Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has expressed his dismay at the uproar surrounding his wife and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of a private email account while serving as secretary of state, blaming it on the Republicans and the media.

"I have never seen so much expended on so little," Mr. Clinton said in a preview clip of an interview with Fareed Zakaria, which will be aired on CNN this Sunday.

"She said she was sorry that her personal email caused all this confusion. And she'd like to give the election back to the American people. I think it will be all right. But it's obvious what happened," the former president added.

Mr. Clinton also went on to compare Mrs. Clinton's email controversy to that of the Whitewater scandal that beset his own campaign and administration back in 1992, The New York Times reported.

He then went out on his way to criticize the media for shifting the nature of the coverage from issue-based to political. "You know, at the beginning of the year, she was the most admired person in public life. What happened? The presidential campaign happened," he said.

Mrs. Clinton was embroiled in another controversy on Friday when it turned out she did not provide the State Department with the actual number of emails, as the administration found a chain of emails that she did not hand over, according to the Daily Mail.