Barack Obama is on the record as saying he learned about Hillary Clinton‘s use of a private email server at “the same time everybody else [did] through news reports.” Emails from the John Podesta Wikileaks hack now reportedly show the Clinton camp worrying over emails Obama received from Clinton before the private server became public knowledge. Why the alleged worry? Because since Obama apparently received emails from Clinton sent through the private server — emails not sent from a government address like state.gov — Obama’s comment could be considered untrue.
The Clinton email story is hard to kill, especially during a rancorous election. Though the FBI investigated Clinton’s email use and recommended against charging her with any crime, a cache of emails obtained by hackers continues to supply ammunition for Clinton adversaries. But Josh Earnest, White House press secretary, addressed this in March, saying:
“The president was aware of [Clinton’s] email address. He traded emails with her. That shouldn’t be a surprise that the president of the United States is going to trade emails with the secretary of state. But the president was not aware of the fact that this was a personal email server and that this was the email address that she was using exclusively for all her business. The president was not aware of that until that had been more widely reported.”
