Hillary Clinton's campaign compared her email scandal to Tom Brady's 'Deflategate'
"This is like, everyone's an expert on inflating footballs and now everybody's an expert on wiping servers. Like, I don't know how that all works," Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign's communication director, said during an interview on Bloomberg's "With All Due Respect."
Clinton is facing widespread scrutiny over her use of a personal email server for government business during her time as secretary of state. Critics are also questioning the subsequent "wipe" of her server of thousands of emails her team deemed personal after handing the rest over to the State Department.
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was accused of intentionally letting footballs be deflated beneath National Football League standards during an NFL playoff game earlier this year. According to the the league, Brady destroyed his cell phone "even though he was aware that the investigators had requested access to text messages."
Palmieri said during her Bloomberg interview that Clinton had simply decided to get rid of her old personal emails. As far as the decision to use a personal email account for her government work, the former secretary of state "didn't really think it through," Palmieri said.
"I've encountered this a lot in politics where people think that the answer is a lot more complicated than it really is," Palmieri explained. "She's answered this many times and she did have her own email account. Others had done it before and it was just more convenient and she kept it like that, and she didn't really - that's the thing, she didn't really think it through."
Clinton herself echoed that sentiment Tuesday at a testy press conference in Nevada during which she discussed her email server. She recently directed her aides to turn the server over to the FBI after questions emerged about whether there was classified information on it.
Asked for specifics on how the server had been wiped clean, Clinton said she didn't understand the technical details.
"What - like with a cloth or something?" Clinton joked, before saying she didn't "know how it works digitally at all."