Attorney General Loretta Lynch Met Privately With Bill Clinton
Editor's note: This Shark cannot believe that Loretta spent a half hour with that slimy draft dodger. Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com
The two were coincidentally at the Phoenix airport at the same time
ENLARGE
Attorney General Loretta Lynch says her visit with former President Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport was primarily social. Photo: nancy wiechec/Reuters
Ms. Lynch said at a press conference that the Clinton meeting was unplanned. Mr. Clinton was apparently waiting to fly out of the Phoenix airport when Ms. Lynch’s plane coincidentally landed there. The former president then walked over to the attorney general’s plane to speak to Ms. Lynch and her husband.
“Our conversation was a great deal about his grandchildren. It was primarily social and about our travels,” Ms. Lynch told reporters in Phoenix on Tuesday.
“We talked about former Attorney General Janet Reno, for example, whom we both know, but there was no discussion of any matter pending for the department or any matter pending for any other body. There was no discussion of Benghazi, no discussion of the State Department emails, by way of example,” she said.
The two did discuss the recent vote in the U.K. to leave the European Union, but the Justice Department isn’t involved in that issue, she said.
But others suggested the meeting could send the wrong message. “It’s probably ill-advised because it does create the appearance of impropriety,” said Ken Sukhia, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida who is now running for Congress as a Republican. “You don’t necessarily have to talk about the subject to garner some good will [from prosecutors] by having that kind of conversation.”
‘There was no discussion of Benghazi, no discussion of the State Department emails, by way of example.’
The impromptu meeting comes at a sensitive time in the criminal probe of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server to do government business while she was secretary of state. Mrs. Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation have interviewed many of Mrs. Clinton’s senior aides from her tenure as secretary of state, and they plan to interview the former secretary herself in coming weeks, according to officials. As attorney general, Ms. Lynch will have the final say on whether any charges are brought against Mrs. Clinton.
Since Mrs. Clinton’s use of private email for government work came to light, intelligence officials have identified multiple email conversations that are now classified, and the FBI has launched a criminal probe to see if anyone mishandled classified information.
Mrs. Clinton has said it was a mistake to use personal email but has denied wrongdoing. She has repeatedly dismissed any suggestion she could be charged with a crime as a result of the investigation.
Officials familiar with the investigation have said it is unlikely criminal charges would result from that investigation, but some Republican lawmakers suggested long before Tuesday’s meeting that Ms. Lynch couldn’t weigh the issue impartially.
Mr. Clinton nominated Ms. Lynch as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position she held from 1999 to 2001.
Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate’s second-ranking Republican, has called for an independent prosecutor to take over the case from the Justice Department.
Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com
