After Clinton-Lynch Tarmac Meeting, FBI Scrambled to Find and Punish Source, Newly Released Emails Show
By Max Kutner On 12/15/17 at 2:45 PM ESTAfter news broke about an airport meeting between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton in the midst of last year's presidential campaign, the FBI scrambled to identify the source who leaked details about the encounter and discipline him or her, according to emails released on the FBI website on Friday.
The meeting between Lynch and Clinton took place in June 2016, while the FBI was investigating Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Bill Clinton boarded Lynch's plane while it was on the tarmac at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport. The following month, then-FBI Director James Comey announced the bureau would not recommend that the Department of Justice pursue charges in the email probe. Comey has testified before Congress that Lynch asked him to refer to the probe as a "matter," a request that made him feel "queasy."
The internal emails show that on June 29, 2016, a senior spokeswoman for the Justice Department emailed her counterparts at the FBI to flag articles that were starting to appear about the meeting. In the email, the spokeswoman, Melanie Newman, described the encounter as "a casual, unscheduled meeting." She provided talking points, which are redacted in the released version.
That same day, multiple FBI officials sent links about the story to Comey, who responded to one email, "Got it, thanks sir." Also on those email chains were FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whom President Donald Trump and others have accused of a pro-Clinton bias because his wife received money for a political campaign from entities associated with Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton ally; and Peter Strzok, who was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller's team because of text messages critical of Trump. Strzok oversaw the Clinton email investigation.
But after Observer published an article containing additional details about the encounter, citing an anonymous "security source" who had been present, the FBI and Justice Department moved from damage control to discussions about identifying the source and punishing that person, the emails show. At the time, the publisher of Observer was Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and one of his senior advisers.
https://www.newsweek.com/loretta-lynch-bill-clinton-tarmac-meeting-details-comey-749995
The Attorney General meets with the husband of a former Secretary of State who committed a felony and afterward orders her department to drop any investigations. And then when the story goes public, she orders them to investigate and punish the person responsible for reporting the story? And Biden doesn't have a problem with this?
