JUDY WOODRUFF:

Joining me now discuss these latest revelations is Richard Painter. He served as the chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush.

Richard Painter, welcome back to the program.

We should say that an investigation by the Justice Department was closed with regard to Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server.

But now, with regard to this new information, what does the law say about the ability of people working in the White House to use their own private e-mail accounts?

RICHARD PAINTER, Former Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush: Well, they are not supposed to. And that's a violation of White House policy going back to the Clinton administration in their White House staff manual.

And in our staff manual, we made it clear, I made it clear, the Bush White House, that you're not supposed to do it. But people did. A number of political people were using Republican National Committee e-mail, and we got in trouble for that, got a lot of grief from the House Oversight Committee over that.

And there was a big flap. None of it was criminal. No one brought in the FBI.

And then Hillary Clinton made the same mistake, had her own personal e-mail server. And I think that was a stupid mistake. It wasn't criminal. That was blown way out of proportion, the Clinton situation.

Some people sent some classified stuff to her, and that's one of the risks you take when you use a personal e-mail, but, once again, no precedent for prosecuting somebody. And that was foolishness to blow that that far out of proportion. I don't know why the FBI took so long with it.

And now, of course, we see what's happening in the Trump administration. It's the same thing. It's a foolish thing to do.

This is not something that calls for criminal investigation, but it really is atrocious that we went through a whole election season trying to make a high crime or something out of what Hillary Clinton had done with her e-mail, which everybody else in the administration is well aware of, because they were receiving e-mails from her on a personal server.

It's a very bad idea. They shouldn't be doing it, but we shouldn't be accusing people of crimes and say, well, lock her up, and these political rallies where they're screaming and yelling, as if they're in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1933 or something.

It really is embarrassing for our country, how far this thing has been taken.