A former GOP-appointed federal prosecutor said Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s decision to meet with Bill Clinton this week is an egregious breach of conduct that should require an appointment of an independent prosecutor in the Hillary Clinton email case.
Joe diGenova, a longtime D.C. attorney who served as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and worked for several Republicans on Capitol Hill, argued that Lynch’s decision to meet with former President Clinton is particularly unethical and problematic for the government’s case because he is a witness in the investigation of his wife’s emails, and is a potential subject of an additional Justice Department investigation into the propriety of the Clinton Foundation’s dealings.
“He is not just Bill Clinton — he is a witness in an ongoing criminal investigation of his wife and in all likelihood he is the subject of an ongoing investigation,” diGenova told the Washington Examiner. “He is a person of interest, in law enforcement terms.”
“Her judgment is abysmal,” he added, referring to Lynch.
DiGenova is calling on the top Republican on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to write Lynch a letter demanding that she meet with them in private to explain her behavior. If she refuses, they should subpoena her, he said.
Lynch on Tuesday met privately for half an hour on a plane, which was parked at a Phoenix airport where she had arrived to deliver a speech touting the Justice Department community policing initiative. There are disputes on whether the meeting occurred on Clinton’s plane or Lynch’s government jet.
The meeting, Lynch has said, was spontaneous and personal in nature and the two did not discuss anything about the pending Justice Department investigations involving the Clintons.
Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have defended her ethics after reports of the meeting surfaced Wednesday.
Reid and Schumer shot down reporters who questioned whether the visit was a mistake considering that Lynch is overseeing the high-stakes investigation into Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee.
“Her ethics are above reproach,” Reid told reporters Thursday.
Other Democrats say the meeting is terrible optics in the middle of such a sensitive, high-profile case with political ramifications that could decide the outcome of the presidential contest.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a Yale Law School graduate, said he believes Lynch will remain objective in her role but would have advised against the meeting because it sends the wrong signal even if it was simply a social encounter.
“I think she should have said, ‘Look, I recognize you have a long record of leadership on fighting crime but this is not the time for us to have that conversation. After the election is over, I’d welcome your advice,'” Coons told CNN’s “New Day” Thursday.
DiGenova went much further and argued that prosecutors have a policy of instituting “black-out” periods when they avoid potential witnesses and subjects of cases at all costs to avoid the appearance of impropriety. If a prosecutor happens to run into someone, they are obligated to tell them that they are unable to speak to them on any topic.
“It’s a steadfast rule among prosecutors and she broke it,” he said.
If she responded to an invitation and came to Clinton’s plane, the breach of ethics would be even worse.
“I find the whole thing just awful. It’s the kind of arrogance that’s so typical of the Clintons. [For Democrats] to shove it off like it’s a nothing burger is disgraceful. This should never have happened.”
The top ethics officer at the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility should also be obligated to launch its own investigation into the meeting, diGenova said.
“Here’s the question you ask if you’re the ethics office at the Department of Justice: Would she meet with the spouse of someone under criminal investigation or any other target in any other ongoing Justice Department case?” he said. “The answer is no.”
Lynch and Bill Clinton have a long personal history. He helped set her on the path to become attorney general when in 1999 he appointed her as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, a position where she gained prominence for her role in prosecuting high profile terrorism and mob cases.
In early 2010, President Obama nominated Lynch to again serve in the same key New York prosecutor post.
