Hillary Clinton has admitted that her private email server was a “mistake” and she “would do it differently” if she could go back. | Getty FBI interviews Hillary Clinton over email use as secretary of state The presumptive Democratic nominee refuses to speculate on the investigation's timeline or final conclusion.

Hillary Clinton met with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday morning for a “voluntary interview” about the investigation into her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state, her campaign announced.

The interview at FBI headquarters in Washington, which lasted for three and a half hours according to a campaign aide, is a long-expected development in the months-long email saga that has complicated Clinton’s White House bid since before its formal inception. Clinton has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing and pledged to cooperate with bureau’s inquiry, bluntly telling an interviewer in March that an indictment is “not going to happen.”


Clinton later Saturday spoke with MSNBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd about the interview, saying she was "eager to do it" while refusing to speculate on the investigation's timeline or final conclusion.

"Let me just repeat what I have repeated for many months now. I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified and there is a process for the review of material before it is released to the public and there were decisions made that material should be classified. I do call that retroactively classifying. So therefore it would not be publically released. But that doesn't chance [sic] the fact as I've explained many times. ... "I have said that I’m going to continue to put forth my record, what I have stood for, do everything I can to earn the trust of the voters of our country."

The presumptive Democratic nominee also addressed criticism from both parties on her husband former President Bill Clinton's meeting with attorney general Loretta Lynch at a Phoenix airport, saying, "hindsight is 20/20."

The Clinton campaign, in a previous statement, called the meeting with the FBI "voluntary."

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on the session.

While her use of a homebrewed email server was not a major issue during Clinton’s primary campaign against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders -- who effectively took the issue off the table during their first debate -- it has already been a major point of contention with her likely Republican opponent Donald Trump, who refers to her as “Crooked Hillary" and has vowed to put her in jail if he is elected.

The timing of the interview suggests that the Department of Justice’s investigation may be nearing its conclusion, just weeks before Clinton formally accepts her party’s nomination in Philadelphia later this month. And it comes after a number of her closest confidantes, including top advisers Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, have already spoken with the FBI. Bryan Pagliano, a former technology aide to Clinton, also spoke with investigators after striking an immunity deal with federal prosecutors.

In recent months, Mills, Abedin and Pagliano have also submitted to court-ordered depositions about Clinton's email setup. The transcripts of those sessions have been publicly released, showing Pagliano repeatedly invoked his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. The conservative group that conducted that questioning as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Judicial Watch, has also asked another judge to order Clinton to give a deposition in a separate FOIA lawsuit. No ruling has been made on that request.

The controversy has dogged Clinton repeatedly since news first broke of her unusual email arrangement in March 2015, and both the candidate and campaign officials have long said they were happy and willing to cooperate with the investigation.

But it has nonetheless long been a drag on Clinton politically, a major cause of her low trustworthiness ratings among voters as Republicans have portrayed her as corrupt. A Quinnipiac University poll published on Wednesday found Trump besting her, 45-37 percent, on the question of who is more honest and trustworthy.

The political furor surrounding the email issue has re-exploded in recent weeks, following the release of a State Department inspector general’s report in late May that concluded Clinton had failed to comply with the department’s records policies while using her server.

The report noted how some employees who asked questions about the arrangement were told not to question it, and it confirmed that the server was subject to apparent hacking attempts.

“Secretary Clinton should have preserved any federal records she created and received on her personal account by printing and filing those records with the related files in the Office of the Secretary,” read that report, which also criticized the agency’s record keeping procedures.

“At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act."

Clinton has cooperated with the FBI’s investigations by turning over more than 30,000 of her emails, while deleting around the same number she said were personal in nature. Hundreds of emails turned over during the process were later deemed classified — several dozen of them Secret or Top Secret, the upper tiers of national security classification, and about 2000 designated as Confidential, the lowest level of protection for classified information — in what Clinton has called “an absurdity."



She has said, however, that using a private email server was a "mistake" and she "would do it differently” if she could go back.

“I understand people may have concerns about this. But I hope voters look at the full picture of everything I've done in my career and the full threat posed by a Donald Trump presidency, and if they do, I have faith in the American people that they will make the right choice here,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper recently.

The timing of the FBI interview, on Fourth of July weekend when few Americans are likely to be paying much attention, is fortunate for Clinton — as is, noted former Obama White House aide David Axelrod, its placement in the lull period between the primaries and the Democratic National Convention.

Timing of FBI interview, between primaries and convention, probably good timing for @HillaryClinton. Best to get it behind her.

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) July 2, 2016

Just last week Clinton’s husband Bill Clinton, came under even more scrutiny from Republicans and Democrats alike for meeting with Lynch aboard a private plane on a Phoenix airport tarmac. The impromptu get-together, which both parties described as a friendly discussion about golf and grandchildren, fueled GOP calls for an independent investigation.

Lynch, a Democratic appointed by President Barack Obama, acknowledged on Friday that the meeting had “cast a shadow” over the Justice Department’s investigation into the candidate’s emails, adding that she anticipates accepting whatever conclusion investigators present her.

“The recommendations will be reviewed by career supervisors in the Department of Justice and in the FBI, and by the FBI director,” Lynch said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. “And then, as is the common process, they present it to me and I fully expect to accept their recommendations."

The Trump campaign blasted out an email after Lynch's comments with the subject line "FACTS ON CLINTON'S SECRET SERVER." Lynch's unwillingness to formally recuse herself from the FBI investigation, the email said, "raises even more questions about potential political pressure, interference and bias."

Josh Gerstein contributed.