Democrats are in a bad place because Hillary Clinton is their de-facto 2016 presidential nominee and they have no fallback if the uproar over Clinton's email practices fatally compromises her ability to run, Sen. John Barrasso told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
"The Democrats need to be really worried because they have put all their eggs in the Hillary Clinton basket, and she has a lot more explaining to do," the Wyoming Republican and Senate Republican Policy Committee chairman told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner.
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Clinton used
personal email accounts exclusively while conducting business as U.S. secretary of state, and the correspondence was handled by a private server at her house.
The news sparked criticism not just from Republicans, cyber-security experts and advocates of transparency in government, but from Democrats carrying the added worry about
Clinton's future as a presidential contender.
Clinton herself tried to defuse the controversy on Wednesday night, tweeting, "I want the public to see my email."
But an unnamed State Department official
told Reuters that it will take "months" to review the 55,000 pages' worth of e-mails that Clinton turned over to State before they can be released.
Barrasso suggested the controversy is a case of Clinton history repeating.
"You watch the Clintons over the years — they always seem to feel they're above the law, that the rules don't apply to them," he said, adding, "We have a president now who believes that the rules don't apply to him — and that's what we're looking for in Hillary as a candidate."
Barrasso was also skeptical about the stated arrangement for making the emails public.
"It's so interesting … the way the Clintons parse their words," he said. "She says, 'well, the State Department ought to release the emails.' Well, the only emails they have are the ones that she has already kind of sanitized and sent to them. So they don't have all of her emails.
"It's another Clinton hide-and-cheat scandal," said Barrasso.