The president’s top spokesman applauded the performances of Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey when they testified before Congress about their decision not to bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server.
Presidential press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that President Obama feels “pride and appreciation” for the public service of both Lynch and Comey.
He declined to comment on the aggressive nature of Republicans lawmakers’ grilling of Lynch and Comey over the last week in hearings aimed at scrutinizing their decisions against indicting Clinton. The FBI had been investigating her decision to set up a private email server when she was secretary of state, and ended up saying that Clinton did end up sending and receiving classified information over that non-secure server, despite Clinton’s claim that this never happened.
“At least for now I’m going to withhold judgment … on how Republicans conducted themselves during those hearings and express to you the pride and appreciation that the White House feels toward those individuals [who testified] under a pretty hot spotlight,” he said.
During her testimony Tuesday, Lynch repeatedly deflected and declined to respond to GOP questions about details of the FBI’s probe of Clinton’s email use, leading to heated exchanges with top Republicans over the course of several hours.
Comey, who appeared last week before a House committee, was tight-lipped about some of the evidence in the case, but he challenged the truthfulness of several of Clinton’s email defenses in sworn testimony before Congress.
He specifically contradicted Clinton on her statements that she didn’t email “any classified material to anyone on my email.”
“No, there was classified material emailed,” he said.
