Obama seemingly criticizes Comey's decision to 'operate on innuendo'

(Image credit: Ty Wright/Getty Images)

published 2 November 2016

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that President Obama would neither "defend nor criticize" FBI Director James Comey's decision to announce the discovery of new emails potentially related to Hillary Clinton's private server — but in an interview that aired Wednesday, Obama seemed to do the latter.

After relaying that he has made a "very deliberate effort to make sure" he doesn't seem to be "meddling in what are supposed to be independent processes," the president offered a broad-sweeping critique of the situation. "I do think that there is a norm that when there are investigations, we don't operate on innuendo, we don't operate on incomplete information, and we don't operate on leaks," Obama said in the interview, which was taped Tuesday. "We operate based on concrete decisions that are made. When this was investigated thoroughly the last time, the conclusion of the FBI, the conclusion of the Justice Department, the conclusion of repeated congressional investigations was that she had made some mistakes but that there wasn't anything there that was prosecutable."

In his announcement late last week — which came before the FBI had issued a subpoena to be able to search the messages — Comey admitted that the bureau did not "know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails." He also said he did not "want to create a misleading impression." Watch the president's comments on the situation below. Becca Stanek