President Obama has shared his thoughts about Hillary Clinton’s private email scandal on three occasions since the scandal erupted last year. Funnily enough, all of his thoughts tended to downplay the damage done by his former secretary of state, who is currently running a presidential campaign to secure his legacy.
Obama first commented on the matter in March 2015, shortly after her private server was discovered.
"Let me just say that Hillary Clinton is and has been an outstanding public servant," Obama said about Clinton, whose email correspondence was shielded from open records requests for six years in violation of State Department rules.
"I’m glad that Hillary has instructed that those emails that had to do with official business have to be disclosed," Obama said, referring to Clinton’s compliance with a State Department request to turn over her email records.
Clinton deleted thousands of emails she deemed "personal" before turning the remainder over to the State Department for scrutiny.
Obama came to Clinton’s defense again in October 2015 after it was revealed that Clinton’s unsecured server contained classified information.
"I can tell you that this is not a situation where America’s national security was endangered," Obama said on 60 Minutes.
When 60 Minutes host Steve Kroft noted that the Obama administration had prosecuted government officials for mishandling classified information, Obama said the cases were "a matter of degree," implying Clinton’s security breach was minor.
Obama used a similar argument last weekend in an interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace.
When Wallace noted that thousands of Clinton’s emails contained classified information, including highly-classified information about the sources and methods of the nation’s spy agencies, Obama urged the public to "keep this in perspective."
"There’s classified and then there’s classified," Obama said, repeating an argument often used by Clinton’s campaign surrogates.
Obama later promised Wallace that the investigation into Clinton’s private email server would not be politicized by his appointees at the Justice Department.