Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta faced a deluge of questions Sunday on CNN's State of the Union attempted as he responded to the FBI's announcement that it would be looking into more emails related to their investigation into Clinton's use of a private server as secretary of state.
The FBI discovered the potentially "pertinent" messages during a separate investigation into Anthony Weiner's sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Weiner is the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Host Jake Tapper started the interview by noting the hypocrisy of Clinton and other Clinton surrogates for criticizing FBI Director James Comey's Friday announcement as political. After playing a clip of Clinton running mate Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) praising Comey, Tapper asked Podesta how the campaign could justify criticizing him after they spent most of the campaign cycle praising him.
"It was long an innuendo, short on facts," Podesta said of Comey's decision. "So we're calling on Mr. Comey to come forward and explain what's at issue here."
"You and the Clinton campaign seem to be blaming Comey for being transparent with Congress," Tapper said after Podesta's response.
Tapper and Podesta then got into a tense exchange over what could be in the new emails the FBI is now reviewing.
"Obviously the FBI agents who stumbled upon them read some of them, and determined them to be pertinent," Tapper said in explaining the reasoning behind the FBI's decision.
"Do you know that, Jake? We don't know anything," Podesta exclaimed, interrupting Tapper.
"I always hear the Clinton team say that she's learned from it. What has she learned?" Tapper, referring to Clinton's email scandal later, asked Podesta.
"I think, as she said many times, she wouldn't do it over again," Podesta responded. "I think she didn't give it that much thought when she did it in the first place."
Later on in the interview, Podesta tried to defend Abedin after Tapper asked why she did not turn over all of her emails relating to the State Department. Podesta avoided the question and tried to explain that Abedin had been cooperative with the FBI investigation.
"She hasn't been completely cooperative if she didn't turn over every device that had State Department emails on them and this one computer did," Tapper said.
He went on to accuse Tapper of speculating about what Abedin's emails could contain when Tapper interrupted him again.
"They found State Department emails on the laptop. That's reporting, that's not speculation," Tapper said.
Podesta also in the interview stated that Abedin, despite the new revelations, will still remain part of the campaign and continues to play a "central and vital role."