Clinton says family paid State Department employee for email work

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday her family paid a State Department employee to maintain the private email server she used while secretary of state and compensated him "for a period of time" for his technical skills.

After picking up the endorsement of New Hampshire's senior senator, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, Clinton again was pressed to answer questions about an issue from her time in the Obama Cabinet that has dogged her presidential candidacy.

"We obviously paid for those services and did so because during a period of time we continued to need his technical assistance," the Democratic front-runner said.

Last week, that employee, Bryan Pagliano, told a House committee he would invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination if called to testify.

Last month, Clinton gave the FBI the server, kept in her New York home, she used to send, receive and store emails while secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. Clinton has said she set up her own system, instead of using a State Department account, for the convenience of using a single hand-held email device.

Clinton said Saturday she did not think the revelation about Pagliano's payment would hurt her campaign and she encouraged "anyone who is asked to cooperate" to do so.

Clinton told NBC News her use of the private email system wasn't the "best choice" and acknowledged she didn't "stop and think" about her email setup.

She did not apologize for her decision when asked directly, "Are you sorry?" Instead, she again said she wishes she had "made a different choice," and she takes responsibility for the decision to use a private email account and server based at her home in suburban New York.

She added it was a choice that should not raise questions about her judgment.

Republicans criticized Clinton's unwillingness to apologize for the decision and said it underscored polls that have shown large numbers of people questioning her trustworthiness.

Current and former Clinton aides have been testifying before the House committee investigating the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks. The committee also has delved into Clinton's email practices at the State Department.

She is scheduled to testify next month.

Her comments she didn't stop to think about setting up a private email server in her home belied the careful planning and technical sophistication required to set up, operate, maintain and protect a private server effectively -- especially one responsible for the confidential communications of the U.S. government's top diplomat as she traveled the globe.

Even home servers typically require careful configuration, Internet registration, data backups, regular security audits and a secondary power supply in case of electrical problems.

Thousands of pages of her emails publicly released in recent months have shown Clinton received messages that were later determined to contain classified information, including some that contained material regarding the production and dissemination of U.S. intelligence.

But Clinton reiterated she did not "send or receive any material marked classified. We dealt with classified material on a totally different system. I dealt with it in person."