Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski gave a speech in England on Wednesday night in which he didn't exactly say Comey was the decisive factor in the election — but seemed to grant that he might have been.

AD

"With eleven days to go, something amazing happened," Mr Lewandowski said in a speech at the Oxford Union debating society on Wednesday evening. "The FBI's director James [Comey] came out on a Friday and he said they may be reopening the investigation into Crooked Hillary's emails. "What that did was remind people that there are two different rules in Washington — those of the elites, and the privileged and those for everybody else. "When Comey moved forward with that investigation ... it allowed the campaign a little spring in their step, and for them to redouble their efforts."

In short: Lewandowski is hardly downplaying Comey's effect on the closing days of the race. He said Comey's first disclosure about more Clinton emails from the Anthony Weiner investigation 11 days out was "amazing."

AD

And his case actually sounds a bit like what Hillary Clinton said last week on a conference call with supporters.

"There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” Clinton said Saturday. "But our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless — proven to be — stopped our momentum."

She added: “We dropped, and we had to keep really pushing ahead to regain our advantage — which going into the last weekend, we had. ... Just as we were back up on the upward trajectory, the second letter from Comey essentially doing what we knew it would — saying there was no there there — was a real motivator for Trump’s voters."

AD

Lewandowski's comments aren't the first from top Trump allies that have complicated matters for Comey. Just before the election, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani seemed to suggest someone had tipped him off to a major announcement that was forthcoming.

AD

"This has been boiling up in the FBI. I did nothing to get it out. I had no role in it. Did I hear about it? Darn right I heard about it," Giuliani said Nov. 5 — three days before the election. He had said a week earlier — before the first Comey announcement — that there was a "pretty big surprise" coming in the next two days. Comey made his first announcement two days later.

Giulani later clarified that he hadn't heard about anything from current FBI agents, and he said his "heard about it" comment was referring to “consternation within the FBI.” He said the "surprise" was a Trump advertising blitz.

AD

Whatever the case, though, the comments from Lewandowski and Giuliani do nothing to tamp down the theories that this was something that was handled poorly and helped Trump significantly down the stretch.

AD

That's different from saying it actually made the difference, of course. But as I noted earlier Thursday, it appeared to tip the scales in Trump's favor among those deciding in the final days of the campaign in the states that mattered and were closely decided — Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump leads in each state by about 1 point or less, and exit polls show those who decided on their vote in the final week accounted for more than that margin in each state.

It remains impossible to know for sure if Comey is the reason for Trump's win (we have been skeptical). But a narrative is forming that he very well might have. And for the Trump team to not really dispute that is a little strange. After all, it suggests that they basically benefited from something outside of their control — that it wasn't their own strategic superiority but something of a fluke.