US Attorney General Loretta Lynch has stepped away from deciding whether Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be charged in the classified email investigation, following outrage over the AG’s private Monday meeting with Bill Clinton, the justice department announced Friday morning.
The news comes in the wake of accusations that the Barack Obama appointee has a conflict of interest in the case, after she met with the former president on her government plane while on the tarmac of Phoenix, Arizona’s Sky Harbor Airport on Monday.
She reportedly will accept recommendations from career prosecutors and the FBI instead of being part of the decision-making process herself.
Lynch will discuss the decision during a previously-scheduled conversation Friday morning at the Aspen Ideas Festival, an anonymous DOJ official said.
RT will stream her remarks live on RT.com/On-Air
Normally, the AG and other DOJ officials would have the final say in bringing charges in an investigation, but Monday’s 30 minute meeting is thought to have led to the change in protocol.
Who believes Lynch really met with Bill Clinton to share pics of the grandkids? #smh
— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) July 1, 2016
Although Lynch stressed the two did not discuss official business, she was accused of impropriety and and urged to recuse herself.
The FBI ordered no photos, no cell phones around secret Lynch/Clinton meeting that was totally just about grandkids https://t.co/mH1g5HVjv0
— Sarah Westwood (@sarahcwestwood) July 1, 2016
“When I first heard that… I actually thought they were joking,” Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Thursday on the Fox News Channel program Hannity. “I’m just flabbergasted by it. I think it’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Take a look at what happened w/ Bill Clinton. The system is totally rigged. Does anybody really believe that meeting was just a coincidence?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2016
Clinton’s primary opponent Bernie Sanders said on CBS News in May that voters should take a “hard look” at a State Department audit on the matter, but it was not enough to sway them away from the former Secretary of State, who is leading in the delegate count.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein told the Observer two weeks ago, “This is sort of typical Hillary Clinton; to do things that are not legal, to say that they are, and then try to cover them up. Hillary Clinton severely chastised other whistleblowers for using Internet channels that were not secure and yet she herself was doing that with private, high level state department information.”
1) Charging Hillary in email case would show how absurd secrecy laws in DC are; 2) if anyone unimportant did this, they’d be charged by now.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 1, 2016
Lynch’s decision is a departure from previous investigations. When President Obama’s former CIA director David Petraeus was investigated for leaking classified documents to his biographer and girlfriend, the FBI recommended felony charges, but Lynch’s predecessor, Obama appointee Eric Holder, changed it to a misdemeanor.
The investigation has been examining Clinton’s use of a private email server in her home while she was the country’s top diplomat to determine whether she or anyone on her team broke the law by setting it up or sending classified information through it.
While it has already been established that some classified information was sent on the server, the question lies in whether Clinton’s handling of said information amounts to criminal mishandling of classified information.
Lynch’s decision to accept the recommendation of the prosecutors is standard procedure for an attorney general, but it eliminates the possibility that Lynch would overrule investigators, something that has been suggested.
Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.