Theoretically this should make you me feel better. So why doesn't it?
I've thought all along that the only thing that could save Hillary would be Loretta Lynch doing what she knows her boss wants her to do, and trashing the FBI's clear evidence that she had committed at least one felony and should be indicted. With Lynch now saying she'll just go along with whatever the FBI recommends, that should take care of that concern, right?
Ms. Lynch isn’t recusing herself from the Clinton email case, as some Republicans have demanded, and it is not clear the extent to which her remarks may quell their criticism.
Ms. Lynch has been faulted by Republicans and Democrats for the meeting, which occurred after Mr. Clinton learned Ms. Lynch’s government jet had just landed at the Phoenix airport. He visited her plane for about 20 or 30 minutes, according to officials.
She has said they didn’t discuss the email investigation into Mrs. Clinton and her staff, but former federal prosecutors said the meeting was ill-advised because it creates an appearance of impropriety, and because Mr. Clinton didn’t need to discuss the specifics of the case to try to garner good will with Ms. Lynch.
In defending herself at a press conference on Tuesday, Ms. Lynch has argued that career prosecutors and agents are handling the politically-charged matter of Mrs. Clinton’s email, in which agents are examining whether anyone mishandled classified information in her email system. Ms. Lynch’s comments Friday are expected to lean further in that direction, saying she plans to take the career officials’ recommendation on how to proceed with the case.
The expected announcement was first reported by the New York Times.
Ms. Lynch has long insisted the Clinton investigation is being handled impartially by career prosecutors, repeatedly suggesting they will be the most important players in deciding whether or not to charge anyone in the case.
If Ms. Lynch were to recuse herself, she couldn’t be part of the case at all, including on the question of whether to file charges. Instead, the matter would likely fall to the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, who is also a political appointee. By not recusing herself, Ms. Lynch retains control of the case, but Friday’s remarks are expected to be her most forceful claim to date that career officials, rather than political appointees, are central to the prosecutorial decisions.
So let's put this together:
FBI Director James Comey has consistently indicated that the investigation is in its closing phases.
Earlier this week, Lynch and Bill Clinton had a private meeting on an airplane sitting on a tarmac in Phoenix. Both insist they never discussed the case, which no one with a brain believes is true, although, as the WSJ story above points out, Clinton is a master of saying-without-saying, so it hardly matters if he did.
With even Democrat operative like David Axelrod criticizing the Phoenix meeting, Lynch suddenly feels compelled to let everyone know that whatever the FBI decides is now fine with her, provided - and this could be a very important caveat - it agrees with career prosecutors who work for the DOJ.
Now, there is no reason to believe that Lynch hasn't been keeping up on the investigation, so my guess is that she knows at least in a basic sense where it's headed. Could she have made this pronouncement because she's very confident Comey and his team will not send up a criminal referral? If so, how could that be given what we already know about her lies concerning the sending and receiving of classified information, and the ordering of an underling to remove classification markings, and the presence of classified information that she had insisted was not there? How could there be no criminal referral when her IT guy is afraid of answering questions and keeps taking the Fifth in depositions?
The only way I can see is that the FBI is applying a different standard to Hillary because of how hot a political potato this would be. It's not enough just to believe a crime was committed. You have to also believe the crime is so serious that it justifies throwing a massive wrench into the U.S. presidential race, and not every crime - maybe not even every felony - meets that standard.
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This all stinks to high Heaven
I would hope they're not looking at it like that, but it's possible they could be and Lynch knows that. If that's the case, it would explain why she's so comfortable suddenly announcing that she's going to follow the FBI's lead.
But there's a bigger issue here that bothers me. Loretta Lynch is the attorney general of the United States. Making decisions like this is her job. If she's not so compromised that she would need to officially recuse herself, then what's the reason she should not be expected to make the decision herself?
If she doesn't think any decision she makes would be viewed as trustworthy because of the political side she's on, then how can we expect anyone in the political world to be held to the same standards of legality as those not in that world? If you or I commit a federal crime, Loretta Lynch makes a decision whether to convene a grand jury to indict. But if Hillary Clinton commits that same federal crime, she can't and she won't? Because Hillary is a political person and therefore it's unreasonable to think Lynch can call balls and strikes fairly?
If that's the case, then people in the political world are above the law, at least in the sense that there's a different set of requirements for them to ever be indicted. And maybe it would be the same if the person under investigation was Paul Ryan, because then Lynch could face criticism for being too eager to indict. So in the same way, applying the law to him becomes more difficult than applying it to you and me.
This is just rotten all around. And the worst thing about it is that Bill and Hillary Clinton have known for a very long time that this is how the game is played, and they've used their mastery of the game to shield themselves from accountability on all kinds of matters where you and I would have found ourselves in a heap of legal trouble.
No matter what happens here, the rules were different for Hillary than they are for ordinary people. And that really sucks because Hillary believes the rules should be different for her, and Loretta Lynch has just decided that, yes, they are.
So no, I don't like this. If Hillary is indicted, I'll like the result because I'm convinced it's the correct one. But what I really want to see is America's actual public officials doing their actual jobs regardless of politics - exercising their judgment based on the facts - and coming to that conclusion. Loretta Lynch has just announced she'll take a pass on exercising any judgment whatsoever.
And if this is in any way the result of her meeting with Bill Clinton on that plane, then Clinton's gambit had the intended effect. He compromised the attorney general of the United States, who is now helpless to do her job.
This all stinks to high Heaven.
Theoretically this should make you me feel better. So why doesn't it?
I've thought all along that the only thing that could save Hillary would be Loretta Lynch doing what she knows her boss wants her to do, and trashing the FBI's clear evidence that she had committed at least one felony and should be indicted. With Lynch now saying she'll just go along with whatever the FBI recommends, that should take care of that concern, right?
