Clinton on emails: ‘What I did was allowed’

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said Monday that she will not apologize for using a private email account and server while secretary of State.

“What I did was allowed,” she told The Associated Press in Iowa.

Despite congressional and FBI probes into her email server and the drumbeat of bad press it has generated, Clinton said that the controversy has not hurt her campaign or her mood.

“As the person who has been at the center of it, not very much,” Clinton said, according to the AP. “I have worked really hard this summer, sticking to my game plan about how I wanted to sort of reintroduce myself to the American people.”

Clinton’s interview with the news service was the second time in four days she’s declined to apologize for using a private email account.

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Clinton on Friday if she is sorry for the email setup, but Clinton said only that it “wasn’t the best choice” and she should have used separate accounts for her private and work emails.

“At the end of the day, I’m sorry this has been confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions,” Clinton said.

“But there are answers to all of these questions and I will continue to provide them, and they’ve been confirmed and affirmed by other State Department officials, and eventually I’ll get to testify in public, and I’m sure it will be a long and grueling time there, but all of the questions will be answered.”

Clinton will testify before the Select Committee on Benghazi in October, where Republicans are likely to focus on the email issue.

She has insisted her email server never handled messages that were marked classified during her time as secretary of State.

The State Department, as it has released the emails to the public, has subsequently classified information in some of the messages, but Clinton maintained that will only happen after the fact.

“There is always a debate among different agencies about what something should be retroactively [marked classified],” Clinton told the AP on Monday.

“But at the time, there were none,” she added. “So I’m going to keep answering the questions and providing the facts so that people can understand better what happened.”

Polls have shown voters giving Clinton low marks on honesty or trustworthiness in the wake of the controversy.