During an interview with 60 Minutes last weekend, President Obama made the bold and ignorant claim that Hillary Clinton's use of a private server during her time at the State Department didn't compromise U.S. national security.
"It is important for her to answer these questions to the satisfaction of the American public," Obama claimed. "I can tell you that this is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”
Not only was Obama's statement out of line during an ongoing criminal FBI investigation of the former Secretary of State and Democrat presidential candidate, it holds no merit with the facts we already know.
Clinton had at least 400 classified documents on her private server which was regularly attacked by foreign governments and bad actors. IT specialists have repeatedly said her server wasn't secure and didn't have the proper safeguards in place to prevent outside enemies from obtaining sensitive information.
Obama's statement reportedly has FBI agents working on and investigating the Clinton case ticked. From the New York Times:
Federal agents were still cataloging the classified information from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal email server last week when President Obama went on television and played down the matter.
Those statements angered F.B.I. agents who have been working for months to determine whether Ms. Clinton’s email setup had in fact put any of the nation’s secrets at risk, according to current and former law enforcement officials.
Investigators have not reached any conclusions about whether the information on the server had been compromised or whether to recommend charges, according to the law enforcement officials. But to investigators, it sounded as if Mr. Obama had already decided the answers to their questions and cleared anyone involved of wrongdoing.
A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. But Ron Hosko, a former senior F.B.I. official who retired in 2014 and is now the president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, said it was inappropriate for the president to “suggest what side of the investigation he is on” when the F.B.I. is still investigating.
“Injecting politics into what is supposed to be a fact-finding inquiry leaves a foul taste in the F.B.I.’s mouth and makes them fear that no matter what they find, the Justice Department will take the president’s signal and not bring a case,” said Mr. Hosko, who maintains close contact with current agents.
The White House attempted to walk back Obama's comments about the investigation earlier this week.
The President was making an observation about what we know so far, which is that Secretary Clinton herself has turned over a bunch of email to the State Department, and the review of that email has garnered some differing assessments about what's included in there," Earnest said.
The President's comment was "certainly was not an attempt, in any way, to undermine the importance or independence of the ongoing FBI investigation," Earnest said, stressing that Obama "has a healthy respect for the kinds of independent investigations that are conducted by inspectors general and, where necessary, by the FBI."
The bottom line is this: The words of the President are supposed to matter, but apparently Obama is more concerned with having an opinion, event if it's ignorant, about everything; unless of course a question relates to one of his administration's scandals, in that case he'll just tell the American people he learned about it "through news reports" like everyone else and that he can't comment on an ongoing investigation until all of the facts are known.
In the meantime, when will Clinton be indicted? It's far past time.
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