The top White House spokesman on Friday refused to criticize Attorney General Loretta Lynch for meeting privately with President Clinton this week, even though Lynch herself admitted the meeting “cast a shadow” over the ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email while she was secretary of state.
“I’m not going to second guess or offer my own backseat driving here,” Josh Earnest said when asked if Lynch exercised poor judgment in meeting with Bill Clinton, at his request, on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport. “I’ll let the attorney general speak to her schedule and to her handling of the significant responsibilities she has.”
Earnest dodged a few more times, and at one point answered by offering a litany of Lynch’s professional accomplishments.
“I think when it comes to judgment, I think there is no quarreling with the 30-year history that Loretta Lynch has established as a highly competent, highly successful federal prosecutor,” he said.
Earnest did distance the White House from Lynch’s actions, however. “I can tell you that the White House and the president were not all involved in that decision,” he said.
Lynch said earlier on Friday that she “fully expects” to accept FBI investigators’ recommendations in the email matter. She also is resisting calls to recuse herself from the case.
“I will leave it to the attorney general to describe the role that she will play and the process that the Department of Justice will undertake as they conduct this investigation,” Earnest said. “The president’s expectation is that this investigation will be handled just like all the others, which is that the investigators will be guided by the facts, they will follow the evidence and they will reach a conclusion based on that evidence and nothing else.”
Earnest said it’s up to Lynch alone to relay what she and Bill Clinton discussed and if it has affected her judgment.
“I didn’t attend the meeting,” Earnest said. “I’ll let her describe the meeting and if it has had any impact on the investigation, I’ll let her describe that as well. This is something that is being handled completely independent of the president and completely independent of the White House.”
Earnest said he has not discussed Lynch’s meeting with Obama, which is why he could not say whether Obama was frustrated or angry that the meeting took place.
Nonetheless, Earnest is confident that Obama “believes that this matter should be handled without regard to politics. And he believes this investigation should be conducted based on facts, not based on the political affiliation or the political standing of anybody who may be involved in it.”
