Email Questions Haunt Hillary Clinton The controversy that Clinton hoped had died out when prosecutors closed their investigation looks likely to shadow her through Election Day By Peter Nicholas and Byron Tau

Posted By on August 12th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/email-questions-haunt-hillary-clinton-1470958940

The email controversy that Hillary Clinton hoped had died out when federal prosecutors closed their investigation last month now looks likely to shadow her campaign all the way through Election Day.

Rolling releases of emails from Mrs. Clinton’s time as secretary of state, combined with her own failure to provide succinct, consistent answers on her email practices, have kept the issue simmering.

“Any time she talks about it or engages someone on the issue, it just keeps the story alive rather than letting it go away,” said Andrew Ricci, a former aide to two Democratic congressmen who is a vice president at the public relations and crisis communications firm Levick.

The drumbeat is undercutting Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy and hindering her efforts to seize fuller control of the presidential race by painting Republican rival Donald Trump as an unacceptable alternative.

Last October, 42% of people polled said her use of a private email system while secretary of state was an “important factor” in whether to vote for her, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed. A survey last month found that figure had jumped to 55%.

What’s more, half of voters surveyed said she lacked the right judgment to be president based on a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe that showed she was careless in handling sensitive government information, compared with one-third who said she does have the right judgment.

John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, said: “She’s said probably about a hundred times now, it [the private email server] was a mistake, wouldn’t do it again. She’s learned from it.”

However, Mr. Podesta conceded the issue has lingered. “It’s a problem that we’ve had to cope with, but I think it’s one we’ve tried to put behind us and people are going to have to weigh that against an opponent on the other side who remains kind of outrageous every day,” he said.

The campaign’s decision to eschew news conferences also limits Mrs. Clinton’s ability to put the issue to rest. The Democrat hasn’t held a full news conference since Dec. 4, 2015, although aides said she has taken more than 2,600 questions from reporters this year on a variety of subjects, many in one-on-one interviews with television anchors.

Mrs. Clinton did take questions from reporters after an appearance last week, and offered a new, and muddled, response to the email flap that stirred fresh headlines. CONTINUE AT SITE

Categorized under: NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS.
Tagged with: no tags.

Comments are closed.