Hillary Clinton is prolonging her own misery where her email scandal is concerned, unnamed aides and allies with close ties to the Democratic candidate have told The Hill.

"I think there are a number of supporters who want her to give a different answer so that even if it doesn't put it to bed, it sounds more sincere," said one aide, who observed that in a time when it's crucial to impress voters, Clinton is "not coming off well." That aide called Clinton "stubborn" on the email issue, while another faulted her for being "careless," particularly since the candidate must realize "that every utterance on the topic is going to be thrown into the crucible."

Most recently, Clinton came under fire for claiming in an interview Sunday that when FBI Director James Comey concluded his agency's investigation of her email habits, he "said [her] answers were truthful" when she spoke in public about her email habits. In reality, Comey explicitly said the opposite, leading multiple fact-checkers to rate Clinton's account as an outright lie. Bonnie Kristian