Clinton falls ill during 9/11 memorial service in New York

Hillary Clinton left a New York memorial service marking the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks early after feeling “overheated,” according to a campaign spokesman.

“Secretary Clinton attended the September 11th Commemoration Ceremony for just an hour and thirty minutes this morning to pay her respects and greet some of the families of the fallen,” spokesman Nick Merrill said. “During the ceremony, she felt overheated, so departed to go to her daughter’s apartment and is feeling much better.”

A video circulated on Twitter appeared to show Clinton leaving the commemoration at Ground Zero. Flanked by several Secret Service agents who are regulars on her detail, Clinton can be seen leaning against a security bollard while agents prepare to help her into a black van. As she steps forward, Clinton can be seen stumbling and buckling as agents help lift her into the van.

One individual familiar with the incident and who knows members of the security detail confirmed that Clinton felt ill and dizzy and that she wobbled as she got in the van.

“However, all details were reporting heat-related matters/issues,” the individual said. “This is actually common and anticipated for events such as this.”

Later, shortly before noon, Clinton was seen leaving daughter Chelsea’s apartment. She hugged a child, waved and departed in her motorcade.

“I’m feeling great, it’s a beautiful day in New York,” Clinton said as she walked out of her daughter’s apartment.

Clinton arrived at the memorial at 8:18 am and greeted Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and his wife as she exited her van, according to the pool.

Reporters traveling with Clinton became aware about 9:36 a.m that she was no longer in the place where she had been standing. By 9:48 a.m., her campaign confirmed that Clinton left the viewing area as early as 9:30 a.m.

Clinton’s daughter lives on East 26th Street, in the Gramercy neighborhood of lower Manhattan – about a 15-minute drive from Ground Zero.

Just before noon, it was 82 degrees and humid at Ground Zero, though it was probably a bit cooler when Clinton left two hours earlier. Reporters traveling with Clinton could not see her directly, but the politicians around her were all standing and packed tightly together. It was not clear if she was standing in direct sunlight, but there was not much shade anywhere at the service.

Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., told MSNBC that Clinton seemed “perfectly normal” when he encountered her earlier at the ceremony. He noted that it “was incredibly stifling” at the event and several people were sweating through their clothes.

Clinton walked out of Chelsea Clinton’s apartment wearing the same dark blue suit and sunglasses she had been wearing at the memorial. She waved, smiled and paused to talk to a young child.

“Yes, thank you very much,” Clinton responded when asked by a reporter whether she was feeling better.

Clinton has been generally healthy as an adult, with the exception of clotting in one leg in 1996 and a concussion and associated health problems from a fall in December 2012. But she has been repeatedly criticized by conservatives and accused of hiding more serious health issues.

A coughing episode on Labor Day prompted a fresh round of questions about Clinton’s health. During a speech during a festival in Cleveland, Clinton started coughing repeatedly at the outset of her remarks, took several sips of water and a lozenge and continued to sound hoarse as she spoke. Later that day, she interrupted a question-and-answer session with reporters in the back of her plane after she started coughing. Clinton told reporters her condition was due to “seasonal allergies.”

The 2012 episode led to a brief hospitalization for a blod clot in Clinton’s head. Details on Clinton’s condition were initially hard to come by, but her State Department office eventually provided extensive medical information.

Clinton wore special corrective glasses for some months afterward, and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, told an audience in 2014 that it had taken about six months for his wife to recover fully. Clinton herself has said she was surprised by the illness, because she had not experienced anything like it before.

Clinton’s campaign released a memo from her personal physician, Lisa Bardack, last summer, pronouncing the candidate healthy and suffering no lasting effects from the concussion.

Otherwise, Clinton seemed upbeat and sometimes jovial as she engaged reporters during multiple sessions on her plane last week.