Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Monday that she would not have approved the use of a private email server — like the one Hillary Clinton used when was in the job — for any deputy working under her.
“I would not. No,” Albright told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” when asked if she would have allowed such a server for a deputy secretary of state. Albright was secretary of state during President Bill Clinton’s second term and has been a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton’s White House bid.
She did however, continue defending Clinton’s email use, saying there was “no security breach.”
“I think she has spoken to this very clearly. Again, I do not see this as a security breach,” Albright said. “I was tough on security and Secretary Clinton was very tough on security and I think that is important to be tough because we are obviously concerned about hacking and a variety of issues. But I think she has explained what she’s done, she has turned things over.”
Albright later explained her comments on Twitter and pushed back against Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin, who asked the question Monday.
“.@madeleine Albright is a strong @HillaryClinton backer but when asked on @Morning_Joe if using private email is ok, she said no,” Halperin tweeted.
But Albright said that was taken out of context.
“@MarkHalperin Your question was whether I would approve it now. After all of this controversy – of course not,” she tweeted.
Clinton called the continuing coverage of her email use — including a report of the discovery last week of a previously undisclosed email chain between her and then-head of the U.S. Central Command David Petraeus — a “drip-drip-drip,” that she doesn’t see disappearing soon.
“It is like a drip-drip-drip, and that’s why I said that there’s only so much that I can control,” Clinton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “I can’t predict to you what the Republicans will come up with — what kind of charges or claims they might make … I can only do the best I can to try to respond.”