[Keilar:] Hillary Clinton is under fire for protecting a man accused of sexual harassment during her 2008 presidential bid. Clinton's faith and values adviser, Bern Strider, was accused of repeatedly harassing a young woman with whom he shared an office. The woman complained of inappropriate kisses and suggestive e-mails among other things according to this reporting, and instead of being fired, Strider was sent to counseling. He was told he had to go to counseling. He never actually completed that counseling according to these reports. And his accuser was moved, she was reassigned. Clinton addressed these reports via Twitter saying that she was, quote, "dismayed when the harassment occurred but was heartened the young woman came forward, was heard and had her concerns taken seriously and addressed." Clinton's then campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle has not spoken publicly about this until now. She is a CNN political commentator. She's joining me for her first live tv interview on this issue. Patti, thank you so much for talking to us about this.
[Patti Solis Doyle, Cnn Political Commentator:] Sure. Thanks for having me, Brianna.
[Keilar:] You recommended to then-Candidate Clinton, Senator Clinton, that she fire Bern Strider. Tell us about how this information came to you about what had happened, and the case that you made for him to go and ultimately what Clinton decided.
[Doyle:] Sure. So, a young woman made a complaint to our head of operations about sexual harassment against Bern Strider [inaudible], who is now the CEO of the DNC, against Bern Strider, who she reported to. The incident was brought to my attention and, you know, I did my due diligence. I interviewed all the parties involved, looked at the evidence, some e-mails he sent, looked at other documents, and came to the conclusion that there was sexual harassment involved, that the young woman was very credible, and my recommendation to the senator was to fire him. And I was overruled.
[Keilar:] You weren't the only one who recommended who believed this was the right avenue to take?
[Doyle:] Correct. Well, you know, there were a few people involved in the investigation, so to speak, but the people involved in it believed he should not be working with our campaign.
[Keilar:] So, she overruled you personally?
[Doyle:] I was overruled, yes.
[Keilar:] What was the reasoning behind not taking your recommendation on that? You know, I really don't want to divulge my private conversations or my private counsel to Hillary Clinton, suffice it to say I believe in a zero-tolerance sexual harassment in the workplace, I believe it now and I believed it then. But I also want to say, you know, it wasn't an easy call. None of these calls are easy and especially in a presidential campaign, we were just a few months away from voting beginning to start with the caucuses and the primaries, firing a high-profile person on the campaign would have certainly made news and caused a distraction, so it wasn't an easy call. But, you know, as a campaign manager, when this was brought to my attention, when you run an organization, you really your first instinct is to protect people, you know. I wanted to protect my team. I wanted to protect this young woman. I wanted to send a message that this kind of behavior is not OK. I wanted to make sure that other women and men for that matter could feel comfortable and free to speak up if something were to happen to them, if there were another incident. And it certainly wasn't lost on me that I was the first Hispanic female campaign manager for presidential campaign. And that I was working for who I thought was going to be the first woman president of the United States, and I didn't want to just be good on this issue. I wanted to be better than anybody else. To be clear, few weeks later, after the Iowa caucuses, you were pushed out as campaign manager. Ultimately, Strider didn't even go to the counseling that had been a part of his docked pay, pay commensurate with the demotion, has to go to counseling. In the end, he didn't go to counseling. You didn't have to do with that because you were gone at this point in time. But who made the decision on what, instead of him going, that these things were going to happen. That he was going to have face these consequences of counseling and
[Doyle:] You know, I said we I wanted our campaign to be better and I believe we were. There was an "Axios" item today where campaign staffers are being interviewed and they laughed at the idea there was an there is an HR process. But in our campaign, you know, I went to the lawyers, we had
[Keilar:] This was lawyers who were looking at
[Doyle:] Lawyers and operations people and me, senior management, we came up with the process, and we did everything I believe but fire him.
[Keilar:] OK. I want to ask you about how Hillary Clinton has responded to this because it is something that really sticks out to me. She says, "A story appeared today, about something that happened in 2008. I was dismayed when it occurred but was heartened the young woman came forward, was heard and had her concerns taken seriously and addressed." She doesn't admit that she messed up. She doesn't admit that especially in light of the fact that at the time you were recommending he go. Not like no one was saying he shouldn't go and we're now in an era where people look back and say, duh, he should have gone.
[Doyle:] Right.
[Keilar:] Why doesn't she just look back and say, this was the wrong call?
[Doyle:] You know, I don't know. I was disappointed by that tweet, that response. It was a wrong call. I wish she had said it was a wrong call. I wish she had said, you know, having to do it over, I would have fired him. I think that's actually true. I believe that she thinks that if I had to do it over again, I would fire him.
[Keilar:] But she doesn't say it, right? And the reason I think it seems reasonable that she would think that is because Strider publicly suffers nothing from this incident, right? This is all kept internally. Then he goes on and ahead of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and I know as a reporter who covered Hillary Clinton for I think it was over a year and a half before she ran, he goes on as the guy in charge of something called correct the record. This is key because this was essentially the response effort prior to her campaign launching, if you needed information, you went to correct the record as a reporter. They set themselves up as this was the pro Hillary Clinton PAC on messaging and this was a key position. So, he then goes on, he's in charge of correct the record, and he ends up being fired for workplace issues, according to "Buzzfeed" and "The New York Times," for harassing at least two other women. When you look back on that, does it strike you that allowing him to stay in the campaign gave him a platform to then go on and harass other women?
[Doyle:] Yes. I mean, I feel a great deal of regret that I didn't fight harder, didn't push harder for him to be fired. I read the "Buzzfeed" report and what the young woman said, one particular statement of a young woman who said she felt she need to quit because she felt she wasn't strong enough or tough enough to work in politics because she couldn't endure sexual harassment. And the idea that Bern Strider made her feel like she was the one that something was wrong with, like she was inadequate is just really infuriating. But having said that, Brianna, I want to say this about Hillary. Look, people are complicated, and Hillary is no exception. And she definitely made a wrong call here. But I worked for her for 17 years and I feel like I know the totality of her as a person, as a politician, as a public servant. And this is a woman who allowed me to put a crib in my office in the White House, and bring my 3-month- old baby to work every day because she knew I was struggling with balancing my early motherhood with a rising career. This is woman who hires women at the highest levels in her orbit, promotes women, gives them raises, who is dogged in her advocacy for the issues that she cares about, and I believe then and I believe now still that she would have all those characteristics would have made her a great president. Would she have made mistakes? Yes.
[Keilar:] Was Bern Strider her faith adviser, faith very important to Hillary Clinton, was he a confidant? What is the blind spot with Bern Strider that she couldn't say, you need to go?
[Doyle:] I don't know. I think that's a question for her.
[Keilar:] When her husband, Bill Clinton, obviously accuse of sexual misconduct on various occasions, he's pushed back on those occasions, do you think that was a blind spot for her, did that make her more skeptical of how you might accept an accusation or respond fully to an accusation like this?
[Doyle:] I've spoken about this before, she loves her husband. There is a real mutual respect and admiration and a lot of love in that marriage. And I think in that instance this was about a wife wanting to keep her marriage together and that
[Keilar:] You don't see a connection with this?
[Doyle:] Again, I have seen them both together up close and they love each other and
[I -- Keilar:] But you don't see a connection with how she relates to that and how this Bern Strider event? You wouldn't extrapolate anything from that, that she has a blind spot on how to adequately deal with some of these issues?
[Doyle:] No.
[Keilar:] Strider right now is the president of the American Values Network. It is a group that organizes Americans of faith toward progressive causes. Does he need to go?
[Doyle:] He does. He needs to go.
[Keilar:] Do you think he'll go?
[Doyle:] I hope so. If I could do anything to help him go, I'm more than happy to do that.
[Keilar:] Do you think looking at how he responded to these reports "Buzzfeed" report, great report by Ruby Cramer, great report in "The New York Times," do you think looking specially because he did speak to Ruby in that report
[Doyle:] Yes.
[Keilar:] Do you think he gets it?
[Doyle:] No, not at all.