Hillary Clinton on server scandal: ‘It's like a drip, drip, drip’
Hillary Clinton takes the stage to speak in Manchester, N.H., earlier this month. (Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Hillary Clinton says she’s been as “transparent as possible” about her use of a private email server as secretary of state — but that continuous questions about her decision to use one have left a mark on her campaign.
“It’s like a drip, drip, drip, and that’s why I said that there’s only so much that I can control,” Clinton said in an interview that aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “I can’t predict to you what the Republicans will come up with, what kind of charges or claims they might make. … I can only do the best I can to try to respond.”
The Democratic frontrunner said such questions are “fair game” and that she takes full responsibility for the controversy.
“It was my choice,” Clinton said. “It was a mistake back when I did it, and I’m trying to do the best I can to answer all of the questions that people have.”
The former secretary of state said that she believed any work-related emails that she sent to government email addresses from her private email address would be captured on federal servers.
That includes the recently discovered email correspondence between Clinton and then-Gen. David Petraeus from January 2009 — two months before Clinton had said she used the private account.
“There was a transition period,” she said. “I wasn’t that focused on my email account.”
Clinton also dismissed the notion that she used a private server to make it difficult to subpoena messages.
“It’s totally ridiculous,” she said. “That never crossed my mind.”
Meanwhile, Clinton has seen her lead in the race for the Democratic nomination evaporate.
According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday, Clinton leads Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by just 15 points (53 percent to 38 percent) — a significant change from July, when she led the self-described socialist by 34 points, and a seismic shift from June, when Clinton led Sanders by 60 points.
And if you include Vice President Joe Biden in the Democratic field, Clinton’s lead over Sanders is even smaller — just 7 points, according the NBC/WSJ poll.
On Friday, former President Bill Clinton blamed the GOP for keeping the server scandal afloat in an effort to sink his wife’s bid for the White House.
“I think that there are lots of people who wanted there to be a race for different reasons,” he told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “And they thought the only way they could make it a race was a full-scale frontal assault on her. And so this email thing became the biggest story in the world. … I have never seen so much expended on so little.”
But the former president said it’s all part of the political game.
“You can’t complain,” he said. “This is a contact sport. They’re not giving the job away.”
