LYNCH IN HOT SEAT
Clinton ‘cover-up’ probe
The Senate is investigating whether Ex-Attorney General Loretta Lynch promised to go easy on the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server.
A Senate panel will investigate whether ex-Attorney General Loretta Lynch pulled her punches in the Justice Department’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server to minimize damage to the former first lady’s campaign for the White House.
A letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein, of California, asked Lynch to explain her role in the FBI’s investigation of Clinton and her correspondence with members of her inner circle as well as Democratic National Committee staffers.
“During your time in the Justice Department, did you ever have communications with [former DNC Chairwoman] Rep. [Debbie] Wasserman Schultz, her staff, her associates, or any other current or former DNC officials about the Clinton e-mail investigation?” reads one of six questions in the letter, sent Friday.
The Judiciary Committee’s de- cision to investigate Lynch’s conduct came weeks after ousted FBI Director James Comey testified that she tried to influence the way he discussed the e-mail probe, testimony that Feinstein said left her feeling “queasy.”
At a Senate hearing this month, Comey told lawmakers that Lynch tried to persuade him to downplay the probe by changing the way the FBI described it.
“At one point, [Lynch] directed me not to call it an ‘investigation,’ but instead to call it a ‘matter,’ which confused me and concerned me,” Comey said during his June 8 testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “That was one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude I have to step away from the department if we are to close this case credibly.”
The change would have made the feds’ description of the probe echo the way Team Clinton had been describing it, Comey said.
Comey had previously told lawmakers he “struggled” with how to handle the e-mail probe be- cause of “a number of things that had gone on . . . that made me worry that [Justice] Department leadership could not credibly complete the investigation and decline prosecution without grievous damage to the American people’s confidence in the justice system.”
Lynch’s surprise meeting with Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Phoenix in June 2016 drew instant condemnation from Republicans. The former attorney general apologized for the “innocuous” meeting and claimed the two talked about golf and their grandchildren, not the probe into Bubba’s wife.
Grassley gave Lynch a July 6 deadline to submit answers to the committee.
Letters also went to Clinton campaign staffers Amanda Renteria and Leonard Benardo.
Benardo reportedly was on an e-mail chain with Wasserman Schultz in which Lynch may have assured Renteria that the Clinton probe wouldn’t go too far, The Washington Post reported.