Clinton: I ‘May Have Short-Circuited’ In My Answers About What The FBI Said About My Emails

Let’s go back to what Hillary Clinton has said about the FBI’s criminal investigation into her private email use: FBI Director James Comey said, “My answers were truthful, and that what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people.”

She was asked to respond to those remarks since news organizations ruled that to be utterly false at the National Association of Black Journalists-National Association of Hispanic Journalists Convention. She was also asked does this undercut her effort to rebuild trust with the American people. Katie noted that it’s a bit odd that Clinton is even here since she’s avoided press conferences for the past 245 days.

“I was pointing out that in both of those instances, that Director Comey had said that my answers in my FBI interview were truthful. That’s really the bottom line here. And I have said during the interview, and in many other occasions over the past months, that what I told the FBI, which he said, was truthful is consistent with what I said publicly. So, I may have short-circuited it. And for that, I will try to clarify because I think [Fox News’] Chris Wallace and I were probably talking past each other.

Clinton reiterated her admission that using two email accounts was a mistake. Yet, she ventured into legalese about her statements about classified information being sent through her server. The FBI determined that out of the 30,000 emails returned to the State Department from Clinton 110 on 52 separate email chains were determined to have classified material at the time they were sent of received. Comey then said in his testimony on July 7 that only three were labeled classified at the time they were sent through Clinton’s server, but did not have the proper classification header indicating potentially sensitive material, therefore Clinton might not have known. As for the 100 emails, Clinton cited Comey again saying that they were classified, but not properly marked, so she defended her careless behavior by saying that she never sent anything marked classified—though Clinton said that other agencies might have disagree. It still doesn’t negate the fact that she and her staff were careless, they potentially exposed secrets to foreign actors, and it’s not necessarily a good defense to say that you couldn’t decipher which information probably should've been marked because you're not "sophisticated" enough. The secretary of state is an original classification authority, and the Clinton camp seems to be okay with the notion that Hillary was, for lack of a better term, too dumb to know what the classification markings mean. Is that what were going with here (again)?

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Second, Guy has written extensively on Clinton's email lies, and about The Washington Post fact checker, who not only gave the former first lady four Pinocchios for her interview she did with Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday, but said, “she relies on excessively technical and legalistic answers to explain her actions.” Yes, there were 110 emails that were classified at the time they were sent, but the FBI also found thousands of classified emails as they combed through her server. These are the Clintons. And when they get their hand caught in the cookie jar their default position is to deny, deny, and deny some more. That’s exactly what Hillary has done with this fiasco over her emails since the FBI concluded their investigation. While they decided not to press charges, they did give a brutal assessment of the utter carelessness that Clinton and her staff exhibited regarding safeguarding sensitive material. The fact that the FBI torpedoed her entire narrative, whether she wants to admit it or not, also sunk her poll numbers against Trump, until the billionaire decided to attack a Gold Star family after the Democratic Convention last month. Still, her confidence and trust numbers with voters are abysmal. 

So, no—Clinton really didn’t clear up anything other than remind people that she’s wouldn’t know what information is indeed classified even though she’s one of the principal actors who decide which communications should be labeled as such.