FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE HW Bush plans to vote for Hillary Clinton in November, the niece of president John F. Kennedy wrote in a Facebook posting.

CNN has also tracked down additional sources saying that Bush Snr will back Clinton in the general election.

“The President told me he’s voting for Hillary!!” read the caption of a picture Kathleen Kennedy Townsend posted on Facebook, as she shook the 92-year-old ex-president’s hand.

The news site Politico posted a screenshot of the picture with the comment.

Townsend, 63, is a Democratic former lieutenant governor of Maryland and the daughter of former attorney general Robert Kennedy, assassinated in 1968. Her uncle was president Kennedy (1961-1963).

On Facebook Townsend is identified as Kathleen Hartington, her middle name.

The Bush clan has not offered their support for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

CNN reports that the former president’s comments came during a receiving line for board members of the bipartisan Points of Light Foundation, and that Bush made them to Kennedy Townsend.

According to the network: “There were roughly 40 people in the room, and it’s not clear how many people heard him, though multiple sources did.”

A spokesman for Bush, president between 1989-1993, was neutral on the subject when asked.

“The vote President Bush will cast as a private citizen in some 50 days will be just that: a private vote cast in some 50 days,” spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement.

He is not commenting on the presidential race in the interim.

Neither Bush nor his sons – including ex-president George W. Bush (2001-2009) and Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor and ex-2016 presidential hopeful – went to Trump’s nomination at the Republican National Convention in August.

- © AFP 2016 with reporting from Daragh Brophy

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