Bill Clinton Reportedly Manipulated Flight to Pin Down AG Lynch in Meeting
Mainstream news sources are now reporting that Hillary Clinton will not be charged in connection with the email scandal that has dogged her (but not really) for over a year now. Just as that information should be unsurprising to any of us, neither should it come as a shock the lengths to which Bill Clinton apparently went last Monday to arrange a private meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix to discuss���well, you will just have to guess at what was discussed. Anyone with a brain and a shred of objectivity, however, surely believes that besides the weather, grandkids, and other such benign topics of conversation, the former president and the nation���s top law enforcement official engaged in some back-and-forth on the matter of Hillary���s email troubles.
It is Lynch���s office that is, of course, responsible for investigating Mrs. Clinton and bringing any charges against her in connection with that inquiry.
Bill Clinton, who was preparing to depart Phoenix at the same time Lynch was arriving to the city on official business, took it upon himself to wait for the AG as soon as he learned that she would soon be landing at Sky Harbor. Once her plane touched down, Clinton walked over to it, stepped right into it, and proceeded to spend the next 25 or so minutes visiting with Lynch.
A member of the security detail that was on site to protect both Clinton and Lynch spoke anonymously about Bill���s actions to the New York Observer, saying that the plan was for Clinton���s plane to be gone before Lynch���s arrived in order to avoid a logjam of limousines and security personnel, as well as an exacerbation of security concerns, more generally. However, according to the source, when Clinton did not leave on schedule, it was clear what was afoot. The source describes the scene:
���Nobody knew this was coming. We just knew to be aware there were other events going on. There was no planned meeting. It was just chance contact. The fact is, he just started walking over. I don���t think it was pre-arranged. He just started walking over and [even her security] can���t tell him, ���you can���t do that.��� He walked in her plane for at least 20 to 25 minutes and the FBI is standing face to face with the Secret Service and just chatting on the hot tarmac like, ���what the hell.������
���I don���t agree with her politics and all that, but I knew from the beginning that she got caught off guard and her staff was already talking about it that it���s going to be a political problem for her. Her staff was flipping out. We didn���t think about the political part until we saw her staff flipping out. For the security guys, it was more of a ���I���ve got armed guys coming into my perimeter��� problem. But the staff guys saw right away that it was a political problem. After Clinton got off, they were like, ���that wasn���t good.��� And I know from others who were in the actual car with her that her people knew immediately the political ramifications of it and were very upset.���
It is in the days that followed this meeting that news began to break that Hillary would be unlikely to face any charges relating to the investigation of her use of a private email server for official communications; Chuck Todd of NBC said so definitively on Saturday, and CNN followed suit soon thereafter.
By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large
