Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said Sunday that an email she sent as secretary of state asking for aide Jake Sullivan to remove markings from a document and send it over a non-secure network didn't violate any laws, and, besides, Sullivan never followed her orders.
"And it never would have happened because that's just not the way I treated classified information," Clinton said Sunday on
"Face the Nation" "Headings are not classification notices, and so oftentimes we're trying to get the best information we can. And obviously what I'm asking for is whatever can be transmitted, if it doesn't come through secure to be transmitted on the unclassified system. So no, there is nothing to that, like so much else that has been talked about in the last year."
Host John Dickerson countered that the email appears to show that Clinton was "very facile" on the process of "how to get around the restrictions for sending classified information."
"I think this is another instance where what is common practice, namely, look, I need information," she said. "I was looking for a secure fax that could give me the whole picture. But oftentimes there's a lot of information that isn't at all classified. Whatever information can appropriately transmitted unclassified often was, that's true for every agency in the government and everybody who does business with the government."
Clinton said Sullivan has worked for her for years, and "is the most meticulous, careful person you could possibly do business with. And he knew exactly what was and wasn't appropriate."
She blamed the fuss about the email on political adversaries trying to throw everything against the wall the see what sticks.
"But there's no there there," she said.
Clinton also was asked if she was being hypocritical in criticizing her rival in the Democratic race, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, for saying he voted for gun rights because he has a large rural constituency who favors them.
"You were a senator, aren't you sympathetic to that?" Dickerson asked. "You said you represented Wall Street, that's what shaped your views on certain Wall Street policy. You suggested that as president you'd be different than what you did as senator when you were representing state with a constituency."
Clinton said Dickerson had "really mixed up two important issues. ... And when it comes to Wall Street, yes, I represented New York. I was proud to do so. And I took on Wall Street, I'm the person who came out against derivatives, I'm the person who came out calling for restrictions on CEO pay which thankfully got into the Dodd-Frank bill.
As for Republican Donald Trump talking about her husband's past with women, Clinton said that's been tried before and didn't work.
"It won't work again," she said.