Donald Trump Donald John TrumpOmar fires back at Trump over rally remarks: 'This is my country' Pelosi: Trump hurrying to fill SCOTUS seat so he can repeal ObamaCare Trump mocks Biden appearance, mask use ahead of first debate MORE on Tuesday called for President Obama to be "investigated" over Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonButtigieg stands in as Pence for Harris's debate practice Senate GOP sees early Supreme Court vote as political booster shot Poll: 51 percent of voters want to abolish the electoral college MORE’s use of a private email server while secretary of State, citing newly released emails published by WikiLeaks.

"That's why he stuck up for Hillary, because he didn't want to be dragged in. Because he knew all about her private server," the GOP presidential nominee told Reuters.

"This means that he has to be investigated," Trump said.

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Trump has seized on a newly leaked email exchange from Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, published by WikiLeaks.

The exchange between Podesta and longtime Clinton aide Cheryl Mills came after Obama's March 2015 television interview in which the president said he discovered through news reports that Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee, used a private server.

"We need to clean this up - he has emails from her - they do not say state.gov," Mills wrote to Podesta in an email published by WikiLeaks.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest explained days later at a daily briefing that Obama knew about Clinton's email address because he had sent messages to it but was unaware of the arrangement to store her email for archiving.

The White House The White House insisted on Tuesday that Obama's comments at the time last year were "entirely factual." "What the president said was an entirely factual response,” Earnest told reporters Tuesday. "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 said. “But they’ve failed to put forward a conspiracy that withstands any scrutiny, so I guess they are back to recycling thoroughly debunked conspiracies." Trump escalated his attacks on Obama during a rally Tuesday afternoon in Sanford, Fla., calling Obama a "phony" and harping on the WikiLeaks emails as evidence that the president is now involved in the controversy over Clinton's email server.

"That means Obama is now into the act," Trump said at Tuesday's rally. "And now I understand, despite his hatred of the Clintons ... now I understand why he pushed her, because he didn’t want to get caught up in the big lie.

"This guy — he’s as bad as she is," Trump said.

The GOP nominee also hammered Clinton over the investigation, arguing that her "criminal conduct" was a threat to "the foundations of democracy." He has previously called for a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton if he’s elected president.

“We have to investigate the investigation," Trump said.