President Obama’s top spokesman declined to say Thursday whether the White House is worried about a meeting Attorney General Loretta Lynch had with former President Bill Clinton amid the ongoing investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and the propriety of the Clinton Foundation’s dealings.
“I am not going to comment on that,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said when asked if he thought the meeting was appropriate. “I don’t want to be in a position of questioning an investigation I haven’t been briefed about.”
Peppered with questions about the Lynch meeting with Bill Clinton, which took place Tuesday, Earnest said he hasn’t spoken to the president about the encounter in question and is not going to “second-guess” the probe.
“I wasn’t there for the meeting but the attorney general was and she was asked a direct question about it and she answered it,” he said. “I think that’s consistent with everyone’s expectations.”
Still, Earnest downplayed the meeting by stressing the importance Obama and Lynch place on ensuring that investigations are free of political interference.
“Both the president and the attorney general understand how important is it for the Justice Department to conduct investigations that are free of political interference … that has been a bedrock principle since our country’s founding,” he said.
The president, he said, believes that is worth protecting because it’s vital to preventing erosion in the public confidence of the justice system, and said it’s a belief that “Attorney General Lynch has dedicated her entire career to.”
“She has protected the public trust by prosecuting individuals in both parties where there is evidence they might have violated the public trust and that is what earned her bipartisan support” in her Senate confirmations, he said.
Lynch on Tuesday met privately with Bill Clinton in Arizona for roughly 30 minutes amid an ongoing Justice Department investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and potential improprieties with the Clinton Foundation’s dealings while she was secretary of state.
The meeting took place aboard a plane parked at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport, although whether it occurred on Lynch’s government plane or Clinton’s is in dispute.
Lynch confirmed the meeting when reporters asked her about it during a news conference later Tuesday at the Phoenix Police Department, but she said nothing about the case was discussed and the discussion was limited to personal matters.
