Ed Rendell: Hillary's Emails Are A 'Closed Issue'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell reacted to the announcement earlier by FBI Director James Comey that former Secretary of State and current candidate for President, Hillary Clinton, should not be indicted for violating protocol by using a private email server during her time at the Department.
Rendell told Rich Zeoli on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that Comey's decision will enflame Clinton's detractors a lot more than it will damage her aspirations for the White House.
"This issue is pretty much dead in the sense that the people who don't like Hillary Clinton will use the stuff that Director said as reason to bash her, reason to not vote for her. The people who like Hillary Clinton...will consider this closed and no factor going forward. Where as if she had been indicted there might have had to have been a trial...My guess is this is pretty much a closed issue."
However, he did say Comey made comments during his statement that could be used by her opponents in the lead up to the election.
"I'm not saying they're problem free, by no means. Comey gave a very balanced report. He talked about some things that they did that were clearly wrong. He used words like extreme carelessness and there is grist for the mill in that report. No question about it."
Rendell dismissed claims that Clinton's emails were more vulnerable to hackers than if she had used the State Department's email servers.
"We know he State Department's email system has been hacked into by the Chinese. That's the system she would've been using if she hadn't used her own system...We know that hostile actors gained access to the State Department. We know that. The Chinese hacked into it on several occasions.
He believes that now, with the speculation around whether Clinton would be indicted having been settled, the main issue of the campaign will be suitability of Donald Trump for the office of President, citing as an example a graphic for his campaign that was posted on Twitter that critics claimed was anti-Semitic.
"Donald Trump is still going to be a good portion of the issue going down the stretch, not whether we want another term of Barack Obama, but do we want Donald Trump? Look what happened this weekend. First of all, he's got to stop tweeting. If I was his campaign manager, I would take every device away from him, lock them in the vault and say you're not getting your hands on anything until the day after the election."
