President Obama says Hillary Clinton's emails did not jeopardize national security
The president made a rare appearance on Fox News on Sunday
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.During his first interview as president with Fox News Sunday, Barack Obama found himself in a very predictable situation—defending Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton amid her ongoing email controversy.
More than 2,000 classified emails were redacted from Clinton's private email server, but President Obama said that his former secretary of state would have never intentionally done anything to put the United States at risk.
“Here’s what I know, Hillary Clinton was an outstanding secretary of state. She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy,” President Obama told Chris Wallace, the show’s host.
“There’s classified, and then there’s classified,” he added. “There’s stuff that is really top-secret top-secret, and there’s stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open-source.”
President Obama also said that his administration would not interfere with the Justice Department and FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s email server, which is expected to conclude by next month.
Clinton has maintained her innocence throughout the investigation, and has said there is no chance of her being indicted for the use of a private server.