Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report strongly indicates that either former Attorney General Loretta Lynch or former President Bill Clinton is lying about how Clinton came to board Lynch’s plane at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix in June 2016. That meeting took place as the FBI was conducting its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s possible mishandling of classified material. When it became public, the meeting thus raised concerns that Lynch was being pressured by or colluding with the former president to prevent Hillary Clinton from being prosecuted.
Yet while Horowitz’s report does not shed light on whether the Hillary Clinton email investigation came up in the meeting between Lynch and Clinton’s husband (both parties deny that it was raised), the report does suggest that Bill Clinton or Lynch is lying. Because the two stories do not add up.
Bill Clinton told Horowitz’s team that “he recalled walking toward Lynch’s plane with his Chief of Staff, and that Lynch and her staff were ‘getting off the airplane.’ He said that he greeted Lynch, who was on the plane, and Lynch stated, ‘[L]ook it’s a 100 degrees out there, come up and we’ll talk about our grandkids.'”
The necessary implication is that Lynch stuck her head out of the plane door and beckoned Bill Clinton up.
In contrast, Lynch says that “[her husband and her] were walking toward the front door, and then … the head of my [security] detail stopped and spoke to someone outside the plane, turned around and said former President Clinton is here, and he wants to say hello to you. And I think my initial reaction was the profound statement, what? Something like that. And he repeated that. … And I said, yes, he can come on the plane and say hello. And he was literally there. So I don’t know if [the detail agent in charge] was talking to President Clinton or somebody else. I don’t know who was on the steps.”
Note Lynch’s explicit statement that she didn’t see who was on the plane’s stairwell talking to her detail chief. Now note the Horowitz report’s clarification that “Lynch said [to the IG officers] that former President Clinton boarded the plane in a matter of seconds, suggesting that he was in the stairwell near the door to the plane.”
Only one story can be true. Either, as Bill Clinton claims, Lynch did indeed stand in the doorway to welcome him into the plane and escape the heat, or Lynch is telling the truth when she says that Clinton entered the plane after being granted permission by the head of her detail.
I’m with Lynch.
Bill Clinton isn’t necessarily renowned with his fastidious sense of duty to the truth and the IG’s report also indicates that the former president sought to delay Lynch from ending their conversation on the plane by praising her service and engaging in small talk. Seeing as neither side speaks of a credible pre-existing relationship, Bill Clinton’s friendly words and reluctance to leave the meeting thus also suggest that his intent was to curry favor with Lynch.
Why that goal? One guess is that it was to earn Lynch’s favorable treatment of Hillary Clinton in the context of the FBI email investigation.