President United States Barack Obama exchanged emails with Hillary Clinton on her private email address while she was Secretary of State but only recently learned the details of the personal email server she was operating, the White House said today.   

Obama had previously said he learned of Clinton's exclusive use of private email while at the State Department"the same time everybody else learned it," after it wasreported in the media.   

"The president was aware of her (Clinton's) email address; he traded emails with her. That should not be a surprise, that the president of the US is going to trade emails with the secretary of state," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.   

"But the president was not aware of the fact that this was a personal email server, and that this was the email address she was using exclusively for all her business," he said.   

The controversy over Clinton's use of private email address -- for the entire four years she was serving as secretary of state -- broke out last week after news reports said that Clinton used a domain named "clintonemail.com" to create the email account on January 13, 2009, the same day she began the confirmation process in the Senate.