Last week, ahead of the FBI’s dismissal of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and the release of the Benghazi report, former President Bill Clinton’s “unplanned meeting” with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the airport in Phoenix raises new questions.
CNN reported on the meeting and how Bill Clinton says he “regrets” the meeting and the “shadow” it casts on the new from the FBI.
photo/ donkeyhotey
“The President’s conversation with the attorney general was unplanned and was entirely social in nature. But recognizing how others could take another view of it, he agrees with the attorney general that he would not do it again,” an aide to Bill Clinton told CNN Saturday.
Hillary Clinton weighed in on the meeting as well Saturday, telling MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, “Obviously, no one wants to see any untoward conclusions drawn, and they said they would not do it again.”
Bill Clinton and Lynch met privately on Monday. Clinton, who had been in the Phoenix area earlier in the day for a fundraiser for his wife’s campaign, according to a campaign source, joined Lynch aboard her plane while both were on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
“I certainly wouldn’t do it again because I think it has cast this shadow over what it should not, over what it will not touch,” Lynch said Friday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, adding, “It’s important to make it clear that that meeting with President Clinton does not have a bearing on how this matter will be reviewed and resolved.”
Lynch said the pair mostly talked about grandchildren and a little golf.
Photo/Nodar Kherkheulidze via wikimedia commons
“It really was a social meeting, and it was, it really was in that regard,” she said. “He spoke to me, he spoke to my husband for some time on the plane, and then we moved on.”
But she said she understood why the incident caused concerns, and said it was “painful” to her that the Justice Department’s integrity was called into question.
“No matter how I viewed it, I understand how people view it,” she said.
The No. 2 Republican in the Senate, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, called for a special counsel Thursday to take over the investigation into the private server, citing the appearance of impropriety.
“This incident does nothing to instill confidence in the American people that her department can fully and fairly conduct this investigation, and that’s why a special counsel is needed now more than ever,” Cornyn said in a statement.
[…] Bill Clinton met with AG Loretta Lynch in 'secret' meeting, but he now 'regrets how i… […]