Warren walks back claim Democratic primary was rigged

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a new interview appeared to walk back her claim that last year’s Democratic primary was rigged, suggesting instead that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) showed “some bias” but that the selection process had been “fair.”

“I agree with what Donna Brazile has said over the last few days; that while there was some bias at the DNC, the overall 2016 primary process was fair and Hillary made history,” Warren said in a Wednesday interview with MassLive. 

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Her remarks contrasted with what she told CNN’s Jake Tapper last week. Pressed by Tapper about whether she believed the primary had been rigged in then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s favor, Warren responded: “Yes.”

A spokeswoman for Warren’s office did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.

Former interim DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile ignited a firestorm last week after Politico published an excerpt from her upcoming book, in which she claimed she had found evidence the Clinton campaign had fixed the Democratic nomination system in the candidate’s favor.

Brazile said she discovered an agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign that suggested the nomination was fixed long before the former secretary of State would become the party’s official nominee, tilting the scales away from Clinton’s rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity,” Brazile wrote in the excerpt.

Following the publication of the excerpt, Brazile dismissed suggestions that the nominating process was “rigged.”

“I found no evidence, none, whatsoever,” Brazile told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, adding that she did not believe Warren “meant the the word ‘rigged.'”

“The only thing I found — which I said, I found the cancer, but I’m not killing the patient — was this memorandum that prevented the DNC from running its own operation,” she continued.

Clinton on Wednesday weighed in on the claims, saying the controversial remarks about the party’s presidential primary being rigged “just wasn’t the case.”

“I didn’t know what she was referring to because, as has now come out, that just wasn’t the case,” Clinton said during an appearance on NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”