Kanye West stirred quite a controversy when he interrupted Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards. | Photo by AP Photo Close

ABC's Terry Moran set the Twitter-sphere all aflutter when he wrote:

We've reached out to Moran and will update this post when we learn more.

Now, an ABC spokesperson explains to POLITICO what happened:

"In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview. This was done before our editorial process had been completed. That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again."

The White House had no immediate comment.

— Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.