Colin Powell defended his use of private email Thursday after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released an exchange between him and Hillary Clinton in which he advised her on ways to skirt State Department’s diplomatic security rules.

“Secretary Clinton has stated that she was not influenced by my email in making her decisions on email use,” Powell said in a statement. “I was not trying to influence her but just to explain what I had done eight years earlier to begin the transformation of the State Department’s information system.” In his Jan. 2009 email to Clinton, Powell warned Clinton that her emails could become federal records if the administration learned about the existence of her server.