CNN host Jake Tapper poked fun at Hillary Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon's accusations that the intelligence community's inspector general had an agenda against Hillary Clinton, saying that Fallon was stating a lot of "facts not in evidence."
At the conclusion of their brief interview Thursday on The Lead, Tapper brought up Clinton's NPR appearance on Wednesday where she said again that she neither sent nor received any material "marked" as classified on her private email server at the State Department.
"The candidate's entire defense seems to be pinned on that one word ‘marked’ classified," Tapper said. "It seems very clear from the intelligence community that some of the material was classified, whether it was marked that way or not."
Fallon, who got a similar grilling Wednesday from MSNBC's Chuck Todd, replied that wasn't the case, accusing the inspector general of indirectly leaking a letter that was reported on by Fox News and revealed Clinton had intelligence on her private server from the U.S. government's most classified programs.
"We don't know that he leaked it," Tapper said.
"It's quite inappropriate that he even sent that letter to Congress while this Justice Department review is going on," Fallon said. "Did he leak the letter directly? Probably not. Did he have every expectation probably that that letter was going to be leaked by the members of Congress to whom he sent it? Probably."
Fallon again charged at the end of the interview that the Inspector General had sent the letter with the intention of it being leaked, with no solid proof, as Tapper pointed out.
"You're stating a lot there that's facts not in evidence, if we were in a court of law, but I appreciate you advocating for your boss," Tapper said.