President Obama claimed he learned about Hillary Clinton’s email through the news, just like everyone else, but notes the FBI recently released from interviews with her top aides revealed the president was corresponding with Clinton using a pseudonym. Moreover, recently released WikiLeaks emails show top aide Cheryl Mills expressing concern after the president made that public statement because she knew he was emailing with her.
“We need to clean this up — he has emails from her — they do not saystate.gov,” Mills wrote to John Podesta on March 7, 2015.
If this wasn’t enough, the way Obama’s BlackBerry is set up offers even more proof the White House knew about Clinton’s email.
President Obama’s high-security BlackBerry used a special process known as “whitelisting” that only allowed it to take calls and messages from pre-approved contacts, two former senior intelligence officials with knowledge of the set-up told Fox News – pointing to the detail as further proof the White House knew Hillary Clinton’s private account was used for government business.
As the administration now acknowledges, Obama and Clinton emailed each other while she was helming the State Department. If received on his BlackBerry, the “whitelisting” safeguard means Clinton and other contacts would have had to be approved as secure for data transmission – covering everything from emails to texts to phone calls. The Obama BlackBerry would have also been configured to accept the communications.
“Whitelisting happens by design. The IT professionals who whitelist devices at places like the White House only add the email addresses authorized by management. To do otherwise would be to violate policy in ways that could introduce threats to the system,” Bob Gourley, former chief technology officer for the DIA, told Fox News.
Another source told Fox News that the administration’s claims would be further undermined if clintonemail.com was whitelisted before March 2015 when Obama claimed to have learned about her email through the news like everyone else.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest refused to elaborate on the president’s March 2015 comments on Wednesday.
"The president's explanation in March of 2015 and my explanation of what the president knew in March of 2015 hasn't changed, and the truth is this is just critics of Secretary Clinton and President Obama recycling a conspiracy theory that has already been debunked," he said.