WASHINGTON — President Obama briefly addressed the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices for the first time, saying the agency does not “operate on innuendo” and emphasizing that there is no evidence that the Democratic presidential nominee violated the law.
“I do think that there is a norm that when there are investigations, we don’t operate on innuendo, and we don’t operate on incomplete information, and we don’t operate on leaks,” Obama said in an interview. “We operate based on concrete decisions that are made. When this was investigated thoroughly last time, the conclusion of the FBI, the conclusion of the Justice Department, the conclusion of repeated congressional investigations, was she had made some mistakes but that there wasn’t anything there that was prosecutable.”
The president’s remarks came several days after FBI Director James B. Comey’s surprise announcement Friday that agents would review thousands of emails potentially connected to Clinton that were discovered as part of a separate inquiry into former congressman Anthony Weiner, D-New York, who is married to a high-ranking Clinton aide, Huma Abedin.
“I’ve made a very deliberate effort to make sure that I don’t look like I’m meddling in what are supposed to be independent processes for making these assessments,” Obama said.
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