© Brian Frank / Reuters
Confronted by new discrepancies over her public account of her private email server, Hillary Clinton said that she simply "wasn't that focused" on her email account back in 2009 -- and that as for the work emails she apparently hadn't handed over, "Whatever happened to them, happened to them."
The Pentagon recently found an email chain between Clinton and then-commander of U.S. Central Command Gen. David Petraeus from early 2009 -- emails which were apparently not turned over by Clinton, despite her having said she had given all of her work emails to the State Department.
Clinton countered that her attorneys had done an exhaustive review of her emails to separate work emails to hand over and private emails that were not appropriate to hand over -- a process she didn't participate in. "Whatever happened to them, happened to them," Clinton said on NBC's "Meet the Press". "We have a very thorough review process that we conducted… what we had available at the time was turned over."
The emails between Clinton and Petraeus were in January and February of 2009, although Clinton had previously stated that she started using her personal account in mid-March, 2009.
"There was a transition period. I wasn't that focused on my email account, to be clear here," Clinton said. Clinton said that the private server she began using for her work emails in 2009 "had been [in her home] for years. It is the system that my husband's personal office used when he got out of the White House. It was sitting there in the basement. It was not any trouble at all."
Clinton insisted that she had "done all that I can to take responsibility, to be as transparent as possible" and said it was "totally ridiculous" to suggest she set up the email server was to make it more difficult to access under the Freedom of Information Act.
But questions about the private email server continue to haunt Hillary Clinton, who acknowledged she has taken a hit in the polls as a result.
"It is like a drip, drip, drip," Clinton said.
--Tim Mak