Hillary Clinton took a rare few minutes to answers some questions Tuesday after a roundtable with small business owners, urging the State Department to release her emails soon and again defending her family’s foundation.
The comments came after a federal judge rejected the State Department’s plan to release most of Clinton’s emails as secretary of state in January 2016 and instead told the agency to open them to the public in small batched over time.
“I have said repeatedly I want those emails out. Nobody has a bigger interest in getting them released than I do,” she told reporters. “I respect the State Department. They have their process that they use for everybody, not just me. But anything they might do to expedite that process I heartily support.”
Clinton has turned over 30,490 emails to the State Department in response to a request from the agency after it was determined she used a personal account to conduct government business, but that she deleted more than 32,000 emails that she considered personal. The department plans to release the emails once they have reviewed them.
“Of course Hillary Clinton wants her hand-selected e-mails made public, because her team carefully chose the ones she wants released before deleting the rest,” said Allison Moore, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “If Clinton wanted all of her e-mails to be public, she wouldn't have created her own server in the first place. The only way to resolve this is to hand over the server for an independent third party to review."
Clinton agreed to answer some questions after her event at a bike shop in downtown Cedar Falls after a reporter interrupted her event to ask if she would take questions.
Clinton continues to face questions about her family’s foundation. More than 40 percent of the top donors to the Clinton family foundation are based in foreign countries.
“I am so proud of the foundation. I am proud of the work it has done and it is doing. It has attracted donations from organizations from around the world and I think that it goes to show people are very supportive of the life-saving and life-changing work that’s done here at home and elsewhere. I will let the American people make their own judgments about that.”
She also took a question on the Iraq war, a topic that has tripped up Republican candidates in recent days. Clinton, who voted to authorize the war in 2003 as a New York senator, said again she believes the decision was wrong.
“Look, I know that there have been a lot of questions about Iraq posted to candidates over the last week. I've made it very clear that I made a mistake, plain and simple,” Clinton said. “And I have written about it in my book, I've talked about it in the past, and what we now see is a very different and very dangerous situation. The United States is doing what it can, but ultimately this has to be a struggle that the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people are determined to win for themselves.”