2nd LD Writethru: Hillary Clinton interviewed by FBI about email arrangement

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for the 2016 U.S. election Hillary Clinton was interviewed on Saturday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about her email arrangement while she was U.S. secretary of state, according to a campaign spokesman.

"Secretary Clinton gave a voluntary interview this morning about her email arrangements while she was Secretary," said campaign spokesman Nick Merrill in a statement.

"She is pleased to have had the opportunity to assist the Department of Justice in bringing this review to a conclusion," said Merrill, adding that no details of the interview would be offered.

According to The New York Times, the interview lasted about three and a half hours at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The long-awaited interview came as federal officials were expected to soon wrap up their investigation into Clinton's personal email setup during her stint as U.S. secretary of state.

It also came days after a private and impromptu meeting between former U.S. President Bill Clinton and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch early this week at the Phoenix International Airport in Arizona rekindled concerns about a potential conflict of interest while Clinton was still under federal investigation.

In an apparent move to quell such concerns, Lynch said on Friday that she "fully" expected herself to accept recommendation by FBI investigators on whether to bring charges related to Hillary Clinton's personal email setup.

At a press conference in March, 2015, Clinton acknowledged that 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.

In response to requests from the State Department, the Clinton camp turned over the other half, roughly 30,000 emails in total, to the State Department in December, 2014.

The controversy surrounding Clinton's email practices again burst into public view in August, 2015 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.

Currently, federal investigators were probing into whether Clinton had mishandled classified information. Endit