"It's not relevant. There's no prohibition against doing that kind of thing," State Department Spokesman John Kirby said on "Fox & Friends."

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"She did it when she was retired. More importantly, she's the right person for this job, because of the experience that she has," Kirby added.

Republicans were quick to point out on Tuesday that Ambassador Janice Jacobs, the State Department's new transparency coordinator, had maxed out her donation to Clinton.

Jacobs, who retired in April 2014, donated $2,700 to Clinton's Democratic presidential campaign this past June, according to Federal Election Commission records.

She told The Associated Press that at the time she didn't expect to be recalled to work.

"I think if you look at her career over so many decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations, you'll see that she's balanced," Kirby said on Fox News.

Clinton turned over about 55,000 pages of documents from her private email server to the State Department for archiving, and the department is releasing the emails publicly.