Upon being told that president Obama had publicly claimed he did not know about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, longtime Clinton aide and counsel Cheryl Mills told Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta “we need to clean this up.”
The revelation comes in the 18th batch of emails released by Wikileaks reportedly from John Podesta’s email account.
The email chain dated March 7, 2015 was started by Josh Schwerin, currently a National Spokesman for the Hillary Clinton campaign after he saw a Tweet from a reporter:
That caused Schwerin to email a group of people including White House Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri and Hillary Clinton’s traveling press secretary Nick Merrill. Schwerin included the tweet and wrote:
Jen you probably have more on this but it looks like POTUS just said he found out HRC was using her personal email when he saw it in the news.
Nick Merrill forwarded that email to top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, who then forwarded it to Podesta with a clear admission that she was aware President Obama had exchanged emails with Clinton on her private server.
From:cheryl.mills@gmail.com
To: john.podesta@gmail.com
Date: 2015-03-07 21:41
Subject: Fwd: POTUS on HRC emails
we need to clean this up – he has emails from her – they do not say state.gov
Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, the government watchdog group that has pursued the email server story and deposed Cheryl Mills told Breitbart News exclusively:
This new information further highlights why Clinton email scandal has always been an Obama scandal that goes far beyond the Secretary of State’s office and reaches directly into the White House.
The American people should also be deeply concerned the Obama administration’s response to the President being caught in an apparent lie. Almost immediately after this email shows that Cheryl Mills realized that President Obama’s statements “needed cleaning up,” the White House response was to issue new regulations that walled off any ability to further investigate the President’s statements.
As U.S. News reported 10 days after the Mills email in an articled title ’Most Transparent’ White House Dumps FOIA Regulations for Itself:
The Obama administration announced Tuesday it will ditch regulations that subjected large portions of White House correspondence to public records requests, a decision derided by transparency advocates who wryly noted it was issued during a week celebrating open access to government.
The notice exempting the White House’s Office of Administration from the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act was contained in Tuesday’s Federal Register, reversing a three-decade-old policy during Sunshine Week, the annual celebration of the FOIA law.
The newly-published email raises serious questions for Mills, Podesta and President Obama. On October 16, Fox News host Brett Baier asked Hillary Clinton’s Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine about Obama’s claim.
First, Baier played Kaine the video clip of Obama’s statement:
CBS NEWS: Mr. President, when did you first learn that Hillary Clinton used an e-mail system outside the U.S. government for official business while she was Secretary of State?
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: At the same time everybody else learned it through news reports.
CBS NEWS: Did you know about Hillary Clinton’s use of private e-mail server—
OBAMA: No.
CBS NEWS: —while she was Secretary of State?
OBAMA: No.
Then Baier pressed Kaine about Obama’s statement:
BAIER: At the same time, Senator, he was using a pseudonym and an e-mail address to communicate with Secretary Clinton. And there’s communication and there are e-mails from staff that suggest they wanted to hold that back and were talking about what to do.
Did the president lie there?
KAINE: Well, I don’t know because—I actually do not know if he’s communicating by e-mail with Hillary, does he know that it’s a private server? I mean, I don’t exactly know if I send somebody an e-mail exactly what their setup is. I don’t really think about that much, and I can’t imagine that the president, with all that’s on his mind would either.
I do know is this, that there was an extensive, as you know, Bret, investigation by the FBI under the direction of a wonderful and tough career public servant, Jim Comey. Jim was in the U.S. attorney’s office in the eastern district of Virginia when I was the mayor of Richmond. And he’s somebody with the highest standards of integrity.
And he reached a conclusion after a very long investigation that no reasonable prosecutor would take this to the next step. I think that still has not been effectively challenged. I know there are people who would like to re-litigate that, but given the depth of that investigation and his own credibility, I think his conclusion, you know, probably gets it right.
Cheryl Mills was given a limited immunity deal by the FBI during their investigation into the private server.
This story is developing.
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