WASHINGTON _ Here's a prediction: Hillary Clinton's latest four-and-a-half minute answer to questions about whether she mishandled classified email is not going to satisfy her critics.
Clinton was asked Friday to explain whether she had misrepresented the findings of FBI Director James Comey when she seemed to say in a Fox News interview last week that he had concluded that her statements about her use of a private email server while secretary of state were "truthful."
To the extent she acknowledged any misstatement Friday, Clinton said she may not have been as clear as she could have been and possibly "short-circuited" her response to Fox's Chris Wallace. She said she meant only to say that Comey had stated that her answers during an FBI interview were truthful.
She went on to say that what she told the FBI was consistent with her past public statements on the matter. But many listeners were left with the impression that Clinton was claiming that Comey had also concluded that her statements to the FBI were consistent with her public statements.
In fact, Comey made no such determination and noted that some evidence collected by the FBI contradicted Clinton's public statements, such as her assertion that she never sent classified material over the private server or never sent materials marked classified.
On Friday, Clinton attributed the confusion to miscommunication.
"I think Chris Wallace and I were probably talking past each other," she said at a gathering of black and Latino journalists.
"What we have here is pretty much what I have been saying throughout this whole year. And that is, that I never sent or received anything that was marked classified," she said again Friday.
Her explanation bore all the hallmarks of a legal argument, but not a particularly satisfying political case.
About 110 emails were determined by the FBI to be classified at the time they were sent, though they were not marked as such. Even so, Comey said that "participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it."
Three of the recovered emails included markings within the text to indicate certain information was classified. But Comey said he did not believe Clinton understood the meaning of the markings. And the State Department later said those markings were improperly applied due to human error, and that the emails did not contain classified materials at the time they were sent.
Comey recommended against criminal prosecution over the email episode, but accused Clinton of being "extremely careless" in her handling of classified material.
The Trump campaign pounced. "Clinton's habitual lying about the use of her secret server to send and receive classified, top secret information shows her blatant disregard for national security and a continued pattern of bad judgment," spokesman Jason Miller said. "Clinton knows the actions she has taken are disqualifying for someone wishing to become commander in chief, and that is why today's painful, pretzel-like response to a simple question about her illegal server was obvious to everyone watching."
