Donna Brazile: 'No evidence' that Democratic primaries were 'rigged'

Former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile said she found "no evidence" that the 2016 Democratic primary for the presidential nomination was rigged.

Asked by ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" Sunday if she agrees with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that the Democratic nomination process was "rigged" in favor of Hillary Clinton, Brazile replied, "I don't think she meant the word 'rigged.'"

When Warren was asked by CNN last week if she agrees with the notion that the Democratic National Committee was "rigged" for Clinton, the Democratic senator replied, "yes."

The question to Warren came after publication of an excerpt from Brazile's forthcoming book, "Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House." An excerpt published by Politico potentially shows the depth of coordination between the DNC and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. It also explores whether the primary contest between the former secretary of state and Sen. Bernie Sanders was weighted against the Vermont lawmaker.

But Brazile told Stephanopoulos she "found no evidence" the primary was "rigged."

"I said I would get to the bottom of everything, and that's what I did," Brazile said. "I called Senator Sanders to say, you know, I wanted to make sure there was no rigging of the process ... I found no evidence, none whatsoever."

What Brazile did find was a memorandum of agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign, she said.

"The thing, the only thing, I found -- which I said, 'I found the cancer, but I'm not killing the patient' -- was this memorandum that prevented the DNC from running its own operation," Brazile said on "This Week."

Brazile described the relationship between the DNC and the Clinton campaign, with Clinton's headquarters in Brooklyn controlling the DNC's spending during the general election.

"I become chair and I'm trying to write a check for something. I raised the money and they're like, you have got to get signed off from Brooklyn. I said Brooklyn?" Brazile said.

"The people who were making the decisions, even for the DNC, they didn't come and work with us," Brazile added. "They told us to shut up and basically let them win the election, and when we tried to intervene, we had to spend money we raised to try to help them win."

Brazile also addressed President Trump's responding to reports on her book with a call for the Justice Department to investigate Democrats. "Crooked Hillary bought the DNC and stole the Democratic primary from Crazy Bernie," he tweeted Friday.

Brazile said on "This Week" that Trump "needs to look at his own house before he tries to clean up someone else's."

"Donald Trump likes to distract," she said. "What Donald Trump should be focusing on right now is protecting our country from being hacked again. He should be working with Congress to ensure that the American people will feel confident that we are going to have a good election season in 2017, 2018. Donald Trump loves to distract us and divide us. I'm not playing his game."

Brazile said she received threats as a result of Trump's attacks against her during the campaign.

"I have worked on campaigns all my adult life," she said. "I have been called some of the worst things in America. But when Donald Trump would go out there and attack me, I got the threats [that] were just unbearable. My house right now is -- I got every different kind of security device. I had to get my home swept. I had to get the DNC swept twice. It was horrible."