Hillary blames Comey: Clinton tells donors she was 'leading by large margins' before white women sitting on the fence were swayed by FBI director's decision to reopen email probe 

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Hillary Clinton may still be coming to terms with her election defeat, but she's already figured out who to blame. 

Clinton blamed FBI Director James Comey's decision to revive the investigation into her emails just days before people went to the polls as the reason for her loss.

On a call Saturday with top campaign donors, Clinton said her campaign was winning until Comey sent his letter to Congress on Oct. 28 announcing that the FBI had uncovered emails possibly related to its earlier probe into her use of a private server as secretary of state. 

'Our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum,' Clinton told donors, according to the New York Times.

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Hillary Clinton (pictured after giving her concession speech) has blamed FBI Director James Comey for her election defeat

The new examination was sparked by an unrelated investigation into former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of her top aide, Huma Abedin.

The investigation was sparked by a DailyMail.com report that revealed Weiner had been sending explicit messages to a 15-year-old girl. 

The emails in question were found on Weiner's laptop. 

Clinton told the donors that her campaign was leading by large margins in nearly every battleground state and was tied in Arizona, a traditionally Republican stronghold, until Comey released his letter.

Clinton blamed FBI Director James Comey's decision to revive the investigation into her emails just days before people went to the polls as the reason for her loss

Comey (pictured) announced new emails had been discovered on October 28. However, he said the emails accounted to nothing a week later

THE CLINTON EMAIL CONTROVERSY  

January 13, 2009: Hillary Clinton's aide Justin Cooper sets up clintonemail.com domain. Huma Abedin signs off on it 

February 2, 2009: Clinton is sworn in as Secretary of State

March 18, 2009: Clinton stops using her BlackBerry email account and switches to the newly created hdr22@clintonemail.com account. The domain is hosted on her own private email server, set up by her aide Bryan Pagliano

September 11, 2012: Four Americans are killed in attack on a U.S. base in Benghazi, Libya including Ambassador Chris Stevens

January 23, 2013: Clinton responded forcefully to intense questioning on the September attacks on U.S. diplomatic sites in Benghazi, Libya, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC

February 1, 2013: Clinton steps down as secretary of state 

Above then-Secretary of State Clinton checks her Blackberry from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya on October 18, 2011

October 28, 2014: State Department demands Clinton's work-related correspondence as part of a congressional investigation into Benghazi

Fall 2014: Clinton's lawyers deletes 33,000 emails which they claim are 'personal' 

December 5, 2014: Clinton's legal team provide roughly 30,000 emails to the State Department when they are demanded by a congressional investigation into Benghazi. 

March 2, 2015: The New York Times breaks the news that Clinton used a personal email account to conduct government business while secretary of state

July 25, 2015: Clinton says she is confident none of the emails on her private email server were classified at the time of sending and receiving

Above Clinton responded forcefully to intense questioning on the September attacks on U.S. diplomatic sites in Benghazi, Libya, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC

August 4, 2015: The Washington Post reveals the FBI has begun looking into the security of Clinton's private email set-up

September 10, 2015: Bryan Pagliano formally asserts his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination rather than answer questions from a Republican-led House committee on her email arrangements

July 6, 2016: The Justice Department closes Clinton email probe and FBI Director James Comey announces the FBI won't prosecute. The decision was made by Comey because Attorney General Loretta Lynch had to recluse herself after a secret meeting with Bill Clinton

October 7, 2016: WikiLeaks begins release of thousands of emails hacked from the Gmail account of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chair

October 28, 2016: FBI reopens its investigation into Clinton's server

November 6, 2016: FBI announces it will not change its original decision not to charge Clinton 

'We were once again up in all but two of the battleground states, and we were up considerably in some that we ended up losing,' Hillary said, according to the newspaper.

The campaign also said the letter was particularly damaging with white women, who they believed were on the fence until Comey's announcement pushed them onto Team Trump. 

White women voted for Trump in surprising numbers, and were a major factor in deciding several of the key swing states that put Trump in the White House.  

Clinton's campaign said white women were swayed to vote Trump by Comey's letter, which potentially decided the election

Significantly more white women voted for Donald Trump than expected. Pictured are a group of women at a rally on Monday in North Carolina

Trump's campaign and Republican supporters seized on the news, even though it was unclear whether Clinton's correspondence was tied up in the probe.

Comey told lawmakers the Sunday before the election that the bureau had found no evidence to warrant criminal charges. His 'all clear' message only served to further motivate Trump supporters, Clinton told donors on the call.

In the nine days between Comey's initial statement and his 'all clear' announcement, nearly 24 million people cast early ballots. That was roughly 18 percent of the expected total votes for president.

While Clinton accepted some blame of her loss, according to donors who listened to her call, she made little mention of the other factors driving Trump's victory: A desire for change by voters, possible sexism, the difficulty of a political party winning a third White House term, her campaign's all-but-dismissal of white working class voters and flaws within her own message. 

Democrats have spent much of this week reeling for their loss, with many in the party beginning a process of soul-searching designed to sort out what exactly went wrong. 

Liberals like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren say Democrats must embrace a more aggressive economic message — one Clinton largely shied away from during her campaign. 

Clinton's blaming of Comey echoes what her aides have said in the days since the election.

Clinton told the donors that her campaign was leading by large margins in nearly every battleground state prior to the Comey letter

About 24 million people early voted in the days between when Comey announced the investigation had been reopened and when it was again closed

'We believe that we lost this election in the last week. Comey’s letter in the last 11 days of the election both helped depress our turnout and also drove away some of our critical support among college-educated white voters—particularly in the suburbs,' Navin Nayak, head of Clinton's opinion research division, wrote in a letter obtained by Politico.

'We also think Comey’s 2nd letter, which was intended to absolve Sec. Clinton, actually helped to bolster Trump’s turnout.' 

Weiner conduct came under investigation in late September, after DailyMail.com exclusively reported on Sept. 21 that the former politician carried on a months-long online relationship with a 15-year-old high school girl.

An investigation into Anthony Weiner's explicit messages with a 15-year-old girl sparked the reopening of the investigation into Clinton's emails. Weiner is the estranged husband of top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin

Dailymail.com exclusively published reports of Weiner's most recent sexting scandal in September

He exchanged flirtatious and sexually-charged messages with the teen for months after the girl struck up a conversation with him on Twitter in January.

The disgraced former congressman told the girl he woke up 'hard' after thinking about her, sent her shirtless photos, and complimented her body. 

He also encouraged her to talk to him on the video-chat application Skype. 

Weiner and Abedin have split up since the latest scandal.