Back in June, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton met in private on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport to talk about golf and grandkids, at least according to her side of the story.
For thirty minutes this meeting was allowed to go on as the FBI requested everyone in the vicinity to put away their cell phones and take no pictures. Lynch also said the meeting was “impromptu” which is weird because Clinton had to delay his plane to meet her at the exact time their paths crossed in Arizona.
What bugged everyone but these two individuals was the fact that both Bill and Hillary Clinton were under investigation by the Justice Department for wrongdoing at the Clinton Foundation and the former secretary of state’s private e-mail server. Another curiosity was the fact that the day after the meeting, the DoJ delayed the release of thousands of Clinton Foundation e-mails for 27 months which could have had an enormous impact on the presidential election.
But Lynch said it was just grandkids and golf:
“Our conversation was a great deal about his grandchildren. It was primarily social and about our travels. He mentioned the golf he played in Phoenix, and he mentioned travels he'd had in West Virginia.
"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."
About a week after this meeting, FBI Director James Comey announced the end of the e-mail investigation.
Now, Lynch regrets the optics of that meeting and told CNN on Sunday, “I do regret sitting down and having a conversation with him because it did give people concern. My greatest concern has always been making sure that people understand that the Department of Justice works in a way that is independent and looks at everybody equally.”
"I wish I had seen around that corner and not had that discussion with the former president, as innocuous as it was, because it did give people concern. It did make people wonder, ‘Is it going to affect the investigation that’s going on?’ And that’s not something that was an unreasonable question for anyone to ask,” she added.
Reminder: President Obama promised to have the “most transparent administration in history.” That worked out well.
