Bubba-Lynch turbulence
Tarmac meeting ‘the capper’
Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s surprise meeting with Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac last year convinced FBI Director James Comey there was no way the Justice Department could conduct an independent probe of Hillary Clinton, Comey testified on Wednesday.
“A number of things had gone on which I can’t talk about yet, that made me worry that the department leadership could not credibly complete the investigation and decline prosecution without grievous damage to the American people’s confidence in the justice system,” Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“And then the capper was — and I’m not picking on the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, who I like very much — but her meeting with President Clinton on that airplane was the capper for me, and I then said, you know what, the department cannot, by itself, credibly end this,” he said.
The FBI chief said that at the time he was preparing to announce the results of the investigation into the former first lady on his own because he didn’t think other top officials at Justice would sound credible doing it themselves.
And he held a news conference days later to announce that the FBI would not be recommending criminal charges although the then-Democratic candidate for president had acted recklessly by using a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state.
Republicans slammed the supposedly impromptu chat between the ex-president and the country’s top prosecutor, alleging the fix was in regarding the feds’ probe into Hillary.
Bubba and Lynch met privately in June 2016 at an airport in Phoenix after the pair realized they were both on the same tarmac, an aide to the former president told CNN at the time.
Lynch at the time painted an innocent portrait of their curious conversation.
“Our conversation was a great deal about grandchildren, it was primarily social about our travels and he mentioned golf he played in Phoenix,” she said last June.
Criticism of their meeting pressured Lynch into saying she would abide by the findings of the FBI and career prosecutors who were probing Hillary’s use of the e-mail server.