Brian Fallon, press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, admitted to CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Tuesday that there were "apparent contradictions" between what Clinton has long said about her private email server use and FBI Director James Comey’s statements on his investigation into the server.
Fallon said that negative reaction to the FBI investigation was "pure partisan overreach," when asked if Clinton would do anything different now.
Cuomo then cited a poll that shows 56 percent of the public disagree with Comey’s decision not to recommend an indictment for Clinton. He then told Fallon that Clinton has misrepresented facts about her server in the past.
Clinton previously held that she had permission for the server from the State Department and told Congress as much. But the State Department’s inspector general report, as well as Comey’s investigation, found this was not true.
The New York Times backed up what Cuomo pointed out after the IG report was released in May:
The inspector general found that Mrs. Clinton "had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business" with department officials but that, contrary to her claims that the department "allowed" the arrangement, there was "no evidence" she had requested or received approval for it.
"There is a theory that sure, Hillary Clinton, when she sat with the FBI, didn’t lie to them because she knew it was going to be a felony," Cuomo said. "18 U.S.C § 1001, ‘you can’t lie to Federal officials,’ you know that. But that doesn’t exist unless you get caught when she was talking to Congress. And now, the investigation–the investigation that’s being called for, says, well, what she said to us before Congress that she asked for permission, she didn’t ask for permission. There’s no record of her asking for permission. That’s a lie. Are you worried about the implication of that kind of deduction?"
Fallon said that what Clinton told the Department of Justice lined up with what she has been saying all along.
"What she said to the interviewers from the Justice Department is consistent with what she said all along, and as you mentioned, what Directory Comey said that there was no evidence that she was anything other than truthful in all her comments to the interviewers a week ago," he said.
Fallon then stepped back from his comments to say there were inconsistencies between the State Department’s report and Clinton’s long-told story.
"Look, I think there’s no question that in reaction to the press conference that director Comey held a week ago today that some questions were raised," Fallon said. "There seem to be apparent contradictions between what Director Comey laid out on Tuesday and what Secretary Clinton has long said."
He finished by defending Clinton’s inconsistencies, citing that in Comey’s testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday, he gave more detailed information that was not stated in his prior comments.