At town hall, Clinton downplays effect of her emails
COLUMBIA, S.C. Hillary Clinton said Tuesday night that she is "not at all worried" about the lasting impact of her email controversy on her presidential campaign.
"I have turned over 55,000 pages of emails," she told Chris Cuomo at a town hall broadcast live on CNN from the University of South Carolina. "I know there are, you know, challenges about what the State Department did or didn't do. That'll 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."
Cuomo asked Clinton about a ruling earlier Tuesday, by a federal judge, that Clinton's top aides during her time as Secretary of State should be called for questioning about her private email server.
"What is your statement to Democrats who are afraid that this...will not leave you in this race," he asked.
"I'm well aware of the drip, drip drip," Clinton said. She compared the ongoing questions about her use of the private email server to other attacks she has endured throughout her life in the public eye.
"The facts are that every single time somebody has hurled these charges against me, which they have done, it's proved to be nothing," she said. "And, this is no different than that."
Trust continues to be an issue for Clinton as she heads into the fourth contest of this election, the primary in South Carolina on Saturday. An ABC News/Washington Post poll last month showed that 48 percent of Democratic leaning voters nationwide believe Sanders is honest and trustworthy, versus 36 percent who believe Clinton is.
In a recent interview in Las Vegas, CBS News' Scott Pelley asked Clinton if she had "always told the truth."
"I've always tried to," Clinton said. "Always. Always."
Cuomo played a clip of the interview, which was featured on the "Late Show with Stephen Colbert" after it aired. Colbert mocked her for hedging.
"Even Richard Nixon knew enough to say 'I am not a crook.' He didn't say, 'It has always been my intention as far as I believe, I will do the best I can not to be a crook,'" Colbert quipped. "'Will you lie' is the homerun of campaign questions. You just say no and then touch all the bases."
Clinton laughed, and Cuomo asked her if she'd like "another shot" at answering the question of whether she'd ever lied.
"I'll just say no," she said.