Colin Powell vs Hillary Clinton Email Scandal: When Did Former Military Hero Tell Candidate About Private Server?

A virtual game of he said-she said is brewing in Washington surrounding Hillary Clinton's use of a private server for personal emails while she presided over the U.S. Department of State. Both former secretaries of state insist have pointed their fingers at each other in reference to the matter, with Powell being the latest to levy an accusation in the ongoing saga, New York Magazine reported.

"Her people have been trying to pin it on me," Powell reportedly said this weekend at an event in the Hamptons.

Powell's words refer to how Clinton has maintained that Powell was the person who advised her to use a private email server. The practice has come under intense scrutiny during Clinton's presidential campaign, resulting in the FBI last month recommending no criminal charges for the Democratic nominee. Clinton reportedly told the FBI during its probe of her email practices of Powell's alleged advice.

A 2009 dinner party — attended by former secretaries of state, including Madeline Albright — is supposed to be the place where Powell offered his advice ahead of Clinton's appointment to that role, as detailed in an upcoming book, according to CNN. "Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation's next top diplomat," writes Joe Conason in "Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton," which is expected to be published before Election Day "Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer."

Powell's representatives have said he has "no recollection" of that exchange.

Clinton's political rivals have long maintained that her personal email use compromised national security. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has led that charge, calling this month's release of 44 previously unseen Clinton emails "more evidence that Hillary Clinton lacks the judgment, character, stability and temperament to be within 1,000 miles of public power."