Hillary Clinton issues dire warnings about election integrity to Democratic 2020 hopefuls

Clinton has previously cited those factors -- and others, especially then-FBI Director James Comey's decision in late October 2016 to send a letter to Congress about her email controversy -- as reasons for her defeat, but Tuesday's speech at George Washington University indicates she is hoping to pass some of those lessons onto 2020 hopefuls.

"You can run the best campaign. You can have the best plans. You can get the nomination. You can win the popular vote. And you can lose the Electoral College and therefore the election," said Clinton, who beat Trump in the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots. She specifically pointed to Stacey Abrams' loss in last year's Georgia gubernatorial election -- in which her opponent, Brian Kemp, was accused of suppressing minority votes, which he denied -- and referenced Republican-led efforts to pass restrictive voting measures ostensibly intended to prevent voter fraud.

In the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, WikiLeaks began releasing emails stolen from the personal account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, who was spammed with a link that appeared to come from Google as a security notification but led Podesta to a GRU-created website. WikiLeaks got the emails from Russian hackers.

Clinton indirectly referred to that effort as she discussed on Tuesday her warnings to Democrats.

"I tell every candidate if you have not had your personal and campaign emails hacked, they will be," Clinton said. "So will the emails of people working for you. Your information will be stolen and then weaponized against you in the most pernicious ways."

She insisted there was a need for cybersecurity that she said doesn't exist in the US today and there was "no real effort being made" for a system that will protect voters. In April, CNN reported that Department of Homeland Security officials and senior leaders have had difficulty getting the White House to pay attention to threats of Russian election interference.

"Cybersecurity is an essential component of protecting our democracy but it's very difficult for campaigns on their own to do that. You need a national commitment to cybersecurity," Clinton said.

She also expressed her concern for "phony, false online news stories" and "lack of election security," saying those fighting to protect American elections "can't be deterred by ridicule or by undermining of what we know has to be done to preserve our democracy."