In an interview with CBS, President Obama concluded that his former Secretary of State and current leader in the Democratic run for president, Hillary Clinton, made a mistake when she decided to host her own private server for her private and government emails.
“I think she’d be the first to acknowledge that maybe she could have handled the original decision better and the disclosures more quickly,” Obama said.Republicans have used Hillary’s email decision as a political weapon to attack her.
Obama downplayed the threat to national security, and when it was pointed out that his administration has prosecuted people for having classified material on their private computers, the president said he didn’t get the impression there was an intent to “hide something or to squirrel away information.” He also said he was not initially aware of her use of the private email server.
There are still questions being raised about the security of that system. Former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden told Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan recently that Clinton’s use of a private server was a “problem.”
Senate investigators recently discovered that Clinton’s private server was subjected to unspecified hacking attempts in 2013 from China, South Korea and Germany. The FBI is still examining her system, and that review could reveal evidence, if any, of unauthorized intrusions into her server or any attempts to siphon off her data.
