President Obama on His 'Very Deliberate Effort' to Avoid Appearance of 'Meddling' With FBI Probe of Emails

— -- In his first public reaction to FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress regarding newly discovered emails that may be linked to Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama wouldn’t say whether he was upset by the timing of the letter’s release.

“I’ve made a very deliberate effort to make sure that I don’t look like I’m meddling in what are supposed to be independent processes for making these assessments,” Obama said in an interview with “Now This News” when asked if the timing of Friday’s release upset him.

“I do think there is a norm that when there are investigations, we don’t operate on innuendo, we don’t operate on incomplete information, we don’t operate on leaks. We operate based on concrete decisions,” he went on to say, adding that the FBI previously determined that “she had made some mistakes but there wasn’t anything there that was prosecutable.”

In the interview Obama expresses his continued confidence in Clinton’s character.

“Hillary Clinton is not only going to make a great president, and not only is she going to work on the issues that your viewers care about, but I trust her, I know her, and I wouldn’t be supporting her if I didn’t have absolute confidence in her integrity and her interest in making sure you people have a better future,” Obama said.