Washington: As an email controversy continued to dog Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump accused her top aide of spilling classified secrets to her notorious husband, Anthony Weiner, whom he called a "perv" and a "sleazebag".
"Huma Abedin is married to a bad guy. Anthony Weiner is one of great sleazebags of our time," the Republican front-runner said in reference to Clinton's top Indian American aide at a rally in Norwood Massachusetts Friday.
"So Huma is getting classified secrets, she's married to Anthony Weiner, who's a perv," he said referring to an online love affair and sexting scandal that led Weiner to quit as a House member in 2011.
"I know Anthony Weiner for a long time," Trump said. "I knew before they caught him with the bing bing bing, and he was a bad guy then. It turns out he was a really bad guy."
Alleging that Clinton had misused her private email server as secretary of state, Trump said disgraced former CIA Director David Petraeus had paid a much higher price for a far lesser crime.
"His life was destroyed for two percent of what Hillary did," the real estate mogul said of the retired four-star general.
Petraeus was sentenced to two years' probation and fined $100,000 after providing classified information to his mistress and biographer.
A Clinton spokesman said of Trump: "He should be ashamed of himself, and others in his own party should take a moment to stand up to him and draw the line for once. It's embarrassing to watch frankly."
Meanwhile, Clinton was also grilled about the email controversy at a news conference at the Democratic National Committee meeting in Minneapolis on Friday.
She again insisted that she didn't send or receive any information that was marked classified at the time, even though some messages were retroactively classified before released publicly.
"It is complicated," she said. "It's a little confusing - and I certainly understand why - for the press and for the public to try and make sense of this."
Clinton also admitted some of the paid speeches that former president Bill Clinton asked the State Department about were "unusual requests" but defended the process used to vet her husband's speeches.
"There was some unusual requests, but they all went through the process to try to make sure that the State Department conducted its independent review," she said.
"He did neither of those speeches," Clinton noted, referring to requests involving North Korea and the Congo.
The questions stemmed from an ABC News report that Bill Clinton sought approval from White House staff for two speeches involving repressive regimes - North Korea and the Congo.
Hillary Clinton noted Friday that her husband travelled to North Korea in 2009 to secure the release of two detained American journalists.
"President Obama sent my husband to North Korea to rescue the two journalists who had been captured," she said.
Clinton was also asked about new emails sent while Huma Abedin worked as a special government employee, which allowed her to work for four different employers at once.
Clinton declined to answer that question, according to ABC.
The newly-disclosed emails have prompted Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to start an inquiry with the State Department concerning the vetting process for Bill Clinton's speeches.
