Clinton tells fundraisers FBI Comey letter sank presidential bid

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Clinton blames election defeat on FBI director's letter

Democrats struggle to determine new party leadership following loss

Hillary Clinton has offered a couple of private but candid explanations about why she lost her White House bid, telling high-dollar fundraisers Saturday that FBI announcements about a second probe into her emails from her time as secretary of state were too damaging.

Clinton said, "Our analysis is that Comey’s letter raised doubts that were groundless and baseless..." and "stopped our momentum," a DNC fundraising source who was on the call told Fox News.

Clinton made the remark on a roughly 30-minute conference call with Democrats who raised more than $100,000, according to Politico.

The former State Department leader lost in a surprising defeat to Republican nominee Donald Trump -- a first-time candidate who essentially trailed in almost every major poll for the entire campaign.

FBI Director James Comey told Congress in an Oct. 30 letter that the agency was looking at emails found in an unrelated case that could be related to a closed FBI case specifically about the Clinton emails.

Clinton suggested her campaign’s internal poll numbers plunged after the letter but nevertheless rebounded, a person on the Saturday call told Politico.

However, she said the second Comey letter, three days before Election Day, saying that she had essentially been cleared in the unrelated case, awakened Trump voters.

The FBI investigated Clinton using a private email server system while secretary of state. Comey said some of the emails included classified information and that she was “extremely careless” in her action. But he concluded the case in July without recommending criminal charges.

Clinton on Thursday told her campaign staff that she had “stepped in it” by saying half of Trump’s supporters were “deplorables,” according to The New York Times.

She and her campaign essentially defended the remark by saying she regretted saying “half” of the supporters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic" people.

Fox News' Serafin Gomez contributed to this report.