 But he never noticed his email address for her was non-DOS, amirite? First heard about it when he read it in the papers, right?
President Barack Obama found himself drawn into Hillary Clinton's email controversy Friday as the White House acknowledged the State Department is withholding a set of messages Obama and Clinton exchanged during her four years as secretary of state.
Nothing yet from the White House Communications Detachment's Special Security Officer (SSO).
As the State Department made public a new batch of more than 7,200 pages of Clinton's emails, officials stressed that the White House was not asserting executive privilege over the Obama-Clinton exchanges but insisting that they be treated as presidential records, which are normally not available to the public until between five and 12 years after a president leaves office.
"With regard to the President's email, as we have previously acknowledged, the President did on occasion trade emails with Secretary Clinton, and we presume those communications will ultimately be made public, along with the rest of the President's records, after he leaves office," a senior administration official said. "There is a long history of presidential records being kept confidential while the President is in office. It is a principle that previous White Houses have vigorously defended as it goes to the core of the President's ability to receive unvarnished advice and counsel during his time in office and is central to the independent functioning of the Executive Branch."
A White House official declined to say whether any of the Obama-Clinton emails related to Libya. If so, the White House's position could cause an executive privilege clash with Congress, since the House Benghazi Committee subpoenaed all Clinton emails related to Benghazi in March of this year.
The new release of Clinton emails ‐ the largest batch of messages made public since State began posting the messages online to comply with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit ‐ revealed more about Clinton's knowledge of embassy security issues and provided a window into lighter moments like Clinton being instructed in the use of emojis.
Friday's document release is the sixth of its kind and with it, more than half of the messages Clinton turned over to the agency from her private email account and server have now been made public. In the new batch, State deemed 268 emails classified at the lowest classification tier, according to spokesman John Kirby, who said that none of these emails "were marked classified at the time they were sent or received." There are now between 600 and 700 emails newly marked as classified since the releases began in May.
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