Four days after meeting privately with former President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Loretta Lynch took the stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival to clarify her role in the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lynch, who has fielded a firestorm of criticism for the impromptu meeting said that the recommendations for how the investigation will proceed will come from DOJ prosecutors and that she will accept those recommendations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“As I have always indicated, the matter is being handled by career agents and investigators at the Department of Justice,” she said. “They are acting independently. They follow the law, they follow the facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“They will make recommendations as to how to resolve what those facts lead to. The recommendations will be reviewed by career supervisors in the Department of Justice and the FBI and by the FBI director. Then, as is the common process, they will present it to me, and I fully expect to accept their recommendations.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lynch’s repeated mention that career professionals would issue the recommendations is important as she said that it means the determination would not be made by political appointees, like herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But when asked by moderator Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post whether this meant that Lynch was recusing herself from the investigation, the attorney general further clarified that she would review the findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“A recusal would mean that I wouldn’t even be briefed on what the findings were or what the actions going forward would be,” she said. “While I don’t have a role in those findings, in coming up with those findings or making those recommendations, I’ll be briefed on it and I will be accepting their recommendations.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lynch said that <\/span>she felt she had to provide people with a view of the process and a clarification of her role in it following what she called a social meeting, which has drawn heavy scrutiny towards<\/span> the nation\u2019s top law enforcement official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I understand how people view it,” she said. “No matter how I view the meeting, I think what’s important to me is how the people view the Department of Justice because of that meeting.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lynch added that she probably wouldn\u2019t done<\/span> the meeting over again and felt that it had taken attention away from the work that the DOJ does, presenting it in a negative light and requiring her to clarify her role in the investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “To the extent that this issue has overshadowed the mission, yes, that’s painful to me,” she said. “I think that it’s important that we provide as much information as we can, so people can have faith and confidence in the work of the department.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The DOJ is investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State and whether the now-presumptive Democratic presidential nominee or her staff failed to legally disclose her correspondence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she will back the recommendations of her investigators in the Clinton server case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":45842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":9,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[15,9],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2714],"class_list":["post-14807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management","category-federal-oversight"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"GXEDKUFXVRFVLBSNETTUUHPDC4","arc_canonical_url":"\/federal-oversight\/2016\/07\/01\/lynch-career-prosecutors-will-make-clinton-investigation-call\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n