POSTED ON AUGUST 4, 2017 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN LORETTA LYNCH, MEDIA BIAS, OBAMA-LYNCH JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

POSTED ON AUGUST 4, 2017 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN LORETTA LYNCH, MEDIA BIAS, OBAMA-LYNCH JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

COMEY’S FBI LIED ABOUT LYNCH-CLINTON MEETING

The American Center for Law and Justice has doggedly pursued information about then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s infamous tarmac meeting with former president Bill Clinton. The Department of Justice has finally responded to ACLJ’s FOIA request with a small number of documents. Several interesting points emerge from the DOJ’s emails, beginning with the fact that the FBI falsely claimed not to have any documents relating to the meeting:

[T]he Comey FBI lied to us. Last July, we sent FOIA requests to both the Comey FBI and the Lynch DOJ asking for any documents related to the Clinton Lynch plane meeting. The FBI, under the then directorship of James Comey, replied that “No records responsive to your request were located.”

The documents we received today from the Department of Justice include several emails from the FBI to DOJ officials concerning the meeting. One with the subject line “FLAG” was correspondence between FBI officials (Richard Quinn, FBI Media/Investigative Publicity, and Michael Kortan) and DOJ officials concerning “flag[ing] a story . . . about a casual, unscheduled meeting between former president Bill Clinton and the AG.” The DOJ official instructs the FBI to “let me know if you get any questions about this” and provides “[o]ur talkers [DOJ talking points] on this”. The talking points, however are redacted.

Another email to the FBI contains the subject line “security details coordinate between Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton?”

On July 1, 2016 – just days before our FOIA request – a DOJ email chain under the subject line, “FBI just called,” indicates that the “FBI . . . is looking for guidance” in responding to media inquiries about news reports that the FBI had prevented the press from taking pictures of the Clinton Lynch meeting. The discussion then went off email to several phone calls (of which we are not able to obtain records). An hour later, Carolyn Pokomy of the Office of the Attorney General stated, “I will let Rybicki know.” Jim Rybicki was the Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to FBI Director Jim Comey.

There are only two possibilities here: either someone at the FBI destroyed documents relating to the Bureau’s communications about the Lynch/Clinton meeting, or someone at the FBI lied in response to ACLJ’s FOIA request. Federal agencies have personnel dedicated to responding to FOIA requests, and presumably the people who carry out this relatively mundane task would not lie or destroy documents without instructions from the top.

To me, the most interesting revelation of the DOJ documents is the extent to which the Democratic Party media were anxious to squash the Lynch/Clinton story. Thus, Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post told DOJ’s spokeswoman that he was “hoping I can put [the story] to rest,” notwithstanding that his editors were “still” interested:

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