News / Politics

Clinton dismisses claims Hillary threatened US national security

Saturday, 13 August 2016 4:27 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 13 August 2016 9:20 AM ]

Former US President Bill Clinton speaks on behalf of his wife and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during a 2016 Presidential Election Forum, hosted by Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote) and Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace August 12, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (AFP photo)

Former US President Bill Clinton has dismissed claims that his wife Hillary Clinton threatened America’s national security with her private email server as "the biggest load of bull."

Talking to reporters on Friday in Las Vegas, Nevada, Clinton denounced the classification system that, he said, forced Hillary to send and receive classified information on an unsecured server while serving as secretary of state. She is the current Democratic presidential nominee for the November election.

"They saw two little notes with a 'C' on it — this is the biggest load of bull I ever heard — that were about telephone calls that she needed to make and the State Department typically puts a little 'C' on it to discourage people from discussing it in public in the event the secretary of state, whoever it is, doesn't make a telephone call," Clinton said. "Does that sound threatening to national security to you?"

FBI Director James Comey told Congress recently that a small number of Hillary’s emails uncovered in his agency’s investigation into her server contained "C" markings.

Clinton was referring to these classification markings. He said that lack of a clear classification procedure led to the Hillary email scandal.

"I think the simplest way to say it is look, there’s a long-running dispute between the State Department and the intelligence agencies. It hadn’t been resolved at the time. It didn’t occur to people at the time that all these 300 people should be doing records classification all the time," he said.

"They had a different system. That is not a cause for distrust. If it were a cause for distrust, it is inconceivable that all these prominent national security people, who were active in other administrations, including Republicans, would have endorsed her,” the former president said.

US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton has come under fire for using a private email account and server at her home in New York for official emails when she was America's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013.

Critics, including Republican presidential election rival Donald Trump, say she endangered government secrets and evaded transparency laws.

The State Department’s inspector general said in late May that Clinton’s personal server violated the department’s record-keeping rules and that it would have been rejected had she asked department officials.

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