Longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin said on Tuesday that the former secretary of state’s private email system was frustrating and sometimes interfered with Clinton’s ability to do her job.
“She wasn’t able to do her job, do what she needed to do,” Abedin said during a deposition with Judicial Watch.
The watchdog group has deposed several other State Department and Clinton aides in addition to Abedin about the presidential candidate’s email practices.
Abedin discussed her frustration with Clinton’s email system after being asked about a Nov. 2010 email exchange in which she told Clinton that they “should talk about putting you on a state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam.”
Abedin sent the email after Clinton missed a phone call with a foreign minister because she did not receive an email to arrange the session.
“She clearly missed the window in this exchange,” Abedin told Judicial Watch’s lawyers, according to a transcript released by the group on Wednesday.
In that Nov. 2010 email exchange, which was not among the records that Clinton handed over to the State Department in 2014, Clinton responded to Abedin, saying that she could get “a separate address or device.” But she added that she didn’t “want any risk of the personal being accessible.” (RELATED: IG Report: Hillary Refused To Make Secret Email Account ‘Accessible’)
Clinton also lamented in the emails that her email setup, which was managed by State Department IT staffer Bryan Pagliano, was “not a good system.”
Clinton claims she paid Pagliano out of her own pocket to manage her email system. Questions have been raised about whether the technician was qualified to maintain and protect a communications system for such a high-profile government official.
This article has been updated with details from Judicial Watch’s transcript.