Hillary Clinton sought this week to defuse a growing political controversy over her use of a private email server for official messages when she was secretary of state, insisting that she violated no rules and that none of the messages included classified material. She said she had not used separate accounts for official and private emails because she did not want to use two phones but admitted that "looking back, it would have been better" to have kept two accounts.
Mrs Clinton’s transgression is, on the face of it, relatively insignificant but it has sparked a fierce political firestorm in advance of her expected announcement of a second presidential bid within the next few weeks.
The controversy is being stoked by Republicans in Congress who have been frustrated in their efforts to find evidence that Mrs Clinton is to blame for the deaths of a United States ambassador and an embassy official in a terrorist attack in the Libyan city of Benghazi in 2012. Ever alert to the whiff of a conspiracy where the Clintons are concerned, conservatives have dismissed her decision to release tens of thousands of official emails from the account. Nothing will persuade her enemies that the private emails Mrs Clinton has deleted related to nothing more sinister than her yoga routine and plans for her daughter's wedding.
None of this is likely to thwart any ambition Mrs Clinton has to capture the White House in 2016 and as the choice of a remarkable 86 per cent of Democrats, according to a recent poll, she is already the runaway favourite for her party's nomination. The controversy has, however, highlighted some of her weaknesses as a candidate, notably her secretiveness and her defensive attitude to criticism from the media and political opponents. The partisan response to the story could also serve as an unwelcome reminder to voters of the toxic atmosphere that prevailed in Washington during Bill Clinton's presidency and to the couple's capacity to polarise opinion. Mrs Clinton has proven herself over decades to be a fighter but her toughest fight yet may lie ahead.