Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch insists she did not discuss Hillary Clinton’s case with former President Bill Clinton when they met secretly on an airport tarmac.
Lynch told NBC News in an interview scheduled to air Monday night that she did not bring up the subject of Hillary Clinton’s investigation during her July 2016 secret meeting with Bill Clinton on a tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Arizona months before the 2016 presidential election.
The FBI investigated Hillary Clinton’s use of a private, unsecured email server while she served as secretary of state because the server held classified information.
It is true that “my speaking to the former president raised concerns in people’s minds about whether or not there was going to be any impact on the email investigation,” Lynch said, adding that the two spoke about “innocuous things.”
Lynch claimed they spoke about Clinton’s grandchildren and “issues of the day,” such as Brexit.
Once news of their meeting went public, Lynch said she regretted meeting Bill on the tarmac. Lynch distanced herself from the email investigation after the meeting, saying she would go along with the Justice Department investigators’ recommendations on the case.
Days after the meeting, former FBI Director James Comey announced that Hillary Clinton would not be charged with a crime for her mishandling of classified information.
Lynch’s interview with NBC News comes a week before James Comey, the former FBI director, who oversaw the Clinton email investigation, releases his autobiography.
Tom Fitton, president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, told Fox News Saturday that there is no full explanation from either Bill Clinton or Lynch about what happened during that secret meeting.
The organization has filed several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests about the encounter but has had little success in getting “unredacted” information about the meeting.
“It’s still cover-up mode on this meeting, which is very interesting,” Fitton said. “Why hasn’t Loretta Lynch been called to Congress or before a grand jury in a significant way about this?”