election, claiming that demonstrators had "the support of the U.S. State Department" in their efforts to undermine his presidency.