UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Hillary Clinton broke her silence on Tuesday on a controversy that has cast a cloud on her likely presidential candidacy, defiantly saying she did nothing improper in exclusively using a private account for official emails while secretary of state. But she acknowledged destroying tens of thousands of emails she described as personal and conceded that she should have used a government account.
“I fully complied with every rule I was governed by,” Clinton said in a 20-minute news conference that marked her first comments on the controversy.
Clinton’s email practices have been closely scrutinized following revelations last week that she used a private email address and server for official government business. That raised questions about whether she was complying with regulations requiring government officials to preserve written communications involving official business.
While the controversy has not affected her status as the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, it has upended her careful blueprint for the rollout of her 2016 presidential campaign. Clinton had planned to spend March touting her work on women’s issues and giving a handful of paid speeches before announcing her candidacy in early April.
Before Tuesday’s news conference, Clinton’s only comment on the email disclosures had been a late-night tweet last week saying she wanted the State Department to make her emails public. Her decision to weigh in further came as Democratic allies began publicly pushing her to do so.
In a signal that the issue was unlikely to fade soon, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus blasted Clinton’s comments as “completely disingenuous.”
“No one but Hillary Clinton knows if she handed over every relevant email,” Priebus said.
A central question for Clinton over the past week has been why she chose not to use government email if she wasn’t trying to skirt federal rules that require officials’ communications to be archived.
She described her use of personal email as a matter of “convenience” and a way to avoid carrying two devices. But she conceded that in hindsight, it would have been “smarter” to use a government account as well as her personal one.
Last month, Clinton told an audience in Silicon Valley that she uses multiple electronic devices.
“I have an iPad, a mini-iPad, an iPhone and a BlackBerry,” Clinton said.
Clinton left the Obama administration in early 2013, but didn’t turn over her written communications for nearly two years and only in response to a State Department request.
The Stat Department says it will take several months to review the material Clinton turned over last year. Spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Tuesday that once the review is complete, the emails will be posted online for the public to see.
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