Hillary Clinton, former U.S. Secretary of State and Democratic Party frontrunner for the 2016 presidential nomination, issued a “no strings attached” apology for using a private email server, a controversy that has seen her turn over close to 55,000 emails from that server to the State Department and has amply supplied her rivals in the campaigns with ammunition for the upcoming debates.
With little more than a month before the first Democratic Party debate kicks off, Ms. Clinton declined to issue an apology to television news channels when asked about the issue last Friday, and only said that she was “sorry that this has been confusing to people and raised a lot of questions.”
Yet this week the former First Lady appeared to reverse her stand on the matter and told ABC News , “That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility,” however adding that that what she did was “above board,” and she recognised that in retrospect, “even though it was allowed, I should have used two accounts. One for personal, one for work-related emails.”
At the heart of the criticism against Ms. Clinton’s use of a private server at her residence in Chappaqua, New York, is the allegation that emails sent to and from that server on occasion contained classified information.
On Tuesday, The New York Times cited intelligence officials who said that a special review of two emails she received as Secretary of State had “endorsed a finding by the inspector-general for the intelligence agencies that the emails contained highly classified information when she received them.”
For example, the review by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency reportedly found that the emails, including one about North Korea's nuclear programme, were classified as “Top Secret” when sent to Ms. Clinton in 2009 and 2011.
Both the Clinton campaign office and the State Department have disagreed with this finding, emphasising that federal agencies regularly differ from each other on what information ought to be considered classified.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate, where Republicans enjoy a majority, appeared to be gearing up to dig deeper into the issue, as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson said that they were “considering seeking one or more immunity orders” for Bryan Pagliano, a former Clinton aide, who was paid to maintain Ms. Clinton’s personal server.
Mr. Pagliano’s lawyers have said that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right to protect himself against any prosecution and refuse to answer questions.
As storm clouds build over Ms. Clinton, a Washington Post/ABC News poll this month found that 53 per cent of Americans now viewed Ms. Clinton unfavourably, an eight percentage points rise since earlier in the summer, tipping the approval rating in favour of rival and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
