Getty Mook: Clinton 'slightly misinterpreted' on emails

Hillary Clinton’s latest comments about her use of a private email server while secretary of state have been “slightly misinterpreted,” her campaign manager said Monday.

“She said this was a mistake multiple times. She has apologized for it,” campaign manager Robby Mook said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” in discussing Clinton’s “Fox News Sunday” interview. “What Director Comey said was that he believes there was no basis for her to believe that, the emails in question that you’re referring to, that she had any reason to believe were classified.”


During her sit-down with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Clinton remarked that FBI Director James Comey characterized her comments as “truthful” in congressional testimony. Wallace, following up, noted that Comey appeared to, in fact, contradict Clinton when he testified that it was “not true” that Clinton had not, as she claimed, received or sent any emails marked classified.

Clinton then put the blame on the “judgments of the professionals,” adding that perhaps some of them “made the wrong call” with respect to the handling of classified material.

Mook reiterated this point Monday.

“These are long-time tenured State Department professionals that worked for different administrations. These folks are not partisan,” Mook said. “They were the ones sending her the emails. She, in [Comey’s] mind, she had no reason to believe they were classified.”

Co-host Joe Scarborough said that “makes it even worse.

“She was forcing everybody that wanted to communicate with her to move out of the classified realm where you send classified information and then put it on their own servers and send it to her. Isn't that worse?” Scarborough asked.

Mook responded, “Well and you don’t understand this. That’s simply not true. You just don’t send classified information over the unclassified system.”

“Well, you would understand this. The FBI director said she did,” Scarborough shot back.

“What the director of the FBI testified [is] he did not see a basis to believe that she knew the information in question was classified when she received it. That’s what he said,” Mook responded.

Mook also pointed to what he called an “important caveat.”

“We can’t see these emails,” Mook explained. “We don’t know. We don’t know if they were marked. We don’t know if they were marked properly. We don’t know. And so the fact of the matter is, we are having to rely on what he is saying, and included in what he said was he did not believe that when she received these emails she had any reason to believe they were classified.”

Asked whether Clinton’s Fox interview comments further complicated the issue, Mook responded, “I think her remarks were slightly misinterpreted.”

“Again, what she was saying, she was saying what I said earlier, which is that Comey testified she had no reason to believe, but also that Comey said in his testimony that everything she said to the FBI was true, and I can tell you what she said to the FBI is the same as what she’s been saying publicly,” he said.