WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Friday denounced as "pathetic" and "totally ridiculous" a Republican congressman's call to impeach her on her first day in office if she is elected to the White House next year.
Clinton, the front-runner for her party's November 2016 presidential nomination, was responding to comments made by Republican Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama.
He told a radio interviewer that "she will be a unique president if she is elected by the public next November because the day she's sworn in is the day that she's subject to impeachment because she has committed high crimes and misdemeanors."
Appearing on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," Clinton said of the comments by Brooks: "Isn't that pathetic? It's just laughable. It's so totally ridiculous."
"It, perhaps, is good politics with, you know, the most intense, extreme part of their base. I guess that is, or otherwise why would they be doing it?" Clinton added.
Brooks told The Hill newspaper this week Clinton would be subject to impeachment for improperly handling classified information on her private email server while serving as secretary of state.
The Republican-led House of Representatives voted in 1998 to impeach her husband, President Bill Clinton, amid a scandal over his sexual relationship with a White House intern. The Senate in 1999 voted to acquit the president.
Clinton also addressed her 11 hours of testimony a day earlier before a Republican-led House panel on her handling of the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. The U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed in the incident.
Asked what she did after the marathon hearing ended late into the night on Thursday, Clinton said, "Well, I had my whole team come over to my house and we sat around eating Indian food and drinking wine and beer. That's what we did. It was great."
