Hillary Clinton’s campaign communications director admitted on Wednesday that the Democratic candidate “didn’t really think…through” her use of a private email server.
Jennifer Palmieri also took a shot at those raising questions over the former secretary’s use of the hardware, comparing them to the arm-chair analysts who weighed in on Deflategate, the controversy surrounding the New England Patriot’s use of deflated footballs during a game earlier this year.
“This is like everyone’s an expert on inflating footballs and now everybody’s an expert on wiping servers,” Palmieri told Bloomberg’s John Heilemann in an interview, adding, “like, I don’t know how that all works.”
“She’s answered this many times and she did have her own email account. Others had done it before and it was just more convenient and she kept it like that, and she didn’t really — that’s the thing, she didn’t really think it through.”
Heilemann asked Palmieri a basic question about how Clinton handled her server, which had been kept in New Jersey since 2013 was handed over to the FBI earlier this month.
It is still unclear when the server was wiped clean and who directed such action. Clinton’s attorney told the House Select Committee on Benghazi in March that the server did not contain any data. And in a letter to the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday, he confirmed that information from the device was erased.
But Clinton has avoided given details about how that process unfolded and what hand she played in instructing her team to scrub the device.
And instead of answering those questions, she’s opted instead to joke about the ordeal. In response to a question about whether she had wiped the server, Clinton quipped, “what, like with a cloth or something?”
Heilemann pressed Palmieri on that question — directly asking her whether Clinton instructed the server to be wiped.
“No,” an exasperated Palmieri said. “She had lawyers to look at all the emails and decide what was personal and what was official and she decided to not retain the personal ones and they were deleted.”
“And beyond that, any technical questions about servers — that’s not — you know, I don’t know, but…”
Heilemann repeated the question.
“I’m saying, she had them go through it and they deleted the emails. I don’t understand what the…,” a cagey Palmieri responded.
Heilemann asserted that when most people delete emails they simply hit a delete button on their computers. Did Clinton do more, he asked.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Palmieri repeated.
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