Former US Senate Intelligence chair Dianne Feinstein says it seems all over for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and has urged him to consider suspending his campaign in an effort to rally behind front-runner Hillary Clinton.
The California Democratic senator made the remarks in an interview with ABC News on Sunday, as Sanders said his campaign won't necessarily be over if he doesn't win the California primary on June 7.
“He ought to be able to read the signposts as well as anybody else, and if he did that, he would know that it's all but over,” Feinstein said. “I know the passion of a campaign. I know when you're in it, and you just keep go, go, go until the last hour is there. Well, the last hour is close by.”
Clinton is maintaining a strong lead over Sanders in the Democratic presidential race, but the senator has vowed to stay in the race until the Democratic convention this summer.
Sanders, an Independent senator from Vermont who is seeking the Democratic nomination, on Sunday called California the "big enchilada” in his bid to overtake Clinton.
Sanders said that the delegate-rich state is "enormously important,” adding that his campaign has had great success over the past several months and vowed to continue battling for delegates.
Clinton is facing a potential indictment as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigates her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
A blistering US State Department inspector general’s report last week was just the first in what is likely to be a series of official actions related to Clinton’s private email server kept in her New York state home.
The State Department’s watchdog report claimed that Clinton never sought approval for her personal email setup, that her use of the system violated the department’s record-keeping rules and that it would have been rejected had she asked department officials.
Feinstein defended Clinton, saying the report shows, “The department does not handle these electronic platform operations well and needs to do better.”
“I mean, what do people want? This goes on and on and on,” Feinstein said. “Hillary Clinton broke no law.”