Spotlight: Clinton remains silent as questions mount over email scandal

Questions are mounting over 2016 U.S. presidential contender Hillary Clinton's private email account as the Democratic front-runner remains silent on the controversial issue.

Last week it was discovered that Clinton had solely used a private email account and kept private servers in her home to conduct business during her four-year stint as head of the State Department, instead of a government-issued email account, which is the norm.

Critics are blasting Clinton over the highly unusual practice, arguing that she could have compromised U.S. national security and that she may also have violated U.S. laws governing transparency among public officials.

The move has also sparked myriad questions over whether there was any intent to keep information away from the public.

Clinton has ordered the State Department to hand over 55,000 pages of emails, but critics say Clinton will still be able to decide which emails the public can see, and the State Department says it does not know for sure whether there were any deleted emails.

At the same time, Senator Dianne Feinstein said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Clinton needs to "come out and state exactly what the situation is," explaining that her continued silence on the issue could hurt her.

The senior senator is the first Democrat to call on Clinton to address the issue in public.

"Democrats want to make sure that Hillary Clinton gets out front on the email issue and answer basic questions. They do not want that controversy to torpedo her campaign before it gets off the ground," Brookings Institution's senior fellow Darrell West told Xinhua.

"She needs to explain why she relied on a private account," West said.

Republicans have blasted Clinton over the controversy, such as Representative Trey Gowdy, a House Republican leading an investigation of how the former secretary of state handled the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

Gowdy took to the airwaves Sunday on the CBS' "Face the Nation" to blast Clinton over the email scandal.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of the Republican Party also expressed concerns over the email account's security. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a Republican front-runner for the 2016 presidential race, said Clinton's decision to use a personal server is "baffling."

"Republicans are complaining about her not following the administration's rules because it helps them argue that she fell short in a variety of ways as Secretary of State," West said.

Indeed, foreign policy is expected to be a major issue in 2016, and that may spell trouble for Hillary Clinton, as critics will view the likely candidate as tainted by the White House's perceived foreign policy missteps on such issues as the Islamic State, which has overrun vast swaths of territory in the Middle East and threatened to attack the United States.

"(Republicans) want to argue that she has a poor record of foreign policy and that many of the criticisms about (U.S. President) Obama also apply to her," West said.

A number of presidential candidates see foreign policy as a great issue for the Republican Party because of all the chaos and uncertainty that exist around the world, he added. Endi