Clinton aide on server: ‘She didn’t really think it through’

Hillary Clinton’s communications director says there is no complex explanation for why the Democratic presidential candidate used a private email server at the State Department.

“I’ve encountered this a lot in politics where people think that the answers is a lot more complicated than it really is,” Jennifer Palmieri told co-host John Heilemann on Bloomberg Politics’ “All Due Respect.”

{mosads}“She’s answered this many times and she did have her own email account,” Palmieri said. “Others have done it before and it was just more convenient and she kept it like that.”

“She didn’t really – that’s the thing, she didn’t really think it through,” she added of Clinton. “She has said, had she – she would have done it differently.”

Clinton has turned the private server over to the Department of Justice. The controversy has dogged her on the campaign trail, where she has seen her poll numbers fall. 

Palmieri also refused comment Wednesday over whether Clinton’s personal device had gotten wiped clean before reaching Justice Department investigators last week.

“To be deleted and beyond that I don’t know, and beyond that I don’t understand — this is like, everyone’s an expert on inflating footballs and now everybody’s an expert on wiping servers,” she quipped. “Like, I don’t know how that all works.”

Palmieri is making the media rounds one day after Clinton’s tense press conference in Las Vegas.

Clinton defended her technology habits as appropriate during the combative event Tuesday evening.

“What I did was legally permitted, number one, first and foremost,” she said. “We turned over everything that was work-related, every single thing.”

“I regret this has become a cause célèbre,” Clinton added. “But that does not change the facts, and no matter what anybody tries to say, the facts are the facts.”

Clinton repeatedly argued Tuesday that criticisms of her personal server use are politically motivated, coming ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

The former first lady also made fun of detractors who claim she stored and then erased sensitive national intelligence from the device.

When asked whether she had “wiped” the server, Clinton quipped, “Like, with a cloth of something?”

“I don’t know how it works digitally at all,” she added. 

Concerns over Clinton’s use of the device are undermining support for her 2016 presidential campaign.

The front-runner for next year’s Democratic nomination is now struggling to maintain her lead amid falling national poll numbers. 

Some voters worry that her use of the device renders her neither transparent nor trustworthy enough for the Oval Office.

– Updated at 4:25 p.m.