President Obama indirectly excused Hillary Clinton’s careless handling of classified material Saturday by saying the State Department is overwhelmed daily by a “massive influx of information” due to improvements in technology.
While cautioning that he wouldn’t comment on Mrs. Clinton’s case, the president said at a news conference in Poland that he’s “concerned” about FBI Director James B. Comey’s warning that the State Department has a widespread problem with its handling of classified documents.
“The advent of email and texts and smartphones is just generating enormous amounts of data,” Mr. Obama said. “It is hugely convenient. But what it also is doing is creating this massive influx of information on a daily basis, putting enormous pressure on the department to sort through it, classify it properly, figure out what are the various points of entry because of the cyberattack risks that these systems have.”
Mr. Comey told lawmakers this week that Mrs. Clinton isn’t particularly “sophisticated” in handling classified material. Critics, including many Republican lawmakers, are pushing to bar Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, from receiving classified briefings during her campaign.
The president suggested that erring on the side of caution when classifying sensitive documents creates other problems, slowing communication among various government agencies.
“If you overclassify, then all the advantages of this new information suddenly go away because it’s taking too long to process,” the president said.
Mr. Obama said handling the flood of information is a problem across government agencies.
“It’s a problem in terms of domestic affairs; it becomes an even bigger problem when you’re talking about national security issues,” he said.
Mr. Comey criticized Mrs. Clinton this week for “extremely careless” handling of classified documents on her private mail system while she served as secretary of state. But Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch accepted his recommendation not to bring charges in the case.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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