Dick Cheney walloped Hillary Clinton Monday morning for her 'sloppy and unprofessional' habit of hosting classified State Department emails on a personal home-brew server housed at her upstate New York house.

The former U.S. vice president told CNN he 'found it surprising that somebody as high ranking as secretary of state, who's dealing with classified and sensitive information all the time, would think it was okay to have a private server in your home, where you put, you know, information and so forth or you send emails.'

Commingling personal messages with what might turn out to be some of America's most closely guarded secrets, Cheney said, 'reflects a lack of understanding about how easy it is for adversaries to tap into communications. The Chinese recently picked up the files of everybody who is currently working for the federal government.'

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Former VP Dick Cheney said Monday morning that Hillary Clinton's choice to mix her personal emails with sensitive State Department information was 'sloppy and unprofessional'

NOT HOLDING BACK: Cheney appeared on CNN's morning program alongside his daughter Liz and also urged VP Joe Biden to run for the White House – although he cracked a mischievous grin when he issued the advice

UNDER FIRE: As Clinton attracts slings and arrows from every corner, Cheney added his opinion that 'you should not operate in the way she did' as a high-ranking US official

'Maybe she went into it ignorant, but I find that hard to believe,' said Cheney, who was also President Gerald Ford's White House chief of staff, a Wyoming congressman and secretary of defense.

'She’s an intelligent woman, she spent time in the White House. You should not operate in the way she did. And I’ve got to believe it was not consistent with the U.S. State Department personnel. It certainly wasn't consistent, apparently, with the way we handle classified information in the federal government.'

'I think she should have known better,' he said.

Clinton has begun to attract barbs from her left flank as well over the email flap.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, her most popular challenger to date, said Monday on MSNBC that hosting State Department emails on a server she personally controlled was 'not a good practice.'

WIth a wry smile and an audible chuckle, Cheney also urged Joe Biden, the current U.S. vice president, to challenge Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Biden has been sending signals that he is considering getting into the race while Clinton – a former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady – takes hit after hit in the polls as her email scandal has become the news story that won't go away.

'I'd love to see Joe get in the race,' Cheney told CNN correspondent Jamie Gangel on the network's 'New Day' morning program.

'Go for it, Joe!' he urged with a half-snicker directed at the famously gaffe-prone Obama deputy. 'He's tried twice before.'

ATTACKED FROM HER LEFT FLANK: Self-described 'socialist' senator Bernie Sanders criticized Clinton on Monday for her email habits while she ran the State Department

Biden, he said, 'obviously is interested. I think there's a lot of support for him in the Democratic Party. I think it would stir things up. They're short candidates on their side, so I'd urge Joe to have a shot at it.'

Asked if the current veep would make a 'more formidable' candidate than the Democrats' current front-runner, Biden hinted that Hillary would have her hands full fighting a two-front war against both a media onslaught and a likeable rival.

'There's this notion that Hillary, sort of, had inherited the nomination, that nobody could really challenge her for the nomination,' he said. 'I think that's now pretty well gone by the boards because of her problems.'

'And I think that's why there's potential support out there. So she does have some opposition now, and my bet is Joe's going to run.'

But Biden's strongest words were reserved for Hillary, who has tacked in the last week toward accepting 'responsibility' for the choice that has turned her campaign into a referendum on her honesty and trustworthiness.

The State Department is scheduled to release on Monday more than 6,000 of the emails Clinton handed over late last year – the largest batch yet that has gone through a screening process to censor material deemed classified.

Earlier releases, which together are smaller than the massive document dump expected Monday afternoon, have included 63 email messages that the State Department determined contained information too sensitive to be shared with the public.

PWNED, CHENEY STYLE: 'I think she should have known better,' he said of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton

But the entire cache, comprising more than 30,000 messages, represents only about half of Clinton's emails once housed on her now-infamous server.

The other 30,000-plus were deleted at Clinton's direction. She has claimed they were all personal in nature, but Republicans on Capitol Hill have been dogged in their attempts to prove otherwise as they investigate her actions before, during and after a pair of 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Those bloody assaults on State Department facilities and a nearby CIA-controlled annex killed four Americans including then-U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

Clinton's selective disclosures to her old agency have resulted in a situation where some conservatives are alleging that foreign powers now have a more complete record than America's government does of her correspondence during her four years as the top U.S. diplomat.

'You think the Russians and the Chinese have her emails? ' Gangel asked Cheney on Monday.