CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she does not need to apologize for using a private e-mail account and server while at the State Department because “what I did was allowed.”
In an interview with The Associated Press during a Labor Day campaign through Iowa, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination also said the lingering questions about her e-mail practices while serving as President Barack Obama’s first secretary of state have not damaged her campaign. “Not at all. It’s a distraction, certainly,” Clinton said. “But it hasn’t in any way affected the plan for our campaign, the efforts we’re making to organize here in Iowa and elsewhere in the country. And I still feel very confident about the organization and the message that my campaign is putting out.”
Yet even in calling the inquiry into how she used e-mail as the nation’s top diplomat a distraction, Clinton played down how it has affected her as a candidate.
“As the person who has been at the center of it, not very much,” Clinton said. “I have worked really hard this summer, sticking to my game plan about how I wanted to sort of reintroduce myself to the American people.”
Part of that includes, Clinton said, answering any questions about her e-mail “in as many different settings as I can.” The one-on-one interview with The AP was the second for Clinton in the past four days, after having told NBC News on Friday that her decision not to use separate e-mail accounts for her personal and public business wasn’t the “best choice.”
Clinton did not apologize for her decision when asked directly by NBC, “Are you sorry?” Asked Monday by The AP why she won’t directly apologize, Clinton said: “What I did was allowed.”
