Hillary Clinton ‘greedy’, Donald Trump ‘a national disgrace’, says Colin Powell

US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton shrugged off brutal critiques levelled by former secretary of state Colin Powell in a series of leaked emails.

The country’s former top diplomat and retired four-star army general adopted a bellicose, rather than his usual restrained, tone when appraising the two contenders to be the next American president in hacked emails with associates published online on Wednesday.

The man who served three presidents called Mrs Clinton "greedy, not transformational" and Mr Trump "a national disgrace" and "international pariah," and said that Bill Clinton, a president he worked for, was "still d***ing bimbos at home," referring to his past extramarital dalliances.

"Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris," Mr Powell, who served as secretary of state under Republican president George W Bush, wrote of Mrs Clinton.

In an email sent in March 2015, Mr Powell was critical of her appearance, saying that she “doesn’t look good” on high-definition TV, was “working herself to death” and raised questions about her being the second-oldest president, turning 70 in her first year in office, if elected in November.

Mr Trump responded to the media frenzy around Mr Powell's private musings with a late-night tweet on Wednesday jabbing the former diplomat's role in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I was never a fan of Colin Powell after his weak understanding of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq = disaster. We can do much better!” he wrote.

Russia condemned

Mrs Clinton declined to be drawn on discussing the private emails, instead condemning Russia for attempting to intervene in the election. The emails were first posted on DCLeaks.com, a website that television network MSNBC said has ties to Russian intelligence.

“I have a great deal of respect for Colin Powell and I have a lot of sympathy for anyone whose emails became public,” Mrs Clinton said in an interview with The Tom Joyner Morning Show, a programme broadcast on the BlackAmericaWeb website on Thursday, referring to the disclosure of tens of thousands of her emails from her time as secretary of state.

Mr Powell, who has confirmed the authenticity of the emails, was sharply critical of the attempts by Mrs Clinton and her staff to draw him into the long-running controversy around her use of a private email to conduct government business when she ran the US state department.

“HRC could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me to it. I told her staff three times not to try that gambit,” he wrote.

He had to “throw a mini tantrum” at a party in the Hamptons to get the attention of Clinton aides over the issue. “She keeps tripping into these ‘character’ minefields,” he wrote.

“I have told Hilleary’s [sic] minions repeatedly that they are making a mistake trying to drag me in, yet they still try,” wrote Mr Powell in another email.

He told a former aide in an email in June that Mr Trump “is in the process of destroying himself, no need for the Dems to attack him.” The businessman’s claim that he would have have 95 per cent of African-Americans voting for him after four years, he said, was “schizo fantasy”.