Hillary Clinton urges voters not to worry about email scandal subpoenas

COLUMBIA, South Carolina — Former Secretary of Sate Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that she isn’t afraid of subpoenas for her or her aides to testify in the email scandal and assured voters it won’t impede her Democratic run for president.

Mrs. Clinton said that she has been under attack throughout her political life and it hasn’t stopped her yet.

“I’m well aware of the drip, drip, drip,” she said at a CNN town hall forum here.
“I’ve been in the public arena for 25 years, and have been the subject of a lot of ongoing attacks, and misinformation and all the rest of it,” she said. “But, I can only tell you what the facts are, and the facts are that every single time somebody has hurled these charges against me, which they have done, it’s proved to be nothing. And, this is no different than that.”

A federal judge has opened the door to subpoenas for Mrs. Clinton and her staff over her exclusive use of private email account for official business at the State Department, questioning the Obama administration’s “good faith” in keeping those emails secret for six years.

The email issue has hounded Mrs. Clinton throughout the race, as the court forced the Obama administration to release about 55,000 pages containing 32,000 emails that she turned over to State two years after leaving office.

The controversy became more serious with the revelation that she handled reams of material that has since been designated classified or top secret, which could conceivably lead to criminal charges against the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mrs. Clinton said the scrutiny was no more substantive than Congress’ investigation of her actions related to the Benghazi terror attack, which she and her supporters have derided as a witch hunt.

However, it was the House Select Committee on Benghazi that helped reveal Mrs. Clinton’s unusual email practices.

“I testified for 11 hours on the Benghazi committee,” said Mrs. Clinton. “I told the truth, I testified under oath, and at the end, they had to say, well, there was nothing there.”

She claimed that by running over her email made her the most transparent cabinet officer in history.

“Nobody in any cabinet position has ever been as transparent or open. I know there are, you know, challenges about what the State Department did or didn’t do,” she said. “That will all be worked out. It is just not something that, you know, is going to have any lasting effect, and I am not at all worried about it.”