Getty Clinton camp to Sanders: Stop the Iowa conspiracy theories

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The Democratic presidential primary has moved on from Iowa to New Hampshire – and so has Hillary Clinton after her razor-thin win in the caucus state Monday.

In a Medium post that the campaign will publish on Friday morning titled “Hillary Clinton Won Iowa. End of Story.," Clinton Iowa state director Matt Paul pushes back against the Bernie Sanders campaign’s suggestion that misreported results in individual precincts could make the difference there, and dismisses its “conspiracy theories” about the Iowa Democratic Party’s systems.


“There’s been even more bluster than usual from the Sanders campaign, this time in an effort to disqualify Hillary Clinton’s historic victory in Monday night’s Iowa caucus,” the post opens. “Disparaging good news for Hillary Clinton has become a pattern for the Sanders camp. If you support someone else? You’re dismissed as part of the ‘establishment,’ unless of course they want to claim your support in ads anyways. If a process doesn’t go their way? It’s invalid or flawed or they blame the Iowans who ran it."

Paul’s post comes as the Sanders camp calls its captains in every precinct around the state to verify the official results in what could be the first step of a convoluted challenge process. The Des Moines Register editorial board — which endorsed Clinton — on Thursday called for an audit of the final numbers.

Segueing into a refutation of Sanders supporters’ claims that Clinton unfairly won coin tosses in some precincts and the Sanders campaign’s claim that 90 precincts didn’t have chairpersons (and therefore reported suspicious results), Paul — a former aide to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack — doesn’t hold back in his critique of the competition.

“Once it became apparent that they had lost, the Bernie Sanders campaign began to peddle claims that have been disproven in an effort to poison an otherwise historic night for Hillary Clinton, our supporters, and volunteers,” he writes.

At the conclusion of the more than 500-word post, Paul runs through the math of Sanders’ challenge, noting that the Vermont senator's campaign is currently disputing seven precincts out of the 1,681. If results from all the precincts in question — seven from the campaign, four from the Iowa Democratic Party — were overturned, the change in overall numbers wouldn’t be enough to give Sanders the caucus win.

“It may be inconvenient for the Sanders campaign that Hillary Clinton won the Iowa caucus,” Paul writes, “but it’s the truth."