Friday on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told host Laura Ingraham the House Judiciary Committee had “smoking gun” evidence former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee, got special treatment from the Obama Justice Department during the investigation of her use of an unauthorized email server during her tenure.
Gaetz argued Clinton “didn’t deserve special treatment” and that she should have been “treated like every American.”
Partial transcript as follows:
INGRAHAM: The congressman joining us now. Congressman Gaetz, you have been all over this. People are saying, oh, you just don’t understand when they say “special investigation” and “small team” that’s just routine kind of lingo. So you are making a big deal over nothing.
GAETZ: Well, Laura, we now have smoking gun evidence that Hillary Clinton got special treatment, and it’s important to provide context. We’ve got Loretta Lynch on the tarmac with Bill Clinton. We’ve got Loretta Lynch telling James Comey to call this a matter and not an investigation. Then we have got James Comey sucking this up to headquarters and keeping the investigators in the Washington, D.C. office away from the Clinton investigation. And then he drafts the exoneration statement before even conducting the interview.
In six days the FBI director Christopher Wray will be before the House Judiciary Committee, and we need answers because Hillary Clinton didn’t deserve special treatment. She should have been treated like every American, and now we know she was not.
INGRAHAM: Do you think that when they say “special treatment” and the way they designated it, it was just, from what you can see with all the things you just laid out, it was soft pedaling it or shortcutting it or we know the conclusion, let’s just put some window dressing on it so it looks like it’s official but let let’s wrap this baby up as soon as possible. Is that what you are getting at?
GAETZ: Well, that’s what the evidence suggests. And when you look at the recent documents released about the tarmac meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton, the FBI was more worried about spin control and public relations and punishing the person that released this information than they were about the improper conduct of the attorney general of the United States. And so time and again, we see from the Obama era that they were determining the outcomes before actually conducting the investigation. That’s not what the American people deserve, and that’s why we’re going to fight for a real investigation.
INGRAHAM: Congressman, weren’t they also desperate to find out who leaked the Clinton meeting on the tarmac with Loretta Lynch?
GAETZ: Absolutely. Recently discovered emails show that the FBI was very concerned about who let the American people know that Loretta Lynch was meeting with Bill Clinton, but they weren’t at all concerned about the fact that the meeting had occurred and had jeopardized this very critical investigation. So we’re really seeing a circumstance where the FBI, the Lynch Department of Justice, was engaged in a cover-up of their activities all at the same time they were determining the outcome of the Hillary Clinton investigation before actually doing it.
INGRAHAM: All right, Congressman Gaetz, thanks for that update.
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