Clinton, who was reportedly paid $7,000 less than reality star Snooki for a similar speaking event, went on to add that officials from "every [US] state" need to do all they can to prevent hackers from tampering with their election systems.
"What the Russians will do is try to employ hackers so then they will be able to say ‘We didn't do it,' but it's all part of the same plot," Clinton told her audience at the university's Eagleton Institute of Politics. "I mention that because we need a national commission to look into what actually really did happen and what could happen in order to protect our elections."
"I worry we don't know what we don't know, my friends… and you know when they say the Russians got into 21 states and their voter registration files but nothing changed… I'm sitting there thinking, ‘Well, how do we know?" she added.
In September 2017, the US Department of Homeland Security revealed that it had found evidence that hackers allegedly tied to the Russian government attempted to infiltrate the election systems of 21 US states. The DHS statement, as Sputnik previously reported, was misleading at best and plain wrong on other counts, as state officials themselves were quick to point out.
The 70-year-old later claimed that some states might simply be too embarrassed to admit they were susceptible to hackers and that the federal government could "care less" about digging into the issue further, according to the Washington Examiner.
After a year of watching US President Donald Trump govern from the Oval Office, Clinton noted that his antics could lead to Democrats gaining more seats in the 2018 elections.
"For enough Americans, the prospect of an unpredictable reality TV campaign was too good to turn off, but now we've seen it for more than a year," she said. "I think many Americans are beginning to ask questions about what to expect and how this is going to turn out."
The Chicago-born politician even addressed the issue of haters telling her to "get off the public stage and shut up."
"I was really struck by how people said to me — you know, mostly people in the press, for whatever reason — mostly, ‘Go away, go away,'" she told event-goers. "And I had one of the young people who works for me go back and do a bit of research. They never said that to any man who was not elected. I was kind of struck by that."
Clinton also discussed the need for women in politics and the National Rifle Association during the Rutgers event.
