Clinton allies exact revenge on Trump Campaign aides flood the airwaves to pummel the president-elect.

Donald Trump blasts Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s aides launch a counterattack.

Friday’s headlines could have easily been ripped from the 2016 presidential election archives.


A week before Trump will be sworn in as the nation’s 45th president, the president-elect breathed life into a revival of the ugliest campaign in modern history, a polarizing slog Americans thought was behind them.

“What are Hillary Clinton’s people complaining about with respect to the F.B.I. Based on the information they had she should never have been allowed to run - guilty as hell,” Trump wrote in a pair of tweets Friday morning. “They were VERY nice to her. She lost because she campaigned in the wrong states - no enthusiasm!”

Those tweets followed a wave of former Clinton aides who took to network television screens Thursday after a Justice Department watchdog announced that it would conduct a broad review of the FBI’s handling of its investigation into Clinton’s private email server during the presidential campaign.

In the flashback to their campaign roles, the Clinton allies largely addressed the imminent Justice Department inspector general review. But former Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon poked the bear Friday morning, questioning the legitimacy of Trump’s surprise Election Day victory over Clinton.

“I think those tweets are just the latest indication that Donald Trump is someone who’s very insecure in his victory, and I understand why. Every day there are new developments — new shoes dropping, so to speak — that call into question the legitimacy of his win,” he told CNN.

Fallon said Trump’s transition team has been forced to confront the reality that Russia meddled in the presidential election by leaking hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal account. He called FBI Director James Comey’s eleventh-hour letter to Congress a “sufficiently questionable” move that warranted an independent review.

“I think Donald Trump is just trying to cling to whatever legitimacy still is in effect here, but I think the only things that will get to the bottom of these two issues are independent investigations,” he added.

Trump’s transition team has long maintained that the allegations of the Kremlin's meddling in the U.S. election is a politicized effort from Democrats seeking to delegitimize Trump’s victory. After months of rejecting the assessment from the U.S. intelligence community that Russia did indeed launch cyberattacks — with the aim of helping Trump get elected — the president-elect finally conceded Wednesday, “As far as hacking, I think it was Russia.”

Despite that concession — and a call Wednesday night from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper condemning the leak of a privately funded intelligence dossier on Trump’s ties to Russia and assuring the president-elect that no member of the intelligence community leaked the 35-page file of unverified personal and salacious claims against the president-elect — Trump insisted via Twitter that the documents were likely leaked “by ‘intelligence’ even knowing there is no proof, and never will be.”

In a torrent of TV appearances Friday, former Clinton aides fanned out across the airwaves to counterprogram Trump, slamming his use of Twitter as his preferred medium to share an unfiltered burst of whatever he’s thinking. They applauded the pending review of what they contend as Comey’s unprecedented decision to alert Congress to the discovery of emails related to Clinton’s server 11 days before the election.

Former Clinton chief strategist Joel Benenson told MSNBC that Comey “should be held accountable” for his interference, although he refused to detail how, and essentially told Trump it’s time to grow up.

“He’s a week away from being inaugurated president of the United States,” he said. “What would be great is if he started conducting himself in a way that’s consistent with the manner of all preceding presidents — Democrat and Republican — in the public dialogue. Stop hurling insults. Stop hurling tweets. Go about your business.”

Robby Mook, Clinton’s former campaign manager, took a similar line, remarking that the election is over and it’s Trump who will be sworn in as president next week.

“That’s not the question here. I think the question is whether outside actors influenced the outcome of the election, whether that be the Russians or the FBI,” he told CNN, adding that “Trump doesn’t have good answers to these questions so he’s lashing out, as he usually does.”

Clinton allies stopped short of asking for Comey’s resignation, arguing instead for the DOJ inspector general to conduct its review to determine the facts before moving forward.

“I think there are serious questions that need to be answered about the ability of Jim Comey to effectively lead that organization going forward,” Fallon said. His response to a question of whether Clinton believes Comey should resign offered one of the few reminders that it is, in fact, no longer 2016 — and the campaign is over.

“I think that she thinks that the ...” he began, before catching himself. “I don't speak for her anymore, I should say, and I’ll let her speak for herself in due course when she deems it appropriate.”