Hillary Clinton, who made history as the first woman to lose an American presidential election, blames FBI director James Comey for her defeat, saying,

... our analysis is that [FBI director James B.] Comey's letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum," she said.

Clinton did say that what should have been good news essentially backfired. Comey issued another letter to Congress on the Sunday before Election Day, concluding that the nine-day examination of newly discovered emails had turned up nothing to change his earlier conclusion that there had been no criminal conduct.

"Just as we were back up on the upward trajectory, the second letter from Comey essentially doing what we knew it would — saying there was no there there — was a real motivator for Trump's voters," Clinton said.

A day earlier, Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri had told the same group of donors something similar — that the news angered Trump voters and caused a spike in turnout, while Clinton's projected turnout fell.

The following things did not have an effect on Mrs. Clinton's defeat:

1) Her numerous violations of the Espionage Act regarding, yes, the emails.

2) Her sloppy handling of national security secrets.

3) Her repeated lies about her sloppy handling of national security secrets.

4) Her solicitation of donations for her foundation while she was secretary of state.

5) Her ineptitude as secretary of state, which led to the death of our ambassador in Libya.

6) Her double standard about sexual harassment of women when it came to Donald Trump and her husband.

7) Her general lack of accomplishment after more than a decade in government office.

What is especially interesting is that Donald Trump won not by increasing the number of votes for the Republican candidate.  In fact, he got about the same number of votes as the losing candidate, John McCain, did in 2008 (about 60 million).

The difference is that Hillary Clinton got way fewer votes than Obama did.  In 2008, he received 69 million votes.  Hillary got about 9 million votes fewer.  People simply did not like or trust her.  If she had not been so negligent, so illegal with her emails, Comey would have had nothing to write about.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.