Silence is going to hurt her: Senator Feinstein on Clinton email controversy

US Senetor Dianne Feinstein has become the first major Democrat to urge Clinton to share more details of the private email account

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton should fully explain her actions involving the use of a private, nongovernment email account when she was the country's top diplomat, US Senetor Dianne Feinstein has said, becoming the first major Democrat to urge Clinton to share more details of the private account.

Feinstein yesterday said the former first lady and New York senator "needs to step up and come out and say exactly what the situation was," adding that from "this point on, the silence is going to hurt her."

Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, also avoided the controversy yesterday morning.

Asked whether his wife was treated fairly, Bill Clinton replied, "I'm not the one to judge that. I have an opinion, but I have a bias."

"I shouldn't be making news on this," he said, in remarks reported on CNN.com.

Hillary Clinton has been criticized for her use of the private email account and whether she complied with federal rules requiring officials to retain their communications. Clinton says that she's turned over all relevant emails totaling 55,000 pages to the State Department for review.

Last week, the House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, issued subpoenas for Clinton's emails, and its chairman said yesterday, "We're not entitled to everything. I don't want everything. I just want everything related to Libya and Benghazi."

Republican Representative Trey Gowdy said "there are gaps of months and months and months" in the emails the committee had previously received. "It's not up to Secretary Clinton to decide what's a public record and what's not."

Clinton is considered the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, but hasn't entered the race yet. So far, a tweet has been her only comment on the email controversy. She did not address the issue Saturday night during an event in Coral Gables, Florida, for the Clinton Global Initiative University.

One of Clinton's predecessors, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that he has retained none of the emails sent from his personal email account during his tenure at the department in the first George W. Bush administration. "I don't have any to turn over," he said yesterday. "I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off."

Powell added, "A lot of the emails that came out of my personal account went into the State Department system. They were addressed to State Department employees and the State.gov domain. But I don't know if the servers (for) the State Department captured those or not.