For weeks the media has attempted to get Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton to apologize for her mishandling of classified information on a private email server, and after some confusion in the “did she or didn’t she?” game, the Clinton campaign finally sent an email to supporters admitting the candidate’s faults and dispelling allegations against her in an attempt to set the record straight.
“I wanted you to hear this directly from me,” she wrote to her supporter e-mail list. “Yes, I should have used two email addresses, one for personal matters and one for my work at the State Department. Not doing so was a mistake. I’m sorry about it, and I take full responsibility.”
Clinton, whose personal emails contain exchanges with staffers late at night to ask if they were awake, sent the email very late on Tuesday night after Labor Day weekend. Earlier in the evening Tuesday, Clinton told ABC World Report’s David Muir that she was sorry for her actions, but later, reports came out that while doing a pre-interview for the Ellen DeGeneres show that same day, Clinton walked back on her apology. Last week, while being interview by Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, Clinton avoided giving an apology although repeatedly asked to do so.
The former secretary of state is currently under investigation by the FBI for her email server and has had to give over thousands of pages of emails. Next month she will testify in front of the Benghazi select committee.
Her campaign provided a fact sheet on the campaign website, explaining away the email crisis. Clinton dismantles any allegations against her by stating that her “use of a personal email account was aboveboard and allowed under the State Department’s rules” and also, she wasn’t the only one in on the scandal, revealing that “everyone I communicated with in government was aware of it.”
Additionally she insists that nothing she “sent or received was marked classified,”that she “provided all work related emails to the State Department” and that only after she left the State Department were the classification regulations were changed.
When Clinton’s aide Cheryl Mills, a recipient of many of Clinton’s emails, testified before the Select Committee last week, she was unable to account for classified emails dealing with the crisis in Libya that Clinton did not hand over to the State Department. Outside agencies have also confirmed that Clinton had multiple classified documents on her account dealing with both drones and nuclear weapons in North Korea.
