Obama: Reports on Quid Pro Quo Between FBI, State Dept ‘Are Just Not True’

Tuesday at the White House, in a joint news conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, President Barack Obama was asked about the FBI interview notes that revealed discussions between Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy and the FBI about removing the classification of emails stored on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private server and the State Department allowing the FBI to place more agents in forbidden countries, Obama said the accusations of a quid pro quo were “just not true.”

Obama said, “With respect to the FBI reports, we have heard from the FBI and the State Department that the notion or the accounts that have been put out there are just not true. You can question them again, but based on what we have seen, heard, learned, some of the more sensational implications or appearances, as you stated them, aren’t based on actual events, and based on what actually happened—I think derived from overly broad characterizations of interactions between the State Department and the FBI that happened a lot and happened between agencies.”