US Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton, former Democrat President and husband of Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, on Lynch’s plane at the Phoenix airport Tuesday. Lynch said the meeting was unplanned, and all they talked about was grandkids. Oh, and Brexit.
For anyone who believes this, I might know of some beachfront property north of Santa Fe in which they might be interested.
President Barack Obama (D) has already, three times publicly, instructed Lynch and through her his FBI Director to take no substantive action against Hillary Clinton: in two interviews in which he announced she’d done nothing wrong, and in his endorsement in which he said she should be President.
Bubba understands this; he didn’t go over to Lynch’s plane to shoot the breeze about inconsequentials, or to gossip about Brexit, or to tell her his terms. He went at her invitation to hear her offered quid pro quo.
As if that’s not enough, there’s this:
Department of Justice officials filed a motion in federal court late Wednesday seeking a 27-month delay in producing correspondence between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s four top aides and officials with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a closely allied public relations firm that Bill Clinton helped launch.
Notice that: Wednesday—the day after Lynch met with Bubba in her private plane. And
US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras, a President Obama-appointed judge, had previously ordered the State Department to release the requested documents by July 21.
Hmm….
Update: Lynch on Friday said she’ll “defer to career prosecutors and the FBI” on matters related to the Hillary Clinton investigation. A DoJ official prior to her actual announcement:
Determinations as to whether to charge any individual, as well as the findings of the investigation, will be made by career prosecutors and investigators who have been handling this matter since its inception[.]
But what does “defer” mean–she’s explicitly not recusing herself from the case? What’s the practical value of those determinations being made by career prosecutors and investigators? Deferral doesn’t mean she’s not retaining final decision-making. Those prosecutors and investigators will still be working for Lynch after they’ve wrapped things up.
And Lynch has already amply demonstrated her level of integrity with that meeting with Bubba and her subsequent move to try to suppress release of those Clinton Foundation emails she’s been ordered to release.
UpUpdate: At her Colorado news conference Friday, Lynch confirmed that she will defer to her career FBI investigators and prosecutors but will not recuse.
There’s also this tidbit, it turns out, from Christopher Sign of ABC 15 in Phoenix:
The former president steps into her plane. They then speak for 30 minutes privately. The FBI there on the tarmac instructing everybody around “no photos, no pictures, no cell phones.”
Is there any remaining doubt that FBI Director James Comey is as deeply in Hillary Clinton’s (and Bill Clinton’s, whose Clinton Foundation also is under criminal investigation, supposedly) back pocket as Comey’s boss, Lynch?