WASHINGTON — Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Friday that she “fully” expects to follow the recommendations of career prosecutors handling the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server — without recusing herself from the case.
Lynch has come under mounting pressure to step aside after it was disclosed that she had a 30-minute meeting Monday night with Bill Clinton on the tarmac at Phoenix International Airport.
In retrospect, she admitted, the meeting was a mistake.
“I certainly wouldn’t do it again, because I think it has cast a shadow,” she said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.
“The recommendations will be reviewed by career supervisors in the Department of Justice and in the FBI, and by the FBI director, and then, as is the common process, they present it to me, and I fully expect to accept their recommendations.”
The qualifier “fully” seemed to leave the door open for Lynch to weigh in on the fate of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Afterward, a Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed that Lynch was still the “ultimate decider” in the case.
Lynch maintained that Bill Clinton’s visit on her airplane was not about the investigation but merely a “social meeting” about grandchildren, travel and former Attorney General Janet Reno, whom they both know.
“It’s important to make it clear that meeting with President Clinton does not have a bearing on how this matter will be reviewed, resolved and accepted by me,” she said.
The FBI is near the end of its investigation into whether Hillary Clinton mishandled classified material on her private e-mail server. Investigators have seized the server and have interviewed her underlings, including top aide Huma Abedin.
Clinton turned over more than 30,000 e-mails to the State Department and erased about 32,000 others she deemed personal. The State Department has since decided more than 2,000 e-mails were classified, with 22 rated “top secret.”
FBI agents instructed onlookers around the tarmac to put away their cellphones and not take photos or video of Bill Clinton getting onto Lynch’s plane, according to Phoenix’s ABC 15.
Criticism of the meeting was bipartisan, coming from former President Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), the Republican National Committee, as well as Donald Trump, who said the
“secret confab” between Lynch and Clinton was no coincidence.
“Bill’s meeting was probably initiated and demanded by Hillary!” Trump tweeted Friday.
In 2015, Attorney General Eric Holder softened charges against Gen. David Petraeus for providing classified material to his former mistress while CIA director.
Career prosecutors recommended felony charges, but Holder signed off on a misdemeanor and no prison time — a deal that frustrated some Justice Department and FBI professionals who believed the retired general got special treatment.
Asked Friday what advice she wished Holder had given her, Lynch said, “Where the lock on the plane door was.”