Former Secretary of State Colin Powell normally stays out of the limelight. He did, however, surface in March with comments about the Republican candidates’ “junior high school tricks” with one another, which was around the same time Marco Rubio and Donald Trump were taking shots at each other, and Ted Cruz and Trump were also duking it out as well. Powell retreated from the spotlight, but his name popped up last week over Hillary Clinton’s use of private email while she was secretary of state.
Powell had pushed back after claims — which Clinton made during her FBI interview about her private email server — surfaced in the New York Times, which also dug up passages from Joe Conason’s upcoming book about Bill Clinton. Both the FBI notes and Conason’s book contained Clinton’s account of Powell allegedly advising her to use private email. But Conason added talk of a dinner party — attended by Condoleezza Rice, Madeline Albright, and Henry Kissinger — where they passed around advice to Clinton. Conason claimed that Powell chose that moment to recommend private email.
Late last week, Powell denied all recollection of such a conversation and said he only emailed Clinton to say his AOL account was handy for non-classified messages. But Conason’s account was that Clinton took this dinner conversation to heart and followed her original desire to use her personal account for most messages. Then Clinton not only used private email, but a private server (which she kept at home) too. Whereas Powell kept his classified information on a State-secured machine on his office desk.
Well, Powell is steamed about being dragged into this mess. Page Six reports that he sounded “angered” when a reporter approached him on Saturday night at the Apollo in the Hamptons event:
“The truth is she was using it (her personal email) for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did [during my term as Secretary of State] … Her people have been trying to pin it on me.”
When asked why Clinton’s team were attempting to blame him, he responded, “Why do you think?”
Powell reportedly insisted that he wasn’t bothered the claims, but clearly, he’s not happy. Clinton’s email scandal is going nowhere fast with the State Department working on their own ongoing investigation. This isn’t the last word on the matter, for sure.
(Via Page Six & New York Times)