CNN's Inside Politics panel ripped Hillary Clinton for being hypocritical and falling short in transparency on Sunday, saying the latest round of allegations against the Clinton Foundation are her own fault because she ignored Freedom of Information Act requests as secretary of state.
The release of nearly 300 pages of emails after a lawsuit by Judicial Watch has revealed more overlaps and allegations of pay-for-play between the Clinton Foundation and Clinton's State Department.
"There is a tremendous amount of defensiveness by the Clintons about this," New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said. "The campaign, their officials sort of walked into this problem that existed before they got there. But if you look at the emails that were released, these were part of FOIA lawsuits. The State Department under Hillary Clinton did not respond to Freedom of Information requests over several years, so the timing of this is almost entirely at their own hand, in the sense that if they had just released them at the time, this wouldn't be a big deal."
Clinton has attacked Republican opponent Donald Trump for not releasing his tax returns and not being fully transparent. Haberman said these were "legitimate questions to ask about a future president, especially one who is talking about the lack of transparency about her opponent."
Bill Clinton reacted strongly on Friday to the criticism of his wife from the FBI, calling the idea she had endangered classified information with her private server the "biggest load of bull I ever heard."
Reporter MJ Lee said the former president became "very frustrated" over questions about his wife's trustworthiness.
Lee said it reflected the campaign's continued inability to get past her email scandal, but she added Clinton hasn't always "helped her own case," such as when she made the "Pants On Fire" claim that FBI Director James Comey said she had been "truthful" about her server.
"Her pivoting away from this issue hasn't just been, look, I'm sorry, I made mistake and let's move on," Lee said. "She has said, at best, misleading things about Comey's testimony, and at worst, inaccurate things about Comey's testimony ... When she talks about these issues, she has to make sure that the way in which she cherry-picks her answers don't actually cause fresh questions of their own."