Colin Powell: I repeatedly warned Clinton’s staff not to connect me to her emails

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said he repeatedly warned Hillary Clinton’s staff not to tie him to her private email set-up and that Mrs. Clinton herself keeps tripping into ’character’ minefields, according to newly-leaked personal emails from Mr. Powell.

“Dumb. She should have done a ’Full Monty’ at the beginning,” Mr. Powell wrote in one email in August, according to emails leaked by the website DCLeaks.com.

The emails, which also showed Mr. Powell blasting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as a “national disgrace,” were posted Tuesday by Buzzfeed and The Intercept.

In a Buzzfeed story on his disparaging comments about Mr. Trump, Mr. Powell said he had no further comment but wasn’t denying it. He also told NBC News “the hackers have a lot more.”

“I warned her staff three times over the past two years not to try to connect it to me,” Mr. Powell wrote. “I am not sure HRC even knew or understood what was going on in the basement.”

Mr. Powell also used a personal email account during his time in office but did not maintain his own server, as Mrs. Clinton did. Mrs. Clinton said in a recent CNN interview that the decision to have a single email account was hers and that she takes responsibility.

“Spent last week with Cheryl Mills and the HRC team burying the email flap,” Mr. Powell wrote in another email in August, referring to Ms. Mills, a top Clinton aide at the State Department. “Sad thing it that HRC could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me into it.”

“I told her staff three times not to try that gambit. I had to throw a mini tantrum at a Hampton’s party to get their attention. She keeps tripping into these ’character’ minefields,” he wrote.

That’s apparently a reference to a recent event at which Mr. Powell told People Magazine: “Her people have been trying to pin it on me.”