President Obama wouldn't say in an interview airing Wednesday if he felt Hillary Clinton had jeopardized national security with her private email conduct, at one point brusquely saying he didn't want to re-litigate the matter.
Clinton was not indicted for her reckless handling of classified material and her continued, now-refuted insistence that she never sent such information over the server. However, FBI Director James Comey slammed her for being "extremely careless" and presiding over a State Department that did not take classified material seriously enough.
"Can you still, as we sit here today, say she didn't jeopardize national security information?" NBC host Savannah Guthrie asked.
Obama sighed.
"I don't want to characterize any further what the FBI Director said," Obama said. "I think he was comprehensive, unusually so, about how they arrived at the decision. I think Hillary's acknowledged that she made a mistake."
He bristled at the idea of her engaging in "criminal activities," taking exception to the rhetoric at the Republican National Convention that included chants of "lock her up." Bernie Sanders supporters have also cried she should be imprisoned at the Democratic National Convention, however.
"Folks are rough on Hillary Clinton in ways that, even as somebody who's had my share of getting whacked in the public eye, I'm surprised by sometimes, and I don't think it's fair," Obama said.
"But it's not just her political opponents who are saying that this was wrong. You have the FBI Director saying it was extremely careless," Guthrie said. "The director did say a reasonable person should know."
Obama, sounding testy, said he didn't want to "re-litigate this."
"I can say with confidence that Hillary Clinton was an outstanding secretary of state, that she helped to make this country safer, that if she made mistakes, they were not ones that were intended to in any way compromise American security," he said.