Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s first press conference since her email scandal hit front pages got off to a very late, and very odd, start Tuesday. A Turkish reporter led off the questioning by asking Clinton whether the furor over her use of a nondescript private email address and home server for all State Department business was part of an anti-feminist backlash.
“It’s wonderful to see you here again,” the reporter, Kahraman Haliscelikof Turkish TV, greeted Clinton Tuesday after she delivered a statement on women’s rights.
“Why did you opt out of using two devices at the time?” Haliscelik asked, after Clinton spoke at the United Nations in New York. “My second follow up question — if you were a man today, would all the fuss being made, be made?”
Clinton said she would “leave that to others to answer,” and instead focused on the first question. The decision to use a non-State email address and server was a matter of “convenience,” said the former first lady and U.S. senator from New York.
Clinton was secretary of state during President Obama’s first term — during which time she sent and received all government correspondence through the email address “[email protected],” which was hosted on a server in Clinton’s residence that was registered to the apparently pseudonymous “Eric Hoteham.”
“It was allowed. Others had done it,” she said.
Saying that her email trove included a total of about 60,000 messages, roughly “half” of which were work-related, Clinton said she believes she has turned over all of her work-related emails to the State Department. She has called on them to be made public.
The controversy over Clinton’s emails began last week when the New York Times reported she relied solely on the personal email address to conduct government business, a practice that seems to violate both federal law on record keeping as well as norms regarding security of government correspondence.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that it was a matter of protocol that a reporter from a foreign correspondent was permitted to ask Clinton the first question.
