2020 White House contender Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (D-HI) legal team is demanding failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to retract her remarks in which alleged the military combat veteran of being Russia’s preferred candidate, reports The Hill.

“Your statement is defamatory, and we demand that you retract it immediately,” an attorney for Gabbard wrote to Clinton, requesting the former secretary of state “immediately” retract her statements and share a formal retraction on social media.

Last month, Clinton made comments about a 2020 candidate who is “the favorite of the Russians,” who was being “groomed” by the Kremlin as a potential third-party candidate — widely understood to be a veiled shot at Gabbard.

Appearing on a podcast hosted by David Plouffe, President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign manager, the Obama cabinet member claimed:

[Russia] has a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting [Gabbard] so far. That’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she is also a Russian asset. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate, and so I do not know who it’s going to be, but I can guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most need it.

Shortly after, Gabbard — an Army National Guard Major — slammed Clinton via social media, branding her the “queen of warmongers” and accusing her of orchestrating a New York Times hit piece released ahead of last month’s Democrat presidential debate in Ohio.

… concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and … — Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019

… powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly. — Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019

Gabbard re-upped her harsh criticism of Clinton in an interview with Breitbart News last week, stating that the foreign policy establishment smears any dissenting voices challenging their conventional policy prescriptions.

“This message and this warning that’s come from Hillary Clinton as well as her proxies and the foreign policy establishment elite in Washington that says if you stand up against them, if you dissent, if you, as I am, are calling for an end to our country’s long-held foreign policy of being the world’s police, toppling dictators in countries we don’t like, if you do that then your character will be smeared, just as they are trying to smear my character and undermine my campaign,” the congresswoman told Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow on the Breitbart News Daily radio show.