Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday defended her exclusive use of a private email address during her time as secretary of state, saying that she did so as a matter of "convenience," to make life simpler by using one device and one email account.
"I thought using one device would be simpler; obviously, it hasn't worked out that way," she said in her first public comments since the issue emerged last week.
Clinton also said that most of her email was exchanged with government employees and therefore would be preserved.
Clinton delivered a statement at the beginning of a news conference, highlighting the U.N. event where she spoke earlier in the day, and denouncing efforts by Republican lawmakers to undermine attempts for a nuclear agreement with Iran.
After a week of criticism and questions about the email account, she fielded political questions from reporters, something she had not done since her 2008 presidential campaign.
Clinton's time as secretary of state provided her a respite from the campaign press corps, which she felt had turned on her during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.
But as she shapes her 2016 campaign, Clinton must wade back into politics, prompted not by her own careful timing but forced by a controversy over whether she intentionally used a private email account to skirt federal records requests for State Department correspondence.
In a Twitter message last week, Clinton said she wanted the State Department to release about 50,000 pages of emails. "I want the public to see my email," she wrote. "I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible."
But the brief response was not enough to squelch lingering questions about whether her lack of an official email address was intended to shield her correspondence from federal records requests by political opponents, journalists and academics.
The news conference, which took place after she delivered a keynote address on women's issues at the United Nations, comes during a busy week for Clinton. She is participating in back-to-back events in New York that are intended to focus on her activism on women's issues, which is expected to be a central theme of her 2016 campaign.
Early Tuesday, Clinton's potential opponents had already tried to capitalize on the opportunity to push her off message.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida sent an email to reporters reminding them of his disclosure of personal emails and provided links to news articles criticizing Clinton for a lack of transparency.