Hillary Clinton denies careless handling of classified material
In a round of interviews Friday afternoon, Hillary Clinton spoke for the first time about the shootings in Dallas Thursday night, and about FBI Director James Comey's testimony before Congress about the private email server she used while she was secretary of state.
On the former, Clinton told CBS News' Scott Pelley that we "should walk in the shoes of police officers who do dangerous jobs, we should walk in the shoes of African Americans who worry about every traffic stop," and that we all need to treat each other with respect and dignity.
Clinton also told MSNBC's Lester Holt we have "some very deep divides in our country," and if we don't start addressing them, "we'll find ourselves in a worse downward spiral." She also called for proposals for national guidelines about the use of force.
Clinton lamented that "something has been unleashed in our nation...we are unfortunately in the grip of some very divisive and hateful rhetoric," she said on MSNBC.
Friday's interviews marked the first time Clinton spoke publicly about the conclusion of the FBI's investigation into her handling of classified information.
"I have said I made a mistake using my personal email, I regret that ... it's time to move on," Clinton told Pelley.
To that end, she was also asked about her reaction to Comey's congressional testimony about the case Thursday.
"I am certainly relieved and glad that the investigation has concluded," she told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "but I also know how important it is to make sure everybody understands that I would certainly not do that again."
Asked about the fact that Comey had said that she and the people she emailed with were "extremely careless" with classified information, Clinton seized on the fact that only three documents of the tens of thousands she turned over were actually marked classified. She also noted to CBS News that at least two of them were marked inaccurately, the result of human error.
But when Comey announced the FBI's findings on Tuesday, he noted that beyond the emails that had classified markings, from the group of some 30,000 emails that Clinton provided, 110 emails in 52 email chains were found to "contain classified information at the time they were sent or received."
And the FBI director's stance is that anyone in Clinton's position, anyone she was communicating with about these matters should have known better -- that "an unclassified system was no place for that conversation."
On this point, the former secretary of state disagrees. "They, I believe, did not believe they were sending any material that was classified," she told CNN. And, in opposition to Comey's findings, she told Pelley, "I do not think they were careless. I have a very high regard for the professionals in the State Department, so I believe that they knew what they were doing, and I had no reason to question or second guess their expert opinions."
Of the State Department diplomats she corresponded with, whom she said faced tremendous pressure from the field and from questions by journalists, Clinton told Blitzer, "I have no reason to believe that they were careless in their judgments in sending me the material that they did."