In the aftermath of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton and the concentric circles of advisers and friends and hangers-on comprising Clintonworld have fairly consistently adopted the tactic of blaming everyone but the candidate, herself, for her loss. Among the most popular culprits is Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who skimmed off tens of thousands of votes in a handful of key states last fall and who some in Clinton’s camp argue was a pawn in Vladimir Putin’s insidious plot to elect Donald Trump.

Stein’s foes tend to point to a number of circumstantial events as evidence. In 2015, the former Green Party candidate sat at Putin’s table at the same gala hosted by RT, the state-sponsored Russian news outlet, that former national security adviser Mike Flynn has been excoriated for attending. And while Stein said she was not paid a speaking fee for the event (Flynn made $45,000), she attended the event just three months after she met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at another RT soiree. Stein also tapped fierce North Atlantic Treaty Organization critic Ajamu Baraka as her running mate. And during the election, there was arguably no media outlet that embraced Stein more than RT.

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Amid the ever-expanding investigations into the Russian government’s interference in the presidential election, some Democrats have called for Stein to appear before Congress to testify under oath about her Kremlin ties. “We’re certainly interested in any efforts the Russians made to influence our election,” Adam Schiff, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Politico. “There have been public reports, I think, that Jill Stein was also in Russia attending the RT function, so we’re going to need to look at any efforts the Russians made through whatever means to influence our elections.”

But for her part, Stein has no qualms about the role she played in last year’s election. In fact, she has begun to rely on certain defenses similar to those invoked by the man she is accused of helping elect. When asked about Russia during an interview with Politico, Stein was quick to dismiss speculation and leaned on many of the same arguments as the Trump team has in recent months. After rebuking claims that she espoused the merits of Putin as “fake news”, the erstwhile presidential hopeful said, “Putin is an authoritarian and has a very troubled, disturbing record.” On the other hand, she also noted, “It’s important to look at where Putin comes from. . . . It was Larry Summers and the guys from Harvard who basically privatized the public domain [in post-Soviet Russia] and created the oligarchs.” Stein also expressed skepticism toward the United States intelligence community’s conclusion that the Kremlin meddled in the 2016 election. “Most people are saying, ‘Oh it’s the Russians,’ but there is not a lot of evidence,” she said.

And in terms of whether she blames herself for Trump’s victory, Stein argues that neither candidate was a good choice. “There are differences between Clinton and Trump, no doubt, but they’re not different enough to save your life, to save your job, to save the planet,” she says. “We deserve more than two lethal choices.”