Hillary gets testy when pressed on email scandal

LAS VEGAS — A restive crowd waited for an hour in a packed and warm gymnasium at a community center in North Las Vegas, one of the poorer neighborhoods of the glitzy city, for the chance to ask Hillary Clinton some questions.

When she arrived Tuesday afternoon, a dozen supporters — many waving both hands in the air to get her attention in the circular town hall setup — got their opportunity. They asked her about gun laws, stand your ground laws, and what she would do to support LGBT rights. The crowd was excited, cheering for both the questions and the answers. One woman simply asked for a hug (Clinton promised she would give her one when she finished her Q&A); a child’s voice piped up to ask if Clinton would earn as much as a man if she becomes president. Throughout the hourlong town hall, Clinton appeared relaxed and loose.


Close to an hour later, the Democratic front-runner faced another group who had waited patiently to ask her questions: the press. This time, in an empty and quiet gymnasium, Clinton grew testy as the back-and-forth with reporters became more heated and focused pointedly on her emails and her use of a private server while she served as secretary of state.

“What was supposed to be convenient has turned out to be anything but convenient,” she said, reiterating that she “wants Americans to understand” that when it comes to whether or not she sent or received any classified emails, the process would be the same whether or not she had used a government account. “It has nothing to do with me and it has nothing to do with the fact that my account was personal,” she said of inspectors general investigations into whether or not classified material was discovered.

“Isn’t leadership about taking responsibility?” she was asked.

“I take responsibility … in retrospect this didn’t turn out to be convenient at all,” she said. “And I regret that this had to become such a cause celebre,” reiterating that what she did was legal and she has tried to be helpful to law enforcement agencies.

“No matter what anyone tries to say, the facts are stubborn,” Clinton said. “What I did was legally permitted, first and foremost. No. 2, I turned over an abundance of [emails in] an attempt to be helpful, over anything that I thought was vaguely related [to work]… and I said make them public.” She acknowledged “anxiety” about it, but stated: “The facts are the facts.”

The Justice Department is now investigating whether there was any improper handling of sensitive material. Clinton’s campaign has said she is not the target of the probe.

But when pressed multiple times about whether she had tried to wipe her entire email server clean, Clinton was not able to answer the question.

“I don’t know, I have no idea,” she said. “Like with cloth or something? I don’t know how it works digitally at all. I know you want to make a point, I will just repeat what I have said: in order to be cooperative as possible, we have turned over the server … we turned over everything that was work-related. Every single thing.”

As she exited the gymnasium, a reporter asked her if the questions were an indication that the email controversy isn’t going away, and will dog her campaign into next year.

Clinton turned around, her hands raised in the air in a shrug. “Nobody talked to me about it — other than you guys,” she said, and then exited with her top aides around her.

The dichotomy between the discussion at Clinton’s town hall and the one that followed with the press has existed for months, as controversies surrounding the Clinton Foundation and her email use as secretary of state have swirled around her campaign. Campaign operatives and surrogates maintain that it shows that voters don’t care about what’s in Clinton’s email — they care about policy proposals that affect their lives.

In that vein, Clinton on Tuesday was again eager to draw a contrast with Republicans on issues that will motivate voters in a general election.

“I don’t know how many of you watched that debate,” she said, “Seventeen candidates. … not one word about college affordability, not one word about equal pay for equal work, not one word about dealing with criminal justice and mass incarceration and that black lives matter.” The crowd cheered.

The campaign sent out a news release after the event touting that “Hillary Clinton Drives Core Economic Contrast at Town Hall in Las Vegas.”

But it’s not that the supportive crowd here on Tuesday and others like it that come out to see Clinton do not care about the email controversy, or are not paying attention. Some admitted that even though they like her, they worry it makes her too vulnerable in a general election.

“I’m concerned about that because Republicans could take that and make her look really, really bad,” admitted Otistine Brown, a retired school teacher from Las Vegas, who attended the town hall on Tuesday and said she had an opportunity to speak with Clinton. “I’m concerned about the emails. She said she thought the attention around it was “like a ploy to get her out of this election.”

Even with the controversy swirling in the background, she said she still supports Clinton. “It’s important that she stay in this election,” she said. “I told her to stay in there, and hang in there.”