In an email commenting on Hillary Clinton’s admission that a private email server “clearly wasn’t the best choice,” aide Neera Tanden wrote that with practice Clinton will eventually “sound like a human.”
Tanden, as the president of the Center for American Progress (CAP), is a highly-placed Democratic strategist and a close friend of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, who is CAP’s chairman and counselor.
She wrote the note to Podesta on Aug. 26, 2015, and it was released Friday by WikiLeaks. Tanden also suggested that the Clinton campaign team had great difficulty bringing Clinton around to issuing what was more an explanation than an apology for conducting State Department business from a personal email address.
“I read what she said today. She’s actually moving,” Tanden wrote. “It seems to me that if directly asked whether it was a mistake she may actually say it was. She often says she absolutely won’t do something and then does it. Not always but often. I would advise to stay at her and schedule multiple interviews soon! Lock her in. Eventually she will sound like a human.”
Clinton’s statement, issued at an Ankeny, Iowa primary campaign event on Aug. 26, 2015, was considered a dramatic shift in Clinton’s email discussion. Until then, she had treated the issue as either inconsequential or a joking matter.
But on that day, she claimed, “My use of personal email was allowed by the State Department. It clearly wasn’t the best choice. I should have used two emails — one personal, one for work — and I take responsibility for that decision.”
But Clinton was incorrect in suggesting that her email arrangement was condoned by the State Department. It was, in fact, contrary to regulations that guard the transmission of classified information.