'What Happened': Clinton memoir looks at 2016 election, Russia, sexism

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By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hillary Clinton’s memoir about her failed attempt to win last year’s U.S. presidential election will be called “What Happened,” a declaration rather than a question, her publisher said in the run-up to its September 12 release.

Among the things the Democratic nominee will say happened are sexism against the first woman to be the presidential candidate for a major U.S. party and “an unprecedented assault on our democracy by a foreign adversary,” according to publicity material from the publisher, Simon and Schuster.

Staff in Clinton’s campaign and at Democratic party headquarters saw thousands of their internal emails stolen and published online last year. U.S. intelligence agencies have said that Russian intelligence agencies stole the emails as part of an effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin to foil Clinton’s chances of becoming president.

Putin has denied the charges, and U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed doubt about the conclusion of intelligence agencies he oversees.

In a tweet on Thursday, Clinton said, “Writing ‘What Happened’ was hard, so is what we see every day. As we move forward & fight back, I hope this helps.”

Clinton has at times faced intense scrutiny by the media and political opponents for more than 25 years since her husband, Bill Clinton, successfully sought the U.S. presidency in 1992.

“In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I’ve often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net,” Clinton wrote in the book’s introduction. “Now I’m letting my guard down.”

Despite polls showing the former secretary of state was expected to triumph in the election last November, Clinton won only 227 electoral college votes to Trump’s 304. She won the popular vote by about 2.9 million votes.

The official book jacket cover for Hillary Clinton’s upcoming book “What Happened” is shown in this image released in New York, NY, U.S., July 27, 2017. Courtesy Simon & Schuster/Handout via REUTERS

Since then, she has made a handful of speeches and public appearances while working on the book.

In April, she told the Women in the World Summit in New York City that she had no intention of running for another public office and that she was writing a book that, in part, delves into what derailed her attempt to become America’s first woman president.

“For people who are interested in this, the nearly 66 million people who voted for me, I want to give as clear and as credible an explanation as I can,” she said.

Clinton has also faulted the manner in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under director James Comey, investigated how she managed her email, some of which involved classified information, when she was secretary of state.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, told the Washington Post last week, “When you lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity, you don’t blame other things — Comey, Russia— you blame yourself.”

Clinton and Trump were the most unpopular U.S. presidential candidates in modern polling history.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Daniel Wallis)