Tuesday after speaking at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York City, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a press conference to address the brewing controversy over her exclusive use of private email on a server she owns when serving as secretary of state for President Obama.
Clinton said, “I’ll give you some of the back ground. In going through the emails, there were over 60,000 in total sent and received. About half were work-related and went to the State Department. About half were personal that were not in any way related to my work. I had no reason to save them, but that was my decision, because the federal guidelines are clear and the State Department request was clear. For any government employee, it is that government employee’s responsibility to determine what is personal and what is work-related. I am very confident of the process that we conducted and the emails that were produced. And I feel like once the American public begins to see the emails, they will have an unprecedented insight into a high government official’s daily communications, which I think will be quite interesting.
“With respect to the foundation, I am very proud of the work the foundation does,” she continued. “I am very proud of the hundreds of thousands of people who support the work of the foundation and the results that have been achieved for people here at home and around the world. And I think that we are very clear about where we stand; certainly where I stand on all of these issues. There can’t be any mistake about my passion concerning women’s rights here at home and around the world. So I think that people who want to support the foundation know full well what it is we stand for and what it is we’re working for.”
When asked if she is willing to turn over the server to a third party, Clinton responded, “I have fulfilled that responsibility and I have no doubt that we’ve done exactly what we should have done. When the search was conducted, we were asking that any email be identified and preserved that could potentially be public records. And we went beyond that and the process produced over 30,000 work emails, and I think that we have more than met the request from the State Department. The server contains personal communications from my husband and me, and I believe I have met all of my responsibilities, and the server will remain private and I think that the state department will be able over time to release all of the records that were provided.”
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