US officials say that a review of e-mails sent-and-received by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will take "several months", stoking fears of Democrats that the issue could cloud her ability to run an effective campaign for the US Presidency.
Mrs. Clinton has acknowledged failing to use official government e-mail accounts while she was the country's top foreign policy official, and her aides are calling the flap a "manufactured controversy".
But our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks says Mrs. Clinton is now coming under considerable pressure to explain whether she safeguarded every e-mail she sent as Secretary of State, as US law requires.
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When the celebrity website TMZ starts hounding you with a camera at Washington's National Airport…..generally speaking, it's not a good thing.
Hillary Clinton maintained a stony silence in the face of questions about the growing scandal concerning her e-mail.
The issue hit the nation's front pages via a New York Times exclusive on Monday….revealing that as Secretary of State she never used an official government e-mail address…..indeed, didn't even have one.
And if that gave rise to the idea that the Secretary of State was communicating with world leaders via Gmail, or another off the shelf commercial provider….they were quickly dispelled when it became apparent that in fact, she set up a sophisticated network of servers at her home in upstate New York. It seems to have been specifically designed to bypass US government systems.
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State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf has spent most of the week promising reporters that she'd get back to them with information about whether Hillary Clinton met the legal requirement to safeguard any e-mails relating to government business….and make them available to Congressional committees, the media and historians.
Mrs. Clinton would have known about the importance of that because officials in George W. Bush's White House got into trouble for using personal e-mail accounts and not archiving the contents correctly.
So far, the State Department can only say they have 55 thousand pages of Mrs. Clinton's e-mail, handed over 2 years after she left office.
They cannot say whether that's every thing.
Republicans, smelling a rat, are issuing subpoenas that would require Mrs. Clinton to safeguard any e-mail still in her possession.
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Chris Cilizza is a political columnist for The Washington Post.
He says the story is more than the "manufactured controversy" Clinton loyalists maintain, because it underscores the sense that there's an arrogance at the heart of Mrs. Clinton's operation.
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The only comment the former Secretary of State has made came on Twitter: "I want the public to see my e-mail" she wrote, saying she's asked the State Department to release it as soon as possible.
But officials now say that will take months….which could be disastrous politically for Mrs. Clinton.
She was hoping to announce her candidacy for the Presidency as early as next month.
Democrats, watching on, are now nervous that her Presidential aspirations are looking a lot less solid than before.
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