Hillary Clinton confidently predicted on Thursday that the escalating controversy over her use of a private email server “absolutely” will not derail her 2016 presidential campaign should she win the Democratic nomination.



Clinton, asked in a debate on MSNBC whether she could reassure nervous Democrats that the flap would not blow up her run for the White House, replied: “Absolutely I can.”

The former secretary of state, under fire over her exclusive use of a private email server to do sensitive government work during her time as America’s top diplomat, accused unnamed “people in government” of retroactively classifying her communications and painted Republicans as desperate to knock her out of the 2016 race.

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“Before it was emails, it was Benghazi,” she said, referring to the deadly September 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in the eastern Libyan city. “The Republicans were stirring up so much controversy about that, and I testified for 11 hours, answered their questions. They basically said, ‘Yep, didn’t get her, we tried.’ It was all a political ploy.”

Clinton, weighing in on the argument over whether she received highly secret documents on her private server, declared: “It’s an absurdity. I have absolutely no concerns about it whatsoever.”

Her rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, also dismissed the controversy, after days of suggesting it could pose a problem. Some commentators have said Sanders is making a mistake in not exploiting the FBI investigation into Clinton’s email arrangement for his own political ends.

Sanders, who had famously expressed irritation during the first Democratic debate at the fuss over Clinton’s “damn emails,” insisted that his views had not changed.

“I am feeling exactly the way I felt at the first debate,” he said. “There’s a process underway. I will not politicize it.”