On Sunday, Hillary Clinton appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and moderator Chuck Todd made sure to give the former Secretary of State some softball questions to help justify her use of a private e-mail server during her time at the State Department.
Todd teed up Mrs. Clinton with what he described as an “alternative explanation” for her use of a private server which was that “Republicans have been coming after you for years, you might have -- may have been running for president in the future and you wanted to make it a little more difficult for congressional investigators to subpoena your government e-mails and more difficult for Freedom of Information Act requests.”
After Clinton provided a long answer to Todd’s question, the Meet the Press moderator provided the Democrat up with another easy question about her ability to reassure her base that her campaign is strong:
You know one of the things about this over the last six months and I've heard from supporters is that there's an allegation about your e-mail server, the campaign provides an explanation, you provide an explanation, there's a new allegation, you have to provide a new explanation, there's an addendum, it has the feel of a drip-drip-drip. Can you reassure Democrats that there's nothing else here?
While Todd was eager to give Clinton ample opportunities to justify her e-mail setup, he failed to challenge her on past statements she had made that “everyone” within the State Department knew she was “using a personal e-mail.”
Earlier this month, the Washington Post gave Mrs. Clinton three Pinocchios for such claims but Todd failed to bring this up and instead found it necessary to ask the Democrat another softball question: “Can you say with 100% certain they the deleted e-mails that the FBI’s not going to find anything in there that’s going to cause you to have to explain again?"
See relevant transcript below.
NBC’s Meet the Press
September 27, 2015
CHUCK TODD: Can you respond to an alternative explanation that has sort of --
HILLARY CLINTON: Another conspiracy theory?
TODD: That perhaps the reason you wanted to have a private server and not a government server is that Republicans have been coming after you for years, you might have -- may have been running for president in the future and you wanted to make it a little more difficult for congressional investigators to subpoena your government e-mails and more difficult for Freedom of Information Act requests. Is that a fair theory or no?
CLINTON: It's totally ridiculous. That never crossed my mind. In fact, since more than 90% of my work-related e-mails were on the system they are subject to FOIA or any other request. That's how the Benghazi committee got the e-mails even before we went through our exhaustive process. Now I have -- as you're rightly pointing out -- been involved from the receiving side in a lot of these accusations.
In fact, as you might remember during the '90s, there was a bunch of them and, you know, all of them turned out to be not true, that was the outcome. And when I ran for the senate the voters of New York they overlooked that, and they looked at my record, and they looked at what I would do for them and I was elected senator after going through years of this kind of back and forth and it is regrettable but it's part of the system.
TODD: You know one of the things about this over the last six months and I've heard from supporters is that there's an allegation about your e-mail server, the campaign provides an explanation, you provide an explanation, there's a new allegation, you have to provide a new explanation, there's an addendum, it has the feel of a drip-drip-drip. Can you reassure Democrats that there's nothing else here?
CLINTON: Well, it is like a drip-drip-drip and that's why I said there's only so much I can control. But what I have tried to do in explaining this is to provide more transparency and more information than anybody that I'm aware of who’s ever served in the government and I'm happy to do that because I want these questions to be answered. I can't predict to you what the Republicans will come up with, what kind of charges or claims they might make. I have no control over that. I can only do the best I can to try to respond. The Justice Department has the e-mails, they have the server. They're conducting a security inquiry. They will take whatever necessary steps are required to get this matter resolved.
TODD: Can you say with 100% certain they the deleted e-mails that the FBI’s not going to find anything in there that’s going to cause you to have to explain again?
