President Obama doesn't know more about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails than the average American, despite his past assurances that Clinton didn't harm U.S. national security by sending out unsecured emails, a White House spokesman said on Monday.

"The president has neither sought nor received a confidential briefing or confidential information about the ongoing investigation," Press Secretary Josh Earnest clarified. "The president's knowledge about this situation is based entirely on public reporting."

On Sunday, Obama clarified comments he made last year that the Democratic presidential front-runner did not hurt national security by using an unsecured email server to communicate during her time at Foggy Bottom.

"Here's what I know: Hillary Clinton was an outstanding secretary of state," Obama told Fox News on Sunday. "She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy."

Earnest said that although he has not read the reams of Clinton's emails released by the State Department, he has no reason to doubt her assertion that none of the information relayed over non-government servers or through a private email account was classified.

She "has said from the beginning that none of the information that she received or sent from that e-mail account was stamped or marked classified," Earnest said. "I haven't seen any evidence publicly that what she's saying about that was wrong. And considering that we're talking about tens of thousands of e-mails, I think that's a relevant fact."

Obama on Sunday distinguished between information stamped classified that is sensitive and information deemed classified that, if made public, could hurt national security.

"And what I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that … there's classified and then there's classified," Obama said. "There's stuff that is really top secret, top secret and then there is stuff that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you may not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you can get in open source."

Earnest tried to reconcile Obama's remarks Sunday with on-going federal prosecutions against government officials who have revealed classified information.

"[T]here are secrets that are critical to our national security," Earnest said. "There are secrets that I think that even journalists occasionally would acknowledge should be kept secret in order to protect the American people."

"Now, how to keep that secret and for how long to keep that information secret, is surely the subject of legitimate debate," he added. "But at its core, there are some things that I think we all acknowledge should be kept secret. And that means when information like that is not kept secret by people who have taken an oath to protect it … those individuals should be held accountable."

Obama on Sunday assured Americans that the federal probe into Clinton's conduct is being handled the same as any other similar investigation.

"I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department, or the FBI, not just in this case, but in any case," Obama said. "Nobody is above the law. How many times do I have to say it?" he asked.