A TOP pick for President-elect Joe Biden's economic cabinet, spread a conspiracy theory days after the 2016 election that Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump because Russian hackers flipped votes.
Tanden, who on Monday was nominated as Biden's director of the Office of Management and Budget, repeatedly claimed in the weeks after Trump's win that Kremlin operatives were the reason behind the Democrat's loss.
The 50-year-old served as an unpaid adviser to Clinton during her 2016 presidential run – on Monday, she was selected by Biden as OMB chief, a role that oversees his administration's financial management.
Days after the 2016 election, Tanden pushed the baseless theory that Russian hackers had swapped votes for Clinton to Trump, Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald reported on Monday.
In response to a report that the FBI claimed "Russian hackers" had "accessed voter info," she tweeted: "Why would hackers hack in unless they could change results? What’s the point?”
Tanden then suggested this was the reason why "Trump was as surprised as everyone else" when he won the presidency.
In a series of old tweets, she claimed the "Russians did enough damage to affect more than 70k votes in 3 states," referring to Clinton's losing margin in the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Tanden has deleted some – but not all – of her tweets blasting prominent Republican lawmakers including House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Maine Senator Susan Collins while praising their Democratic counterparts, according to the Daily Beast.
When Collins' re-election appeared to be hanging by a thread, Tanden promised in a since-deleted tweet to treat her challenger, Democrat Sara Gideon, "like a long lost relative" and "work hard to help her beat Susan Collins."
It's unclear when exactly she deleted them, but many of the tweets were still viewable as of Tuesday.
Republicans are reportedly balking at the thought of Tanden being nominated as OMB director, with some saying she has "zero chance" of being confirmed.
GOP senators were quick to point out on Monday that her "partisan" background could make it difficult for Tanden to gain support.
Senator Rob Portman, a former Office of Management and Budget director himself, said: “The concern I have is both judgment, based on the tweets that I’ve been shown, just in the last 24 hours… and it’s the partisan nature.
"Of all the jobs, that’s one where I think you would need to be careful not to have someone who’s overtly partisan.”
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