Hillary Clinton on Use of Private Email: Everything was Permitted

Hillary Clinton in her first national interview since announcing her presidency, defended use of private email server

Hillary Clinton on Tuesday defended her use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State, claiming that she had gone “above and beyond” what was expected of her in disclosing work-related correspondence.

In her first national interview since she announced her presidential candidacy nearly three months ago, to CNN, the Democratic frontrunner brushed off the controversy and officially cleared the air. The Guardian reports that the sit-down interview was given to CNN’s Brianna Keiler, in which Clinton declared that the controversies were “largely fomented by and coming from the right”.

This has been a theme that has been used against me and my husband for many, many years. And at the end of the day, I think voters sort it all out.
– Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential frontrunner

The Guardian also brought up the details of a CNN poll which had been conducted on June 2; the poll had found that “57% of Americans thought that Clinton was not honest and trustworthy, a jump from 49% in March”. Hillary, however, when quizzed by Keilar as to whether the use of her private email had led to the decline in trust, firmly stated:

Everything I did was permitted. There was no law. There was no regulation. There was nothing that did not give me the full authority to decide how I was going to communicate. Previous secretaries of state have said they did the same thing. And people across the government knew that I used one device.

According to an NBC News report, “Clinton has turned over 55,000 pages of emails sent from her private server to the State Department. Thousands of others, however, Clinton and her aides deemed personal and have been deleted”. In the CNN interview, Clinton reiterated over and over again that she had always been honest in disclosing fully work-related matters.

I turned over everything I was obligated to turn over. And then I moved on. People delete their personal emails, their work-related emails, whatever emails they have on a regular basis. I turned over everything that I could imagine.
– Hillary Clinton, Democratic presidential frontrunner