Trying to get the rollout of her presidential campaign back on track, former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton says she should have used a government e-mail address while working as the nation’s top diplomat — an admission that sought to quell a political furor some Democratic allies say she could no longer avoid.
The focus on Clinton’s e-mails has jumbled what had been expected to be a smooth glide toward the kickoff of her presidential campaign next month.
She had planned to spend this month promoting her work on women’s equality, a signature issue for someone who could become the US’ first female president.
Instead, questions about Clinton’s e-mail habits have dominated her activities in the past week, following revelations that she used a personal e-mail account at the Department of State and did so via a private server kept at her home in suburban New York.
While Democrats have dismissed of the notion that Clinton’s e-mails are something voters will care about come election day next year, her silence — aside from a late-night tweet sent last week — had led several of her former colleagues in the Senate to urge her to tell her side of the story.
During a news conference on Tuesday at the UN, after she had delivered a previously scheduled speech on women’s rights, Clinton pledged that all her work-related e-mail would be made public “for everyone to see.”
However, she also acknowledged that she deleted messages related to personal matters. She refused calls from Republicans to turn over the e-mail server she kept at her home to an independent reviewer.
“The server contains personal communications from my husband and me, and I believe I have met all of my responsibilities, and the server will remain private,” Clinton told reporters who crammed into a hallway to ask questions at her first news conference in more than two years.
Not long after Clinton spoke, Representative Trey Gowdy, the chairman of a House of Representatives panel investigating deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, said he was “left with more questions than answers” and that he planned to call her to appear before his committee at least twice.
Gowdy said one appearance from Clinton would be needed to “clear up” her role in using personal e-mail, while the second would be to answer questions related to the Benghazi attacks that killed a US ambassador and three other Americans.
Those appearances are likely to come after Clinton returns to politics as a presidential candidate, creating an unwelcome distraction for the leading contender for her party’s nomination.
Clinton on Tuesday said she had exchanged about 60,000 e-mails in her four years as US President Barack Obama’s top diplomat, about half of which were work-related. None contained classified information, she said, and her private e-mail system did not suffer any security breaches.
However, since the e-mails were sent to and from her personal server, there is no way to independently verify her assertion they were, as she said, “within the scope of my personal privacy and that particularly of other people.”
Clinton insisted she did not break any rules, but she does appear to have violated what the Obama White House has called “very specific guidance” that officials should use government e-mail to conduct business.
Republicans also needled Clinton for her explanation that she used the private e-mail account out of “convenience” — a way to avoid carrying one device for work e-mails and a second for personal messages.
They pointed to Clinton’s appearance last month in California’s Silicon Valley, when an interviewer asked her if she preferred Apple’s iPhone or a phone running Google’s Android platform.
“iPhone. OK, in full disclosure, and a BlackBerry,” Clinton said, adding: “I’m like two steps short of a hoarder. So I have an iPad, a mini iPad, an iPhone and a BlackBerry.”
Democrats defended Clinton, saying it was reasonable to want to carry just one device.
Jerry Crawford, a co-chair of her 2008 campaign in Iowa, called her response: “A very commonsense explanation that Americans will appreciate.”
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