Hillary Clinton should drop her presidential bid while the FBI is investigating her use of a private email server while serving as secretary of State, retired Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said, but a Clinton campaign spokesman called his suggestion "just silly."
"If it were me, I would have been out the door and probably in jail," Flynn, who served as President Barack Obama's top military intelligence official, told CNN's
"The Lead" host Jake Tapper Friday, complaining her actions showed "a lack of accountability, frankly, in a person who should have been much more responsible in her actions as the secretary of state of the United States of America."
Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon pointed out FBI probes for both former Secretary of State Colin Powell and of aides for ex-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that the same agency looked at their emails, and also found that in retrospect some should have been treated as classified.
"That tells you everything about the relative seriousness of this," Fallon told Tapper. Flynn said he did not have any evidence that Clinton or her staff removed material from a classified server and put it on one that was unclassified.
Earlier this month, the FBI officially confirmed that it is investigating Clinton's use of a private server at her home in Chappaqua, New York, while she was secretary of state. In addition, two different government agencies have flagged emails on her server as having classified material, and earlier this month, State refused to release emails found to be "top secrets."
Clinton has said that when the mails were sent, the information was not marked as classified, and State has said it classified them retroactively.
"This over-classification excuse is not an excuse," Flynn said. "If it's classified, it's classified."
Further, Flynn told Tapper that Clinton should have known better than to use a private server, given that she has held roles as a senator and as secretary of State.
"Even back when she was married to the president of the United States, she was going to have privileged information in that regard," said Flynn.
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