What are the FBI and DoJ hiding?
Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton met on an airport tarmac days before the FBI interviewed Hillary, not under oath, about her use of a private unsecured email server and her destruction of over 30,000 emails. After the interview, Comey announced that Hillary was extremely negligent but absolved her of any criminal intent. Hillary told us the deleted emails were about yoga and Chelsea's wedding plans. Lynch and Bubba said they talked about golf and grandkids and Bill's travels.
Lynch told reporters that the impromptu conversation on her government aircraft in Phoenix on Monday centered on social issues, from talk of grandchildren and Clinton's golf game to their recent travels. Nothing came up, the attorney general said, about any ongoing Justice Department investigation.
On March 15, 2017, Judicial Watch sued the Justice Department to obtain records about the meeting. It requested:
- All records of communication sent to or from officials in the Office of the Attorney General regarding the meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton in June 2016.
- All records of communication sent to or from officials in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General regarding the meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton in June 2016.
- All references to the meeting held between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton contained in day planners, calendars and schedules in the Office of the Attorney General.
The suit was filed because the FOIA request to the Justice Department and FBI did not produce any records.
The American Center for Law and Justice, the ACLJ, also filed suit because its FOIA request to the FBI produced the following reply from Comey's FBI:
No records responsive to your request were located.
Last week, the Justice Department release about 400 pages about the meeting consisting of emails between the FBI and the Justice Department. Most of the pages were redacted, so we do not know what was said, which will require further lawsuits to obtain the truth. But the released documents show that the DOJ and FBI were coordinating how to handle the news of the meeting. For example, the email chain said:
"FBI just called," indicates that the "FBI ... is looking for guidance" in responding to media inquiries.
Evidently the FBI needed "guidance" from the DOJ about how to respond to the media. Why not tell the truth, if the truth was that Lynch and Clinton spoke about golf and grandkids? Does it take 400 pages to explain and record a chance meeting about golf and grandkids?
The serious question is why the Justice Department, presumably led by Sessions, and the FBI, presumably led by a Trump appointee, are redacting the communications between the Obama Justice Department, then clearly led by Lynch, and the Obama FBI, then clearly led by Comey. There are no national security issues, so why not release the entire unredacted documents?
We want the contents of the 400 pages detailing the communications between the Comey FBI and the Lynch DOJ, and why the FBI said there were no documents in response to the FOIA request when there are at least 400 pages.
Jay Sekulow, attorney for the ACLJ, and Judicial Watch have stated they will go to court to get the unredacted documents. But why do they have to go to court? We are entitled to know what happened.
What is there to hide, and why is the Sessions DOJ protecting Lynch?