O’Malley: Clinton email server questions ‘legitimate’

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley on Sunday touted his political experience while saying that questions about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State were “legitimate.”

{mosads}The Democratic presidential candidate said that Clinton and her lawyers could answer questions surrounding whether she sent classified e-mails using a personal server.

“You have a legitimate question to ask and Secretary Clinton and her lawyers can answer it,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“For my part as a candidate, I intend to put out the ideas and the policies that make college more affordable for more people, that expand Social Security, to get wages to go up again for a majority of us who are all working harder instead of down,” O’Malley added.

“So that’s what I’m going to talk about, John. And I’ll leave you to ask Secretary Clinton those other questions.”

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, recently turned over the server to the Justice Department as part of investigation into how she handled certain information while secretary of State. She told reporters on Saturday that the flap over her emails boils down to a bureaucratic issue.

“The facts are the same as they have been from the very beginning of these questions being raised, and most importantly I never sent classified material on my email and I never received any that was marked classified,” she said, according to news reports.

For his part, O’Malley said the “electorate actually looks at candidates in a very holistic way.”

“They ask, ‘Which of these candidates has the independence, the proven ability and experience, and the ideas that will actually serve our nation and move us forward?’ I’ve done that.”

O’Malley said he is the only Democratic candidate with 15 years of executive experience that led to better schools, more-affordable college and the highest median income of any state in America.

“These are the things that people care about,” he said.

“And these are the things I’m going to talk about. And the thing that voters will draw their own conclusions about ability, about integrity, about trust and who should lead us forward as a nation.”

O’Malley, who is pushing for more Democratic debates, said he prefers to focus on where he stands on the issues from financial rules to trade and the Keystone XL pipeline.

“Where does [Hillary] stand? These are the things that you can only have answered in a debate.”

— This report was updated at 2:07 a.m.