Former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton couldn’t stop laughing when asked during an interview about former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified douments.
“I had zero mails that were classified,” she said on reports of Trump often drawing a parallel between his Mar-a-Lago (Trump’s resort in Florida) documents and her emails and that there was a “Clinton Standard”.
“I can’t believe we are still talking about this,” she said.
Clinton was asked about Trump’s retention of classified materials during an appearance with her daughter Chelsea Clinton on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday. Fallon noted that both had lived at the White House when Clinton’s husband Bill Clinton was the President.
“How easy is it to walk out with boxes of classified documents,” Fallon asked.
Clinton burst into laughter, while her daughter noted that it was “not just one box or one document”, but multiple boxes and “thousands of documents”, Newsweek reported.
“What would you do with that,” Fallon then asked. “Is it for the presidential library?”
The former first lady laughed once again, and said: “Well, usually when it comes to presidential libraries, everything is in the archives. We have a National Archives and Records Administration, where everything goes and then they get transferred to a presidential library. At least that’s the way it used to happen.”
Clinton also addressed the issue on Twitter after Trump allies compared her misuse of an email server to the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified materials.
“I can’t believe we’re still talking about this, but my emails… As Trump’s problems continue to mount, the right is trying to make this about me again. There’s even a ‘Clinton Standard’. The fact is that I had zero emails that were classified,” she wrote.
“Then FBI director James Comey admitted he was wrong after he claimed I had classified emails. Trump’s own State Department, under two different secretaries, found I had no classified emails… By contrast, Trump has hundreds of documents clearly marked as classified, and the investigation has just started.”
In another tweet, she said: “I’m more tired of talking about this than anyone, but here we are.”
In a July 2016 press conference, Comey had described Clinton’s use of a private email server as “extremely careless”, but said he would not be recommending that the Department of Justice pursued charges.
A lengthy investigation by the US State Department later found no evidence of deliberate mishandling of classified information.
More than 100 classified documents were seized during the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last month. A federal judge on Monday granted Trump’s request for a special master to be brought in to determine if any of the materials removed are protected by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.
The investigation into Trump’s retention of sensitive materials after leaving the White House comes after he repeatedly attacked Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential election, for using a personal email account and server while she was Secretary of State. She complied with investigators and was not charged.
