Hillary Clinton asserted at the Iowa State Fair Saturday that average voters don’t care about her use of a private email server as secretary of state.
But the Democrat avoided testing out her theory, opting to answer questions from reporters rather than attending The Des Moines Register Presidential Soapbox, a forum nearly all of the other candidates for president will have attended by the time the fair ends next week.
“We’ll see how this all plays out, but it’s not anything people talk to me about as I travel around the country. It is never raised in my town halls. It’s never raised in my other meetings with people,” Clinton told reporters at the fair when asked about the FBI’s investigation into her home-brew email server.
She was accompanied by former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who endorsed his former senate colleague in The Des Moines Register earlier this week.
“I never sent classified material on my email, and I never received any that was marked classified,” Clinton maintained.
“So I’m going to let whatever this inquiry is go forward and will await the outcome of it. The State Department has confirmed what I just said to you.”
Clinton’s qualification that she did not receive any emails that were “marked classified” is a relatively new wrinkle in her explanation of the use of a private email account.
The FBI seized Clinton’s home-brew email server from a New Jersey data center earlier this week. That’s after I. Charles McCullough, the Intelligence Community inspector general, found two emails he believes contained “top secret” information at the time they were sent. Clinton did not send the emails, but they traversed her server, which was housed at the time in the basement of her Chappaqua, N.Y. home.
When the scandal broke open in March, Clinton said “there was no classified material” on the server. But as the inquiry has progressed, she’s revised that claim. Last month in Iowa she said that “I am confident that I never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received.”
But as Clinton alters her claim with each new twist, she’s taken a more aggressive stance on the campaign trail against Republicans for their role in pushing the issue.
“But I do think that if you look at the Republicans in Congress, the ones running for president, there is an unfortunate tendency to try to make partisan a tragedy in Benghazi which I just fundamentally disagree with,” Clinton said Saturday. “I don’t think it’s right, and I will not participate in it.”
Clinton’s remarks at the fair were similar — though not as fiery — as her scathing attack on Republicans at the Democratic Wing Ding Dinner Friday.
“I won’t get down in the mud with them,” Clinton said of Republicans at that event, her voice low and her finger wagging in the air.
“I won’t play politics with national security or dishonor the memories of those we’ve lost. I won’t pretend that that is anything other than what it is — the same old partisan games we’ve seen so many times before.”
Just before Clinton’s press conference, former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee answered questions at Presidential Soapbox. Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is scheduled to answer questions from the public later on Saturday. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush fielded questions Friday. Only Donald Trump has said he will not take part in the event. It is unclear why Trump will avoid the forum, but it may stem from a falling out he had with The Des Moines Register last month over a negative editorial it published about the billionaire.
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