Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook was grilled Monday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe over Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server at the State Department.
Host Joe Scarborough said the controversy surrounding Clinton’s email practices was made worse by her forcing State Department subordinates to email her over an unclassified channel.
Mook responded that Scarborough’s claim was not true and said classified information should not be sent in an unapproved manner. Scarborough noted that FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers earlier this month that Clinton did send classified material through her home-brewed server.
Mook defended Clinton by saying that she did not know that many of these emails were marked classified at the time that they were sent or received. Comey said on Capitol Hill that a reasonable person would have known not to send such material over an unprotected server.
Scarborough turned to panelist Mark Halperin and called out Mook for making claims that Comey contradicted at the congressional hearing.
"Was I watching an alternate hearing, because it seems what I’m hearing is that a reasonable person would have known?" Scarborough said.
While debating with Scarborough over what Comey had stated about Clinton’s email use, Mook said the public still cannot see all of her emails.
"There’s an important caveat here; we can’t see these emails. We don’t know. We don’t know if they were marked; we don’t know if they were marked properly," Mook said. "We don’t know, and so the fact of the matter is we’re having to rely on what he is saying and included in what he said was he did not believe that when she received these emails, she had any reason to believe they were classified."
Halperin then asked Mook if Clinton made a mistake by not fulfilling her obligations under the Freedom of Information Act to release all of her email information.
"I don’t believe that she has spoken to that matter," Mook responded.
"That’s why I'm asking you. Was that part of the mistake?" Halperin said.
"You’re going to have to ask her that question," Mook said.