Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton attend a campaign rally at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., on Oct. 24, 2016. Opposites agree: Trump, Warren say Democratic primary was 'rigged'

Donna Brazile’s explosive assertion that the Democratic Party’s 2016 primary was “rigged” in favor of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders reverberated Thursday night, with President Donald Trump calling for a Justice Department investigation and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a potential 2020 contender, saying she agreed with Brazile’s conclusion.

In a pair of posts on Twitter, Trump said that “Crooked H” had “bought and paid” for the primary.


Trump tweeted that it amounted to “real collusion and dishonesty,” adding that it was a “Major violation of Campaign Finance Laws and Money Laundering — where is our Justice Department?”

Earlier Thursday, Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in an interview with CNN that she backed the conclusion by Brazile, the former interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, that the party’s 2016 presidential primary was “rigged” in favor of Clinton.

So far, neither Clinton nor her former campaign apparatus has responded to Brazile’s assessment of the primary, which was first published in POLITICO Magazine on Thursday. In excerpts from Brazile’s upcoming book, “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House,” she revealed the existence of what she described as an “unethical” agreement between Clinton and the DNC, in which the candidate’s campaign traded funding for increased control of the platform.

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According to Brazile, by financing the DNC early on and keeping it financially afloat during the latter stages of the campaign, Clinton’s campaign gained substantial control of the committee throughout the election process, a claim that was repeatedly echoed on the campaign trail by Sanders himself.

“The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical,” Brazile wrote, referring to the Hillary for America presidential campaign committee.

“If the fight had been fair,” she added, “one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party's integrity.”

Brazile cited the agreement as proof that, as she suspected prior to joining, “Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process.”

On Thursday, Warren called Brazile’s revelations “a real problem.” Pressed by anchor CNN Jake Tapper on whether she believed the Democratic primary had been “rigged” in Clinton's favor, Warren replied simply: “Yes.”

“What we’ve got to do as Democrats now is, we’ve got to hold this party accountable," Warren added.

The senator, a leader of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and a potential candidate for president, came out in favor of Clinton over Sanders during the 2016 primaries, a move that frustrated Sanders supporters and further boosted the front-running Clinton’s bid for the nomination.

Both Warren and Trump have previously railed against what they call a “rigged” political system in the U.S., but from differing standpoints.

At the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Warren cast Trump as “a man who cares only for himself.”

“His whole life has been taking advantage of a rigged system,” she said, forcefully denouncing Trump’s business and political careers.

As a candidate, Trump slammed the “rigged” and “boss-controlled Republican primaries.” As both Clinton and Trump neared clinching their respective parties’ nominations, Trump began to bash the Democratic primaries for being “rigged” against Sanders.

For his part, Sanders while campaigning frequently spoke out against the “rigged” economic system in the U.S., challenging existing practices on campaign finance and money in politics.

