More than 18 months ago, President Barack Obama said he learned of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s e-mail practices “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.”

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

— Katherine Miller (@katherinemiller) March 7, 2015

Within hours, Clinton aide Cheryl Mills told campaign chairman John Podesta that “we need to clean this up — he has emails from her — they do not say state.gov.”

While it has been known for some time that Obama knew of Clinton’s use of a private e-mail and even corresponded with her on it, this is the first evidence that Democratic operatives were concerned that the president had lied to the public.

A White House spokesman denied Tuesday that Obama had been dishonest:

“What the president said was an entirely factual response,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters during gaggle in Los Angeles, where the president was attending fundraisers.

 “I recognize that some of the president’s critics have attempted to construct some type of conspiracy about the communication between the president and the secretary of state,” Earnest continued.

“But they’ve failed to put forward a conspiracy that withstands any scrutiny, so I guess they are back to recycling thoroughly debunked conspiracies.”

Shortly after Obama addressed the e-mail issue in March 2015, Earnest insisted that Obama was unaware that Clinton was engaged in practices that violate federal policy and law. Mills’ comment indicates that this may not be the case.

Earnest also reiterated the Democratic talking point about not trusting the veracity of the e-mail leak. “I can’t verify the integrity of these emails,” he said, describing the e-mails as “stolen” and released “to undermine our democracy.”