“I have never seen so much expended on so little,” Mr. Clinton said in a taped interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that will be shown on Sunday. The network released excerpts on Saturday afternoon.

“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,” Mr. Clinton said. “I think it will be all right. But it’s obvious what happened.”

Mr. Clinton likened the current inquiries into Mrs. Clinton’s emails to scandals as far back as the Whitewater land deal that plagued his 1992 campaign and the early years of his administration.

“This is just something that has been a regular feature of all of our presidential campaigns, except in 2008 for unique reasons,” Mr. Clinton said, without elaborating on why he believed President Obama did not face similar Republican-led efforts to derail his candidacy.