The American public doesn’t understand that Hillary Clinton is telling the truth about her classified emails because government classification issues are “too complicated to explain to people,” Bill Clinton said Friday.
The former president was speaking in Las Vegas a presidential forum hosted by the Asian American Journalists Association when he was asked why his wife lied about her emails.
“This is the biggest load of bull I’ve ever heard,” Clinton said during a lengthy response to the question.
He also threw two government officials — FBI director James Comey and Sec. of State John Kerry — under the bus while defending Hillary.
“First of all, the FBI director said when he testified before Congress, he had to amend his previous day’s statement that she had never received any emails that are classified,” said Clinton, referring to Comey’s statement during a July 5 press conference that Hillary Clinton received at least three emails with classification markings on them when she was secretary of state.
“They saw two little notes with a ‘c’ on it,” Clinton said, referring to the emails, which were notes for a phone call that Clinton was scheduled to have with a foreign leader.
“This is the biggest load of bull I’ve ever heard,” the former president said.
WATCH:
But he left out numerous other criticisms Comey laid out of the former first lady’s email habits.
During that press conference last month, Comey called Clinton’s use of a private email server “extremely careless.” He also said that Clinton sent or received more than 100 emails that federal agencies have determined contained information that was classified at the time the emails were originated.
In the nearly 18 months since news of Clinton’s email setup broke, the Democratic presidential candidate has offered up several different defenses of her email practices.
She initially said that she did not send or receive any classified information. When it was found that some of her emails did have information that was retroactively classified, she revised her claim to say that she did not send or receive any information that was classified at the time the emails were originated. When other emails in the batch of documents she gave to the federal government were found to have information that was classified at origin, Clinton again revised her public statements to say that she did not send or receive information that was marked classified.
That assertion has also been undermined. Clinton signed a classified information non-disclosure agreement when she took office in Jan. 2009 in which she acknowledged that classified information should be considered classified whether it is marked or unmarked.
Bill Clinton also defended Hillary’s email practices by pointing out that her successor, John Kerry, also used a personal email account until last year.
“She should have known that a different set of rules would apply to her,” Clinton complained.
