Hillary Clinton refuses to apologize for using private email system

Hillary Clinton on Friday refused to apologize for using a private email account and server, but said she was sorry for causing confusion among the voters.

When asked by MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell whether she was sorry for exclusively using her private email account and server rather than a State Department email account while helming the agency, Clinton insisted she had done nothing wrong.

"It was allowed and it was fully above board. The people in the government knew that I was using a personal account," Clinton said.

However, Clinton said it would have been better if she had two accounts and she took responsibility for her choice.

"I certainly wish that I had made a different choice and I know why the American people have questions about it," she said.

The controversy around Clinton's emailing practice burst into public view earlier August after the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community revealed that two of the thousands of emails held by Clinton contained top-secret information.

On Friday, Clinton again insisted that she treated classified material seriously and had never exchanged emails that were marked classified through her private email system.

"We dealt with classified material on a totally different system," Clinton said. "I dealt with it in person or on secure phone lines."

At a press conference in March, Clinton said she had exchanged about 60,000 emails from her private email account during her stint in the Obama administration, among which about half were personal and thus deleted. The Clinton camp turned over the other half, 30,000 emails in total, to the State Department last year.

Clinton said Friday that the emails turned over to the authorities were so inclusive that the State Department returned 1,200 of them as unrelated to her work as the U.S. top diplomat.

Clinton's Republican rivals have long claimed that she had deleted certain work-related emails, mainly on the 2012 Benghazi attacks that claimed 4 American lives, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, to protect herself.

For a long time since her announcement of a White House bid, Clinton had either dismissed the controversy or joked about it.

However, as the issue continues to fester and threatens to obstruct her otherwise smooth path to the Democratic nomination, Clinton recently started to show much more contrition, even acknowledging that she understood voters' concern.

"At the end of the day, I'm sorry this has been confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions," Clinton said in Friday's interview.

"But there are answers to all of these questions and I will continue to provide them," she added. "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 attend a congressional hearing in October on the 2012 Benghazi attacks, and the email controversy is likely to assume a predominant role in the hearing. Endit