Hillary Clinton Aide Huma Abedin Talks New Memoir “Both/And”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: when then FBI Director Comey decided to reopen an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails because of e-mails that were found on your former — now former husband’s laptop from you. Cast your mind back to then, and tell me today what you think and how you think you and your former husband and all the scandal that surrounded him torpedoed her election prospects.

HUMA ABEDIN, AUTHOR, “BOTH/AND: A LIFE IN MANY WORLDS”: Well, there was a lot going on in 2016. As is now documented fact, there were so many outside factors that affected how that race ended. She wrote — Hillary wrote her own book detailing that. But, obviously, that moment 11 days before the election to receive this shocking news was a trauma that is going to stay with me for the rest of my life. And at that point in the election, to endure something unprecedented, had never been done in the last 70 years in sort of FBI history, I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand. I had cooperated throughout that investigation. And it — as I say, in the book, I picked up the phone and called Anthony and said, if she loses this election, it will be because of you and me. And I did carry that. It took me to a very dark place post-election. But I have had to work through that and through a lot of therapy to get to the other side.

(CROSSTALK)

ABEDIN: But I will tell you, the one person who’s never held me responsible is my boss and is — were all my former colleagues.

AMANPOUR: Your boss, of course, being Hillary Clinton.

ABEDIN: Yes.

AMANPOUR: Let me talk about this idea of commitment. You have been clearly committed professionally and personally to Hillary. You have been committed, until you were no longer, to your marriage and to your husband, to the point that you actually went out publicly to defend him after the second round of allegations and evidence of his sexting and the rest of it. I’m going to play a sound bite. And then I’m going to ask you why you did it and what made you change after that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABEDIN: Anthony’s made some horrible mistakes, both before he resigned from Congress and after. But I do very strongly believe that that is between us and our marriage. We discussed all of this before Anthony decided he would run for mayor. So, really, what I want to say is, I love him, I have forgiven him, I believe in him. And as we have said from the beginning, we are moving forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)