Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), a 2020 presidential candidate, on Tuesday responded to anonymous accusations that she behaves cruelly to staffers in her office.
Klobuchar sat down for an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, who asked the senator whether she had ever "thrown a binder at anybody," referring to a recent BuzzFeed News report in which an anonymous former aide claimed that an enraged Klobuchar once hurled a binder that hit a staffer in the face.
Klobuchar did not definitively deny the accusation.
"If you look at that story, it said something about me throwing a binder down, not at someone," she said.
Klobuchar also responded to similar anonymous accusations of her conduct published in HuffPost and Yahoo News.
"I am proud of our staff, and yes, I can be a tough boss and push people. That's obvious," Klobuchar said. "That's because I have high expectations of myself, I have high expectations of those that work with me, and I have high expectations for my country."
Klobuchar's response echoed almost word-for-word her statement Sunday on the accusations following her announcement that she would be launching a presidential campaign at Boom Island Park in Minnesota.
"Yes, I can be tough, and yes I can push people," she said. "I have high expectations for myself, I have high expectations for the people that work for me, but I have high expectations for this country."
On Tuesday, Klobuchar cited a low staff turnover rate in her previous career as a county attorney.
"There's nothing more—a better way to judge a manager, which I was for years, by the way, when I was county attorney, with a very low turnover rate for eight years," she said. "I managed hundreds of prosecutors, which isn't easy to do."
From 2001 to 2016, Klobuchar had the highest annual turnover rate of staff in the Senate at 36 percent, according to LegiStorm, an online portal that tracks Capitol Hill's workforce.