Hillary Rodham Clinton’s silence on the email controversy swirling around her is getting louder by the day.
On Monday, the potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate ignored the issue at a forum while a second Democratic senator urged her to speak out — and predicted she will — about her decision to conduct business while secretary of state in a private email account. Republicans are ramping up their attention on the issue.
Clinton is considering holding a news conference in New York in the coming days to address the email controversy directly, according to a person familiar with her thinking. The person spoke on condition of anonymity and was not authorized to speak publicly.
At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said President Barack Obama knew Clinton was using a nongovernment account during her tenure. Obama had indicated earlier that he only learned of that from recent news reports.
Earnest said the president actually learned from those news reports of Clinton’s privately run email server, but was familiar with her private account earlier because the two had exchanged emails when she was in office. Obama did not know at the time that she was using private email exclusively, Earnest said.
Clinton spoke at a carefully choreographed two-hour event involving her No Ceilings project at the Clinton Foundation, highlighting economic and educational opportunities for women and girls. She took no questions.
When she sat down to lead more informal conversations with invited speakers, participants appeared to be reading from teleprompters.
The Republican National Committee used the vacuum Monday to keep the pressure on Clinton, noting a State Department policy requiring all outgoing employees to turn over job-related materials before leaving. The policy required such employees to sign a “separation statement” declaring they had “surrendered to responsible officials all unclassified documents” related to official business during their employment.
Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement the “fact that Hillary Clinton did not abide by the same rules her State Department employees had to comply with is just the latest example of how the Clintons think the rules don’t apply to them.”
Clinton left the State Department in early 2013. It was not immediately clear if Clinton signed the agreement but State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the secretary of state is supposed to follow such department policies. A Clinton spokesman did not immediately comment.
In the past week, the State Department has faced a torrent of questions about Clinton’s email practices, increasingly referring them to Clinton and her team. Psaki, at her daily briefing Monday, repeatedly directed reporters’ questions about the topic to Clinton’s team.
Clinton is under scrutiny over whether she fully complied with federal laws requiring government officials to preserve written communications involving official business. Democrats have defended her, but Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California made waves Sunday when she urged Clinton to offer a detailed explanation.
“From this point on, the silence is going to hurt her,” Feinstein said.
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