Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton struggled on Saturday to tamp down a stubborn controversy over her email usage while serving as United States Secretary of State, especially given reports that she paid a State Department IT specialist to manage a private email server at her suburban New York home. Retained separately, the agreement between the Clintons and Pagliano was to ensure that no taxpayer money was spent on the server that was used by the Clinton family and some of their closest advisers.
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She sat down for an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell to discuss the raging issue of Hillary using her personal email account for official government business.
She replied, “It certainly doesn’t make me feel good, but I am very confident that by the time this campaign has run its course, people will know that what I’ve been saying is accurate”.
According to her Linked-In profile, Samuelson, who received her law degree from American University, began working for Clinton in the fall of 2002 as the assistant treasurer for her political action committee, Hill PAC, and as deputy director of compliance for Friends of Hillary.
The former Secretary of State is subject to a FBI probe into the use of her email system that is now expanding into whether she violated portions of the Espionage Act.
“Bryan was hired by the Clinton family as a consultant in order to help out periodically with the management of the system in Chappaqua that hosted the family’s emails.”
Heather Samuelson, a lawyer and 2008 Clinton campaign staffer, worked under Mills and Clinton’s attorney David Kendall to sift through her ex-boss’ messages.
“We encouraged everyone to cooperate”, Clinton said.
Clinton knows that the journalists following her to the U.S. island territory of Puerto Rico are less concerned, for now, with the candidate’s detailed proposals to improve the economy or fight climate change.
“I take responsibility. I should have had two accounts: one for personal and one for work-related” emails.
Clinton passed up an opportunity Friday to publicly apologize for her email habits, which she continued to defend as within the law and “fully above board” when it came to State Department requirements. “And I think that’s in the public record”.
Clinton said that she “didn’t really stop and think” about emails when she started at State, and she doubled down on her belief that she did not send or receive classified material: “I did not send or receive any material deemed classified“, she said.
Clinton, while campaigning in New Hampshire on Saturday, again addressed the email issue and acknowledged paying to have a private email server set up.
Mr Biden said Thursday that he “will not hesitate” to challenge Mrs Clinton if he is able to gather the emotional strength needed following the death of his son. The Clinton campaign apparently wasn’t too happy with that decision.
Petraeus, who ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge, knowingly mishandled “code word” national defense information, including the identities of covert officers, war strategy and intelligence capabilities, she said.
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Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the committee’s chairman, said Sullivan was in a “unique position” to talk about how US policy in Libya required the State Department to have a physical presence in the country.
