Hillary Clinton claimed Monday that she is the most transparent public official "in American history" on email during her town hall Monday on NBC.
"I have gone further than anyone I am aware of in American history," Clinton said about her cooperation with a State Department inquiry into her private email use.
Clinton’s claim to unprecedented transparency comes as her public image suffers due to her private email controversy. Clinton was again made to answer about her email practices during an extended appearance on The Today Show.
"Do you get how bad it looks?" host Savannah Guthrie asked. "It looks like you set up your personal server, you set up your email, so that you would have control of those emails and you and you alone would decide when you would release them, whether you would release them. And in fact, that is exactly what has happened."
"As long as we’ve had them [emails] I’ve gone longer and farther to try to be as transparent as possible. Nobody else has done that," Clinton said.
Clinton’s claim is sure to raise eyebrows because her use of private email was, categorically, a less transparent way to conduct official business than using government email. Emails sent from government accounts are automatically saved so they are responsive to future Freedom of Information Act requests, while emails sent from private accounts must be turned over by the sender so they are compliant with transparency laws.
Clinton turned over 55,000 pages of emails in response to a State Department probe into the email practices of former secretaries of state. Her emails were printed out rather than submitted in searchable, electronic format, which CNN called "an act of semi-transparency."
Clinton also permanently deleted, perhaps unsuccessfully, tens of thousands of emails from her private server, raising further transparency concerns about what information those emails contained. Clinton maintains that all deleted emails were private in nature.