"Either she was the dumbest Secretary of State in American history or a bald-faced liar," Rudy Giuliani said of Hillary Clinton in a statement. | Getty Giuliani: Clinton acted 'with criminal intent'

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed Sunday that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton "acted intentionally and with criminal intent" in regard to the private email server she used while secretary of state.

Giuliani, a Donald Trump surrogate and former United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement released by Trump's campaign that Clinton's "powerful evidence of criminal intent" was how she deleted 33,000 emails and erased them with "expensive BleachBit software" that he claims is "used by criminals seeking to hide evidence from law enforcement."


"The notes released from Hillary Clinton’s FBI interview make it abundantly clear that she was not only extremely careless in her handling of top secret and confidential government information, but acted intentionally and with criminal intent," Giuliani wrote.

His statement comes two days after the FBI released documents from its July 2 interview with Clinton over her private email server.

Giuliani also claimed Clinton was unfit to serve as commander in chief, using the example that she said she thought the "C" marking on emails was referring to paragraphs marked in alphabetical order, rather than classified information.

"This evidence leads to one of two conclusions. Either she was the dumbest Secretary of State in American history or a bald-faced liar," he said in the statement. "If it’s the former, there is a serious question she may get the nuclear codes confused if she were ever President. If it’s the latter she should be prosecuted for the same crime as Martha Stewart by making a false statement to the FBI in violation of 18 U.S. Code section 1001."

“To say that there has never been a case like this before is actually saying there has never been such a case of such a brazen, intentional, long-term and highly calculated attempt to obstruct justice and certainly no case that intentionally exposed (applying the time honored legal definition of criminal intent) top secret and highly confidential information for our enemies to easily hack,” he wrote.

