Top aide says Hillary Clinton's team didn't foresee political fallout from private emails

Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff at the State Department

(Image credit: FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/Stringer/Getty Images)

published 1 June 2016

For about seven hours last Friday, Cheryl Mills testified under oath in a deposition by conservative group Judicial Watch on the use of a private email server by Hillary Clinton, whom Mills served as chief of staff while Clinton was secretary of state. In the transcript of the deposition, released Tuesday, Mills says that Clinton's advisers didn't give much thought to Clinton's use of a private email account at the State Department, a decision that has dogged Clinton's presidential campaign. "Certainly from my standpoint, I wish that had been something we thought about," Mills said.

Mills, the first of Clinton's close advisers to testify under oath about the emails, said Clinton never considered using a government email account, just as she hadn't used one in the Senate. The decision was "absolutely not" about evading Freedom of Information Act requests, Mills said, noting that any emails that Clinton sent to State Department employees would be "captured" and saved. She said that she did not recall any specific conversations about preserving Clinton's emails or making sure they complied with the public-records law. If anyone raised concerns, she said, "I'm not aware of it. They might have." Mills said several times she wished she and other Clinton advisers had thought more about the private email issue. You can read selections from the transcripts at The New York Times.