Hillary Clinton on Saturday cast blame for her surprise election loss on the announcement by the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, days before the election that he had revived the inquiry into her use of a private email server. 
 
 In her most extensive remarks since she conceded the race to Donald J. Trump early Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton told donors on a 30-minute conference call that Mr. Comey’s decision to send a letter to Congress about the inquiry 11 days before Election Day had thrust the controversy back into the news and had prevented her from ending the campaign with an optimistic closing argument. 
 
 “There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” Mrs. Clinton said, according to a donor who relayed the remarks. But, she added, “our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum.” 
 
 Mrs. Clinton said a second letter from Mr. Comey, clearing her once again, which came two days before Election Day, had been even more damaging. In that letter, Mr. Comey said an examination of a new trove of emails, which had been found on the computer of Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of one of her top aides, had not caused him to change his earlier conclusion that Mrs. Clinton should face no charges over her handling of classified information. 

 Hillary Clinton has blamed the FBI's decision to revive an investigation into her email accounts for her devastating defeat in the US presidential election. 
 
 In a call on Saturday with top campaign donors, Clinton said her campaign was in the lead until FBI director James Comey sent a letter to Congress on October 28 announcing that the FBI had uncovered emails possibly related to its earlier investigation into her use of a private server as secretary of state. 
 
 The new examination was sparked by an unrelated investigation into former New York Representative Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of one of her top aides. 
 
 The surprise announcement by the FBI came after three debates in which president-elect Donald Trump, a Republican, was widely panned for his performance. 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. 
 
 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 politicians 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, said donors who listened to her call, she made little mention of the many other factors political analysts saw as driving Trump's victory. 
 
 OPINION: Spoiled Americans now want to flee what they created 
 
 Clinton told her supporters on Saturday that her team had drafted a memo that looked at the changing opinion polls leading up to the election and that the letter from Comey proved to be a turning point. 
 
 The memo prepared by Clinton's campaign, a copy of which was seen by the Reuters news agency, said voters who decided which candidate to support in the last week were more likely to support Trump than Clinton. 
 
 "In the end, late breaking developments in the race proved one hurdle too many for us to overcome," the memo concluded. 
 
 A spokesperson for the FBI could not immediately be reached for comment. 
 
 Democrats have spent much of this week reeling for their loss, with many in the party beginning a process of soul-searching designed to figure out what exactly went wrong. Liberals such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren say Democrats must embrace a more aggressive economic message - one Clinton largely shied away from during her campaign.
– Hillary Clinton isn't writing James Comey any love letters these days, reports the New York Times, with the vanquished Democrat briefly raising her head Saturday to tell top fundraisers in a conference call that while "there are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful," the FBI director's late-breaking letters to Congress "raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum." Following the final debate in Las Vegas and before Comey's first letter to Congress, Clinton said, "we felt so good about where we were. We just had a real wind at our back." Then Comey's letter dropped 11 days before the election, and "we dropped, and we had to keep really pushing to regain our advantage, which going into last weekend we had." Per a campaign memo Monday morning quarterbacking the loss: "There is no question that a week from Election Day, Secretary Clinton was poised for a historic win," but that "late-breaking developments in the race proved one hurdle too many for us to overcome." The final nail in the coffin was actually Comey's second letter, two days before the election, giving Clinton the all-clear; her campaign contends that only further alienated her from voters who doubted her trustworthiness. There's another interesting dynamic at play in that nine-day window, notes Al Jazeera: Some 24 million people, or roughly 18% of all voters, voted between Comey's two letters. Still, some top Dems point to the campaign's self-inflicted wounds. "There is a special place in hell for Clinton staff, allegedly including Cheryl Mills, that okayed the email server setup," says a former top aide to Harry Reid. Admitted Clinton on Friday in a national call to voters: "Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. These have been very, very tough days."