The Moment in Clinton Interview When Things Got Tense: 'You're Starting With So Many Assumptions

Things briefly became tense Tuesday when a CNN reporter questioned Hillary Clinton about why she chose to permanently delete emails from her personal server after her tenure as secretary of state.

"I think there is a lot of people who do not understand your thought process on that," reporter Brianna Keilar said. "Can you tell me the story of how you decided to delete 33,000 emails and how that deletion was executed?"

Clinton responded saying everything she did was "permitted," adding that previous individuals who have served as secretary of state "did the same thing."

Keilar interjected.

"You said they did the same thing. That they used a personal server and while facing a subpoena deleted emails from them?" the CNN reporter asked.

Clinton did not appear happy by that line of questioning.

"You know, you're starting with so many assumptions," the Democratic presidential contender quipped back. "I've never had a subpoena. There's nothing, again. Let's take a deep breath here. Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation."

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, previously said it was likely Clinton deleted her emails after Oct. 28, 2014, when the State Department asked her to return public records. The Benghazi committee later subpoenaed her emails for an independent review executed by a neutral third party.

In her interview, Clinton said she chose to turn over emails "because I wanted to go above and beyond what was expected of me."

"The truth is, everything I did was permitted," she said. "And I went above and beyond what anybody could have expected in making sure that if the State Department didn't capture something, I made a real effort to get it to them. And I had no obligation to do any of that. So let's set the record straight. And those 55,000 pages will be released over the course of this year, people can again make their own judgment."

Officials with the State Department said in late June that the agency was unable to find its records for 15 work-related emails from Clinton's private server that were released by the House Benghazi committee.

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