Hillary Clinton deflected questions Friday about a paid speaking request for an event in North Korea that was extended to her husband while she served as secretary of state.
Clinton said the request was denied through a process that was set up to allow the State Department authority over what speaking engagements the former president could accept.
“There were some unusual requests, but they all went through the process to try to make sure that the State Department conducted its independent review,” Clinton told reporters after speaking at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in Minnesota.
The State Department approved 215 speeches through such ethics reviews, the Washington Examiner reported last summer.
“In the end, that was not something my husband wanted to do and it was not something the State Department wanted him to do,” Clinton said of the North Korea engagement.
An email obtained by Citizens United through the Freedom of Information Act suggests Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, had arranged the North Korea speech in 2012.
Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, instructed the Clinton Foundation official who forwarded the speech request to decline it and continued to rebuff the foundation employee’s push to approve the engagement.
While dismissing the North Korea speech, Clinton highlighted her husband’s role in freeing two American journalists from the country simply by visiting.
“This was after a painstaking negotiation to try to convince the North Korean leader to release these two young women,” Clinton said.
“Every offer we made, every diplomatic overture we made was rebuffed, and we offered many people to go,” she continued. “Finally, the North Koreans came back and said, ‘If Bill Clinton comes, we’ll give him the two journalists.'”
Although Clinton said it was “beyond unlikely” the State Department would have considered the former president’s return to North Korea a good idea, she noted it was “not totally beyond the realm of possibility” that they would have endorsed the idea.
Clinton also said she was attempting to improve her explanation of the email server that contained hundreds of potentially classified emails from her time at the State Department.
“I’m trying to do a better job of explaining to people what’s going on so there’s not all this concern,” she said, repeatedly blaming the controversy on confusion.
