President Obama’s former chief strategist David Axelrod said Wednesday on CNN’s New Day that the jokes Hillary Clinton is making about her email scandal show that she is not taking the issue seriously.
Clinton appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s show this week where she joked about the newly released cache of 15,000 more emails the FBI discovered that were not disclosed by her attorneys. Axelrod had tweeted that the joke was off-key.
The "what's a few more" answer on KImmel also was a little off key. https://t.co/u9s8oWzio0
— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) August 23, 2016
"I think she should not joke about this," Axelrod said. "She seemed flippant about it. Obviously, there are concerns about the–how she handled these emails, and all these jokes fall flat. It makes it seem as if she is not taking the issue seriously, and that only exacerbates her problem."
Axelrod said that Clinton seemed to be waiting to deliver the off-key line and whoever advised Clinton to say the line did the Democratic presidential candidate a disservice.
The story broke Monday that the FBI uncovered nearly 15,00o new emails as a part of the bureau’s investigation into her private email server. The State Department received orders from a federal judge to release the documents in an accelerated timeline. These emails were not previously turned over to the State Department by Clinton.
The watchdog group Judicial Watch also released over 700 pages of new documents from the State Department that showed communication between long-time Clinton aide Huma Abedin and Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band.