Hillary Clinton explains why she didn’t fire Burns Strider in lengthy Facebook post

Hillary Clinton now says she would have handled the Burns Strider situation during her campaign in 2008 differently if she could do it again.

“The short answer is this: If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t,” she wrote in a lengthy Facebook commentary, posted Tuesday evening, just minutes before 2016 campaign rival Donald Trump was to give his first State of the Union address as president.

READ MORE: Hillary Clinton covered for senior executive accused of sexual harassment: reports

Clinton has come under fire after reports revealed that she did not fire senior adviser Strider in 2008 after he was accused of inappropriate touching by a female campaign staffer.

Clinton kept Strider, who was her faith adviser, around despite recommendations he be fired from campaign manager Patti Doyle, the New York Times reported.

While his accuser was shifted into a new role, Strider’s pay was suspended for several weeks and he had to undergo counselling.

Clinton explained that she believed that firing Strider was not the “best solution to the problem.”

“He needed to be punished, change his behavior, and understand why his actions were wrong,” Clinton wrote. “The young woman needed to be able to thrive and feel safe.

“I thought both could happen without him losing his job.”

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Strider went on to work for Correct the Record, an independent group which supported Clinton’s 2016 campaign for president.

He was fired from that job just months after he started, amid accusations that he assaulted a young female aide, the New York Times reported.

Clinton addressed Strider’s firing in her Facebook post, saying she believed in second chances and that she was troubled by the “reoccurrence.”

“I also believe in second chances. I’ve been given second chances and I have given them to others. I want to continue to believe in them. But sometimes they’re squandered,” she said.

She then noted: “That reoccurrence troubles me greatly, and it alone makes clear that the lesson I hoped he had learned while working for me went unheeded.”

Clinton has come under fire since the reports of how she handled the Strider situation with some going as far as to say she is on the wrong side of the #metoo movement but she argues about the enormous decision over whether to take someone’s livelihood.

“Taking away someone’s livelihood is perhaps the most serious thing an employer can do. When faced with a situation like this, if I think it’s possible to avoid termination while still doing right by everyone involved, I am inclined in that direction. I do not put this forward as a virtue or a vice – just as a fact about how I view these matters.”

Clinton says she has reached out to the victim of Strider’s harassment after the reports surfaced. She said the woman was happy to have worked on the campaign and that she flourished in the new role. Clinton says she cleared her Facebook post with the woman entirely before posting.

Toward the end of the lengthy post, Clinton sums up the situation by noting that no men were involved in the decision-making process over how to proceed while wondering if women need to “come down harder.”

“I recognize that the situation on my 2008 campaign was unusual in that a woman complained to a woman who brought the issue to a woman who was the ultimate decision maker. There was no man in the chain of command. The boss was a woman. Does a woman have a responsibility to come down even harder on the perpetrator? I don’t know. But I do believe that a woman boss has an extra responsibility to look out for the women who work for her, and to better understand how issues like these can affect them.”