John Podesta vehemently denied the gravity of the latest revelations regarding Hillary Clinton’s private email server in a Sunday morning interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
On Friday, FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress explaining the bureau had discovered emails relevant to the Clinton probe while conducting a separate investigation into Anthony Weiner.
Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, opened the interview by blasting Comey for not “actually having looked at” the new emails “before he did this in the middle of the presidential campaign so close to the voting.”
“But it’s not that they haven’t read any of them,” noted host Jake Tapper. “Obviously the FBI agents who stumbled upon them read some of them, and determined them to be pertinent and realized that.”
“Do you know that?” Podesta asked the “State of the Union” host in response. “Do you know that, Jake? You don’t know anything.”
“That’s according to the report,” Tapper shot back. “I’m telling you that’s according to the reporting of Evan Perez, our Justice Department correspondent. It’s not as though they didn’t know anything in the emails.”
“They stumbled upon them, found they seem to be pertinent to the Clinton email server investigation and that is why — ” Tapper added before being interrupted.
“Seemed to be pertinent, might not be significant, 11 days before the election,” Podesta stated. “Is that something you toss on the table or do you take the time to do what other prosecutors have done in the past and make sure that it is so significant that you had to go forward with it.”
“I don’t fault him for taking a look at whatever he’s found, we don’t really know what that is,” he continued. “But at this stage, having taken the steps, he thought it would explain if he thought it’s significant or not significant.
“Let him come forward and say why.”
Later in the interview, Tapper asked Podesta what exactly Clinton had learned from throughout the course of the investigation.
“I always hear the Clinton team say that she’s learned from it,” he stated. “What has she learned?”
“Well look, I think as she said many times, she wouldn’t do it over again,” Podesta answered. “I think it was, you know, I think she didn’t give it that much thought when she did it in the first place, and it’s the kind of a decision that I think needed more thought, more review and she didn’t do it and I think she regrets that.”
“I think it’s regrettable and but you learn and you move on. Again, I think in contrast to our opponent who never seems to learn from his mistakes and keeps repeating them and doubling down on him.”