Joe Scarborough to Clinton: ‘Stop lying’ about emails

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Thursday slammed Hillary Clinton, calling on the Democratic presidential front-runner to “stop lying” about her personal email account.

“It’s pretty remarkable,” he said on “Morning Joe” of Clinton’s response to a watchdog report that found Clinton and her top aides did not comply with policy while she served as secretary of State.

{mosads}“I don’t understand why you put out a statement like that,” Scarborough added. “Stop lying, stop digging.

“’I screwed up. I’m terribly sorry,'” he offered as alternate responses. “‘I hope the American people will forgive me and I hope they will let us move on to the issues that matter.’” 

The State Department’s Office of the Inspector General report said that Clinton circumnavigated policies designed to follow federal records laws by exclusively using a personal email address routed through a private server. Clinton might have jeopardized official secrets, it said, adding that she also never requested permission for the technology arrangement. The watchdog agency’s report said that a personal server in her New York home “would not” have gotten approval because of “the security risks in doing so.”

Clinton’s campaign on Wednesday dismissed the report.

“While political opponents of Hillary Clinton are sure to misrepresent this report for their own partisan purposes, in reality, the Inspector General documents just how consistent her email practices were with those of other Secretaries and senior officials at the State Department who also used personal email,” campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement.

“But as this report makes clear, Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email was not unique, and she took steps that went much further than others to appropriately preserve and release her records,” he added of the Democratic presidential front-runner.

Scarborough on Thursday said that the issue remains a major concern for her campaign.

“The biggest concern is security,” he said. “A lot of people act like, ‘ooh, there’s much ado about nothing here.’

“Well, actually, there was a lot of classified documents, a lot of classified materials going through this server. The great fear all along [was] that a home-brewed server in Chappaqua, N.Y., was going to be broken into.”