Hillary Clinton said that Russian President Vladimir Putin held a grudge against her, which led to his involvement in alleged hack attacks on Democratic groups.
Clinton made the comments Thursday night in New York at a Plaza Hotel "thank you party" for donors, according to CNN.
Clinton, the former Democratic presidential candidate, did not mention President-elect Donald Trump in her speech, her first public comments since allegations of Putin's involvement came out. She said she was proud during her tenure as secretary of state to stand for democracy against Putin, according to CNN's sources at the event.
The former secretary of state said Putin's grudge came about because of comments she made about Russia's 2011 parliament elections not being conducted fairly, CNN's report said. Protests broke out in Russia and Putin blamed her, she said.
The Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's account was hacked, and WikiLeaks released information from those hacks, which fueled comments by Trump and Republicans against her campaign, CNN reported.
A U.S. official told CNN Thursday that the election-related hacks were sophisticated to the point that Putin must have been involved.
"The nature of the operation was such that this had to be approved by top levels of the Russian government," the official said.
One source at the event told CNN that Clinton said the hacks were an "attack on national security and an attack on our democracy." She urged her supporters to stand up for democracy and to stay involved in the Democratic Party, the sources said.
The Washington Post published an opinion piece Thursday night from Podesta, in which he touched on the issue, suggesting a partisan bias at the Federal Bureau of Investigation..
"Comparing the FBI's massive response to the overblown email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI."
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