Attorney General Loretta Lynch is expected to announce Friday that she would accept the indictment recommendations of the FBI in the Clinton email case should such action be suggested by law enforcement agents.
The decision was quietly under consideration at the Justice Department for months, but became a political necessity following a fierce backlash over Lynch’s private meeting with Bill Clinton, the New York Times reported.
A Justice Department official gave Bloomberg a slightly different message Friday morning, but still agreed there is a “very, very low” chance that Lynch would overrule the FBI.
NEWS: Key clarification from DOJ official re what @LorettaLynch plans to say today (v diff than @nytimes lede): pic.twitter.com/d1c4RUEe00
— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) July 1, 2016
If that is her stance, it concentrates Hillary Clinton’s legal fate in the hands of FBI Director James Comey by effectively removing herself from the decision-making process about an indictment.
FBI agents are investigating whether Hillary Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information by circulating sensitive material on the former secretary of state’s private network.
The presumptive Democratic nominee has not yet been questioned by investigators, a step that must be completed before the probe can conclude.
But agents have been on the case since July 2015 and have been scouring the contents of her private server since the following month after the FBI seized the hardware from a warehouse in New Jersey.
