President Obama’s former senior adviser, David Axelrod, called Hillary Clinton’s recent comments on her private email server "bewildering’ on Monday.
CNN host Brianna Keilar first played a clip of Clinton telling Fox News’ Chris Wallace last Sunday that FBI Director James Comey’s congressional testimony on her email practices put the issue to rest and vindicated her of wrongdoing.
"Director Comey said that my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to classify retroactively certain of the emails," Clinton told Wallace.
Keilar then asked Axelrod to respond to Clinton's statement and her follow-up explanation from Friday when she told the National Associations of Black and Hispanic Journalists that she may have "short-circuited" while giving her answer to Wallace.
"Yeah, it’s kind of bewildering, and that’s why I say 90 days, you know a lot of twists and turns in the road, things can happen," Alexrod said. "It’s very–it’s very confusing as to why she can’t simply say what seems obvious, which is I did not knowingly transmit any classified information."
Axelrod added that Comey concluded she did transmit classified material over her email server, but he could not prove she did so knowingly.
"I think that’s what Comey concluded, that she did transmit classified information, but she, you know, they certainly can’t prove that she did it knowingly. And I’m sure she told them that she didn’t, and that seems like the obvious explanation. Why she can’t get there, I don’t know" Axelrod said.
Comey gave Clinton a scathing critique in his press conference last month during which he called her "extremely careless’ with handling classified information, although he did not recommending charges be brought against her.