Back in March 2015, as Hillary Clinton’s email scandal was in its early stages, CBS correspondent Bill Plante asked Obama when he first learned of her hillbilly hardware:

I have some questions here pic.twitter.com/ufkeoZCx2m

— Katherine Miller (@katherinemiller) March 7, 2015

We’ve already learned that this is not true. Not only did Obama know about her email address, he communicated with her using her private email. However, when Obama made this pronouncement to the public it seems to have caught the Clinton camp by surprise:

You can nearly smell the panic. But the subtext here is Obama telling Clinton that he will do whatever it takes to protect her campaign. And James Comey’s investigation showed he meant what he said.