Hillary Clinton has conceded making a mistake in failing to use a US government e-mail account when she was Secretary of State.
Addressing for the first time questions about why she chose not to use a State Department e-mail address, she said she had "opted for convenience".
She insisted that she'd broken no rules, and had handed over to the State Department all the "work-related e-mail" contained on private servers in her New York home.
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
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For reporters of a certain age in Washington, it was almost like stepping back in time.
It's been a while since we've seen a Clinton on the defensive…facing a bank of cameras…and an echoing array of questions about a bubbling political scandal.
But there was Hillary Clinton on Tuesday afternoon…at a solitary microphone at UN headquarters in New York.
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Almost playing with the press…she kicked it off by discussing her work on gender equality…and the speech she'd made moments before.
Then she toyed with reporters further….
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But she eventually got to the entire reason for her first encounter with reporters in 2 years: the burgeoning questions about why she failed to use government e-mail accounts when she was Secretary of State.
It was all, she insisted, above board… a mistaken decision based on convenience.
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And she argued the fact that she SENT so much of her e-mail to government officials meant that it was captured and archived on government servers as required by law….the servers THE government was using to store THEIR e-mail….as opposed to the private server farm she created for her correspondent at her New York home.
Twice she was asked, and twice she sidestepped questions about whether she could guarantee that she had turned over ALL her work-related e-mail to the State Department and not deleted any of it.
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Those personal e-mails, Mrs. Clinton said, related to her daughter's marriage, her mother's funeral and her own yoga classes.
They would not, she said, be made public…and almost teasing the Republicans, she indicated that some of the communications were personal between her and former President Bill Clinton.
They too will remain under wraps.
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That insight, said Mrs. Clinton will be "interesting"…and certainly eagerly awaited by her supporters and detractors alike.
The State Department says the first few hundred pages of e-mail will be released soon…but it will take months for the rest to follow.
As to whether any of this is going to impact Mrs. Clinton's plans to seek the Presidency, she ignored the question.
Leading Democrats, however, cannot….and in many cases they are seriously worried that this is just the beginning of a quagmire over e-mail that will dog Mrs. Clinton just at the moment she was hoping formally to declare her decision to enter the Presidential race.
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