US attorney general can’t go near probe of Clinton

The moment THAT former President Bill Clinton entered U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch’s plane at the airport in Phoenix, the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s personal email account took a new twist.

It’s a twist Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, does not need.

Therefore, in order to quell the political outcry from Republicans over the so-called Tarmac Summit, the attorney general should find a way to have nothing to do with the email probe.

Lynch, an appointee of President Barack Obama’s, said last week she would accept the recommendation of career Justice Department staffers and the FBI director.

According to the New York Times, the attorney general had decided in the spring to defer to the recommendations of prosecutors and the FBI “because of her status as a political appointee sitting in judgment on a politically charged case would raise questions of a conflict of interest.”

But such reassurances aren’t silencing Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee, New York billionaire Donald Trump.

As he is wont to do, Trump wasted no time in charging that the 30-minute meeting last Tuesday between Bill Clinton and Lynch at the Phoenix airport was not entirely social, as the attorney general has said.

Absent irrefutable proof that the conversation went beyond talk about family and the former president’s grandchildren, Trump’s comments should be taken with a grain of salt.

That said, Republicans calling for Lynch to recuse herself from any participation in the Hillary Clinton investigation do have a case to make.

A Justice Department spokeswoman told the New York Times that even if the attorney general accepted the recommendation of her staff, she would be the one making the decision.

“She’s the head of the department,” Melanie Newman said, “and with that comes ultimate responsibility for any decision.”

CAUTION IS CRUCIAL

That may well be, but given the highly charged political environment in which the investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email service while she was U.S. secretary of state is being conducted, an extraordinary amount of caution is demanded.

It makes no difference that Lynch has acknowledged that her meeting with Bill Clinton in her plane was an error in judgment. The fact remains that her continued involvement in the matter will simply embolden those who believe that a grand cover-up will occur.

The FBI is looking into whether Mrs. Clinton, her aides or anyone else broke the law by setting up a private email server for her to use as secretary of state, the Times reported. Internal investigators have concluded that the server was used to send classified information.

“For the Justice Department, the central question is whether the conduct met the legal standard for the crime of mishandling classified information,” according to the newspaper.

Mrs. Clinton, a former U.S. senator from New York, was interviewed Saturday by FBI investigators.

A report on the probe is expected in coming weeks, and the attorney general must know that anything short of a recommendation of criminal charges against Mrs. Clinton will bring her detractors out of the woodwork.

The GOP is well aware that with Trump as its presidential nominee, the party’s political fortunes this year are uncertain, at best. Recent polls show Hillary Clinton leading Trump and also having a definite advantage in fundraising.

The Republican National Convention during the week of July 17 in Cleveland will be seeped in controversy, with many members of the party establishment saying they will not attend, or if they go, they will not address the delegates if invited to by Trump.

That’s why the GOP is keeping its fingers crossed with regard to the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

And that also is why Attorney General Loretta Lynch should reconsider her position as it pertains to being involved in any way in the ongoing probe.

Rather than insist that she’s fulfilling her duties as the country’s top lawyer in making a decision on the recommendation of her staff, she should find a legal way of transferring that responsibility to someone else within the Justice Department.