Obama: I Didn't Know Hillary Was Using Private Email

President Obama says he learned Hillary Clinton was using a home-grown email account while she was his secretary of state at "the same time everybody else learned it—through news reports." His comments came via an interview with CBS airing this morning, though the New York Times notes that the president failed to address the elephant in the room: How he could have failed to notice that his top diplomat was emailing from a clintonemail.com domain rather than state.gov? He continues: "The policy of my administration is to encourage transparency. And that's why my emails through BlackBerry that I carry around—all those records are available and archived."

As to whether Clinton's private email furthered that transparency, Obama said, "I’m glad that Hillary’s instructed that those emails about official business need to be disclosed" and "the fact that she is going to be putting them forward will allow us to make sure that people have the information they need." Meanwhile, CNN reports that Bill Clinton weighed in on the brouhaha—by not exactly weighing in. "I'm not the one to judge that. I have an opinion but I have a bias. I shouldn't be making news on this." Added Sen. Dianne Feinstein, an unabashed champion of a Clinton 2016 run, speaking this morning on Meet the Press: "She needs to step up and come out and say what the situation is. From this point on, the silence is going to hurt her." (More Hillary Clinton stories.)