Bill Clinton calls email scandal 'full-scale frontal assault' on Hillary

On Sunday, former President Bill Clinton criticized continuing discussion of his wife's use of a private email server as secretary of state.

"I think that there are lots of people who wanted there to be a race for different reasons," he said in an interview set to air Sunday on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS. "And they thought the only way they could make it a race was a full-scale frontal assault on her."

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's private server use is under FBI investigation. Long after Clinton said she turned over all of her non-deleted emails to the State Department, it was reported Friday that officials found a new chain with Gen. David Petraeus that disputes the timeline of when the former secretary has claimed she used the scrutinized private email account.

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The 42nd president compared the ongoing controversy to the Whitewater scandal of the 1990s, involving real estate-related criminal allegations for which the Clintons were never prosecuted.

Watch his full interview here.