CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin believes he spent way too much time talking about Hillary Clinton’s abuse of classified information through her private, unsecure email system, lamenting she “very likely lost the election because of it.”
He said the real scandal was “the news media, about how much time we spent on that.
“And that’s something that I have felt a great deal of personal responsibility for,” Toobin said, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
“Because I talked about the emails here at CNN, I wrote about it in the New Yorker, and I think I paid too much attention to them, and I regret that.”
He insisted the scandal turned out to be “a big nothing.”
“Hillary Clinton very likely lost the election because of it, and I think I should have been talking about other issues, not about the emails,” he said.
Toobin previously said, according to the report, that Clinton should have known that conducting State Department business on a private server was a “terrible idea.”
A letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, last week revealed a federal investigation found 38 current and former State Department officials violated government email regulations by using former Clinton’s unsecure, private system.
The Associated Press reported some of the individuals may face disciplinary action for 91 instances in which classified information ended up in Clinton’s personal email system.
An investigation found the system likely was hacked by foreign enemies of the U.S.
Of the 33,000 emails Clinton turned over for review, the State Department found 588 instances in which classified information was transferred.
Washington watchdog Judicial Watch continues to investigate the Clinton email scandal through Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits.
The judge in a Judicial Watch case has expressed concern about Clinton’s actions, encouraging Judicial Watch to “shake this tree” and see what it can discover.
A court decision on whether Clinton will be required to answer questions under oath is expected soon.
Judicial Watch is probing, among other things, whether Clinton used private email in an effort to evade the Freedom of Information Act; whether the State Department’s attempt to settle a FOIA case in 2014 and 2015 was in bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive to the request.
The judge noted, “There is no FOIA exemption for political expedience, nor is there one for bureaucratic incompetence.”
Judicial Watch said the State Department knew about her secret system as early as 2010.
AP reported: “For current and former officials, culpability means the violations will be noted in their files and will be considered when they apply for or go to renew security clearances.”
The internal State Department investigation was launched several years ago after it found 22 emails from Clinton’s private server were “top secret.”
“Then-FBI Director James Comey held a news conference that year in which he criticized Clinton as ‘extremely careless’ in her use of the private email server as secretary of state but said the FBI would not recommend charges,” AP reported.
