The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart on Tuesday characterized a controversial private meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton as a “disaster of epic proportions” for the Justice Department.
Lynch met privately with Clinton in Arizona last week for an off-the-record exchange. Their conversation, which took place aboard Lynch’s jet, was first noticed and reported by a local ABC News affiliate, KNXV-TV.
The attorney general confirmed the exchange two days later, but maintained in remarks to reporters that the meeting was of a purely social nature.
Top lawmakers on both sides have criticized the meeting as inappropriate, and noted that it’s not a good look for Hillary Clinton, whose use of an unauthorized and unsecured private email server when she worked at the State Department has prompted a federal investigation.
But for Capehart, who interviewed Lynch Friday about the meeting, the party with the real problem on its hands is the Justice Department.
Lynch is “trying to explain how this process works, because she knows that this was and remains a disaster of epic proportions when it comes to the independence and integrity of the Justice Department,” he said Tuesday in an interview on MSNBC as he praised the AG for answering questions about her 30-minute conversation with the former president.
“She wants everyone to understand how this process is working … she [also] talks a great deal about career prosecutors and career investigators, she’s trying to make it clear to everyone, if they are willing to hear it, that she’s not making the decision, political people are not making the decision,” he added.
Capehart’s interview with Lynch last week was mostly friendly, but there was a moment when he asked outright: “What on earth were you thinking?”
The attorney general conceded in their exchange that her supposedly impromptu meeting with Clinton’s husband “cast a shadow” over the email investigation.
Capehart went out of his way following his interview with Lynch to praise her as a model public servant, and an upstanding law enforcement officer with a “solid gold reputation.”
“It’s not that she’s worried about her reputation for judgment and integrity,” he said Friday on MSNBC. “What we saw on that stage was an attorney general who is very concerned about what this incident means for the integrity and the public’s confidence in the Department of Justice.”
