Hillary Clinton was interviewed on Saturday at FBI headquarters in Washington, as part of the investigation into her use of a private email server while secretary of state in the Obama administration.

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The interview lasted three and a half hours, the Clinton campaign said, and came at the end of a week in which the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, expressed her regret over a private meeting with Bill Clinton which critics used to cast doubt on her impartiality on the email issue.



Clinton’s campaign confirmed the meeting early on Saturday. Later, the former secretary of state told MSNBC she had been “eager” to participate in the interview and was “pleased to have the opportunity” to help the justice department bring the investigation to a conclusion.

Speaking to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, Clinton agreed that the FBI interview had been “civil and businesslike” but declined to discuss specifics. It remains unclear when the investigation will come to an end or whether any prosecutions will follow.



Clinton has nonetheless been eager to close down an issue that has dogged every step of her presidential campaign. Her email practices while heading the state department were first revealed in March 2015. She launched her bid to succeed Barack Obama in the White House the following month.



The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has said he would pursue a criminal indictment of Clinton if elected president. On Saturday, he tweeted: “It is impossible for the FBI not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. What she did was wrong! What Bill did was stupid!”

Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, released a statement in which he said: “Hillary Clinton has just taken the unprecedented step of becoming the first major party presidential candidate to be interviewed by the FBI as part of a criminal investigation surrounding her reckless conduct.

“That the FBI wanted her for questioning reinforces her central role in deliberately creating a culture which put her own political ambitions above state department rules and jeopardized our national security.”

Between May 2015 and February 2016, more than 30,000 of Clinton’s emails were released in tranches. Among the emails was information marked as classified by government officials, although Clinton’s campaign has said the material was not classified at the time it was exchanged. The matter was referred to the justice department, which opened an investigation in July 2015.

In May of this year, a state department audit found that the use of the private server had violated department rules. Violations cited in the audit included the use of mobile devices for official business without checking if they were secure.

Asked on NBC if she had violated the law, Clinton reiterated that communications marked as classified during the state department’s review of her emails had only been done so retroactively.



“Let me just repeat what I have repeated for many months now,” Clinton said. “I never received nor sent any material that was marked classified.”



She added: “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. So therefore it would not be publicly released.”



Clinton’s meeting with the FBI signaled that the investigation could be nearing its final stages. She is set to formally accept her party’s nomination for president later this month, at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.



Polling has found Americans split over Clinton’s email issue. Republicans are overwhelmingly more likely than Democrats to view her behavior as unethical, but the controversy has taken a toll more broadly on whether voters view Clinton as trustworthy.



Clinton acknowledged to MSNBC it was a perception she needed to overcome.



“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,” she said. “I know that’s something that I’m going to keep working on.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest RNC chair Reince Priebus said Clinton’s use of a private email server helped ‘jeopardize our national security’. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters

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Lynch said on Friday she would accept whatever recommendations were put forward by the FBI and career prosecutors upon the conclusion of the case.



Lynch described her encounter with Bill Clinton, at an airport in Phoenix, as a purely social discussion. But Republicans and even some Democrats said the timing of the meeting raised concerns and Lynch acknowledged it had “cast a shadow” over the justice department’s investigation, a process she insisted was independent.

“It’s important to make it clear that that meeting with President Clinton does not have a bearing on how this matter will be reviewed and resolved,” Lynch said at the Aspen ideas festival in Colorado.

“The recommendations will be reviewed by career supervisors in the department of justice and in the FBI, and by the FBI director. And then, as is the common process, they present it to me and I fully expect to accept their recommendations.”

Clinton told MSNBC the meeting was both short and unplanned, and characterized it as “an exchange of pleasantries”. She also echoed Lynch’s claim that the justice department review was not discussed.



“I think, you know, hindsight is 20/20,” she said. “Both the attorney general and my husband have said they wouldn’t do it again.



“Obviously no one wants to see any untoward conclusions drawn.”