NEW YORK — Upset that Hillary Clinton was floating his name to excuse her private email server use, former Secretary of State Colin Powell complained that Clinton was “using me as a blanket” to cover for the scandal.

The slight was contained in an email hacked from Powell’s Gmail account and distributed privately by DCLeaks. Powell’s emails were accessed by Breitbart News via a password provided to this reporter by the hacking group.

The correspondence in question was sent August 19, in response to a private email from a reporter, who wrote to Powell, “You’re name is trending high on Twitter and the Hillary story is repeated every hour on CNN. Why is she throwing you under the bus to save her own skin?”

Powell replied: “In Hamptons. She can’t throw me under the bus.  Using me as a blanket.”

In another email, this one from May 9, Powell wrote to a businessman colleague about the differences between Clinton’s private email setup and his own use of private emails while he was Secretary of State.

The email, which contained a few typos, reads:

It is well known that I didn’t have a private server at home, didn’t leave with 60,000 emails, was not hooked up to the Clinton Foundation with my own private domain name and didn’t have two outside contractors. I had a classified computer on my desk in addiition to my AOL notebook.  And I readily acknowledged I used it for unclas info.

I set the whole thing up and State folks still stop and praise me when i run into them.  I have been interviewed by State IG, Intel Community IG and the FBI.  State found on their servers two emails to me from my Exec sending me two unclassified messages from two different senior ambassadors.  As part ot their “review” some team of experts declared these two “uncla” messages should have been classified. I publicly said that was absurb and in any event they weren’t classifed when sent and haven’t been classified for past 12 and 13 years.  Ah ha, but from now on they will be considered classified. Keep in mind, it wasn’t my email that was at issue, but the messages being forwarded. It’s all in the book, see the “Brainware” chapter.  It is crazy.  Cp

Powell used the same argument, utilizing similar phraseology, in email messages to others.

“I didn’t tell Hillary to have a private server at home, connected to the Clinton Foundation, two contractors, took away 60,000 emails, had her own domain,” Powell wrote in a similar email on Feb. 4 to former Reagan White House chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein.

Clinton has sought to portray her private email use as standard. She seemingly referred to Powell when she stated at a March 9 debate, “It was not in any way disallowed, and as I’ve said and now has come out, my predecessors did the same thing, and many other people in the government.”

Even PolitiFact found Clinton’s claim to be misleading.

The website documented:

Like Clinton, Powell used a personal email address. However, there’s a big difference: Clinton hosted her email on a private server located in her home. Powell did not.

Many politicians use private addresses, but private servers like the one Clinton used are rarely seen, said John Wonderlich, a policy director at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group focused on government transparency, for a prior PolitiFact story.

And there’s a big difference between a private account, which is generally free and simple to start, and a private server, which requires a more elaborate setup.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

With research by Joshua Klein.