Clinton: Server ‘was a mistake’
She had declined to apologize during interview on Friday.
Democrat apologizes for using a private email server while secretary of state.
Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized Tuesday for her use of a private email account as secretary of state after declining since last week to express remorse in connection with the controversy that has shaken her presidential campaign.
Asked by ABC News about the decision to set up the private email account on a server maintained at her New York home, Clinton said: “That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility, and I’m trying to be as transparent as I possibly can.”
The Democratic presidential front-runner had declined to apologize for using the private email system when asked directly by NBC News on Friday, saying she was “sorry that this has been confusing to people.” On Monday, she said an apology wasn’t necessary because what she did was “allowed” by the State Department.
Her allies hoped Tuesday’s change of course would quell the controversy that has dogged her campaign for weeks. But there was a new sign that the issue is likely to stick around: Two powerful Senate chairman said they are considering seeking immunity orders for a former Clinton aide whose attorneys have indicated would refuse to answer questions under his Fifth Amendment right in order to protect himself against any prosecution.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson — both Republicans — wrote to Bryan Pagliano, who was paid to maintain Clinton’s personal server while she was secretary of state, that they are considering seeking legal protection for him in an effort to compel him to testify. The committees’ oversight function is unrelated to any potential prosecution, they wrote, and asked for a meeting with Pagliano’s attorneys to assess what might be revealed in such testimony.
Clinton’s support in the early Democratic contests has declined as she has sought to address questions about her use of the private email server and whether in doing so she put U.S. security at risk. She has turned over about 55,000 pages of emails to the State Department, which is releasing them in batches after vetting them for classified information, but deleted the remaining 31,000, which she said were personal. The server has been turned over to the FBI for safekeeping.
Clinton said Monday that it would have been a “better choice” for her to use separate email accounts for her personal and public business during her time at the State Department instead of allowing them to be comingled. She also said the issue has not damaged her campaign but has been a “distraction, certainly.”
“But it hasn’t in any way affected the plan for our campaign, the efforts we’re making to organize here in Iowa and elsewhere in the country,” Clinton said. “And I still feel very confident about the organization and the message that my campaign is putting out.”
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Allison Moore said the “only thing Hillary Clinton regrets is that she got caught and is dropping in the polls,” adding that Clinton’s “reckless attempt to skirt government transparency laws put our national security at risk.”
Several of Clinton’s allies have privately compared her resistance to using the word “mistake” to her similar reluctance to say she had erred in voting to support the invasion of Iraq in 2002 when she was a senator. That vote dogged her in the 2008 presidential primary, but Clinton resisted calling it a mistake for months, despite entreaties from many liberals.