After stating on Monday that no apology was necessary for her use of personal email for government business during her tenure as Secretary of State, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton expressed remorse over her personal email use in an interview published Tuesday and acknowledged that she did not make “the best decision.”
During an interview with ABC News’ David Muir on Tuesday, Clinton said she thinks she should have done a better job answering questions in the first place when it came to her email practices, and that ultimately using two accounts was a mistake.
“I do think I could have and should have done a better job answering questions earlier. I really didn’t perhaps appreciate the need to do that,” Clinton said. “What I had done was allowed, it was above board. But in retrospect, as I look back at it now, even though it was allowed, I should have used two accounts. One for personal, one for work-related emails. That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility.”
Clinton also claimed that all of the government officials she communicated with knew that she was using a personal email. “But I’m sorry that it has, you know, raised all of these questions,” she continued. “I do take responsibility for having made what is clearly not the best decision.”
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Clinton released a statement on her Facebook page on Tuesday evening, in which she reiterated her sentiments from the interview and insisted that nothing she “sent or received was marked classified at the time.”
“Yes, I should have used two email addresses, one for personal matters and one for my work at the State Department,” Clinton said. “Not doing so was a mistake. I’m sorry about it, and I take full responsibility.”
[RELATED: Report: Dozens Of Hillary Clinton Emails Were Classified From The Beginning]
Clinton noted that she wants to be “as transparent as possible,” and has released 30,000 of her emails to the State Department and the FBI. Out of the emails that have been dissected so far, over 300 have been marked by the FBI as containing classified information.
While Clinton did not mention the approximately 32,000 emails she claims she deleted from her server because they contained “personal information,” she did say that she will be “testifying in public in front of the Benghazi Committee later next month.”
[RELATED: Will Hillary Clinton Face Legal Trouble For Deleting Subpoenaed Emails?]
Clinton’s apologetic tone contrasted her demeanor on Monday, when in an interview with the Associated Press, she said that she did not need to apologize, because what she did “was allowed.”
“It’s a distraction, certainly,” Clinton said. “But it hasn’t in any way affected the plan for our campaign, the efforts we’re making to organize here in Iowa and elsewhere in the country. And I still feel very confident about the organization and the message that my campaign is putting out.”
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