Silence is hurting Clinton, Dem says

Hillary Clinton is hurting herself by not publicly addressing the concern about revelations that she used a private email service during her time as secretary of State, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

“What I would like is for her to come forward and say just what the situation is,” said Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

{mosads}It was discovered last week that during Clinton’s four years as head of the State Department, she used an email account hosted on a server in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home.

Some lawmakers have suggested that in doing so, Clinton broke the spirit, if not the letter, of the rules requiring the government to archive letters and emails of top officials.

Feinstein said she didn’t think Clinton broke any laws.

“As I understand it, the regulations were unclear and there’s no specific law,” she said.

Feinstein pointed to a law signed by President Obama in November that required government officials to forward any business emails from a personal account to a government account within 20 days.

“That in itself said the situation wasn’t clear,” she said. “It has to be cleared up.”

But Clinton needs to help clear up her email arrangement, she added.

As a “preeminent political figure” and the “leading candidate to be the next president,” Clinton needs to “come out and state exactly” what her motivations were, Feinstein said.

“From this point on, the silence is going to hurt her,” she added.