After months of questions from federal law enforcement officials and the press, Hillary Clinton’s team is still unable to provide a coherent defense for why she felt it was necessary to conduct business over a private email server when she worked at the State Department.
Even Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, is unable to explain the Democratic front-runner’s server scandal. The best Palmieri could muster in an interview with Bloomberg News this week was to say that Clinton, “didn’t really think it through.”
“I’ve encountered this a lot in politics where people think that the answer is a lot more complicated than it really is,” Palmieri told Bloomberg’s John Heilemann. “She’s answered this many times and she did have her own email account. Others had done it before and it was just more convenient and she kept it like that, and she didn’t really — that’s the thing, she didn’t really think it through.”
“She has said … she would have done it differently,” she added.
Several media figures, including NBC News’ Chuck Todd, have suggested that Clinton operated a private, unauthorized server so as to free herself from the legal constraints of Freedom of Information Act requests. His comments were made one day after the former secretary of state cut short a press conference where she tried unsuccessful to address the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe into her email habits.
Palmieri on Wednesday was to explain what Clinton told her team to do with the emails on the server. But the Clinton spokeswoman’s answer explained nothing.
“To be deleted and beyond that I don’t know and beyond that I don’t understand — this is like, everyone’s an expert on inflating footballs and now everybody’s an expert on wiping servers. Like, I don’t know how that all works,” Palmieri said.
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