Well, it has happened…or, at least, we are told it has happened.
After meeting with Bill Clinton for a half hour in a way that was supposed to be unknown to the public (on a plane, away from the terminal, with FBI warning no pictures, no recording, no cell phones),
then, two days later, instructing her Justice Department to withhold possibly incriminating emails that would be a disaster for Hillary Clilnton’s presidential campaign,
Loretta Lynch has been shamed into…
Well, here is the beginning of the report on CBS News’s web site. See if you can figure it out:
Attorney General Loretta Lynch will accept the recommendations of career prosecutors in the Hillary Clinton emails case, a Justice Department source confirms to CBS News.
The story was first reported by The New York Times.
The CBS News source says that Lynch will not formally remove herself from the case.
Lynch does not ever have to accept the recommendation of prosecutors or investigators. She can look at their evidence and then decide to go in a different direction or modify their recommendations.
So what is this? What’s going on here?
Is Loretta Lynch telling us that she has removed herself as the final arbiter of where this investigation winds up – i.e. whether there will be indictments and criminal charges?
Or is she telling us that she will let other people work on it for a while, but retains full ownership of whether to accept what they say….which is exactly where she was in the first place?
Please note that the CBS news story says both things.
Is Loretta Lynch being shamed into recusing herself, or is this a sham dog-and-pony show in which she’s giving up nothing.
I can’t say for sure. But my experience is that when someone gives out two completely different messages, about 99.9% that person winds up doing the thing he/she was going to do in the first place.
I therefore fully expect that this is a sham, right up there with “shovel-ready jobs” and “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor”.
Your call.
In the words of Lizzie Warren,
“Lawyer-Woman speak with Forked Tongue.”
I would expect a lawyer to be able to state an issue clearly, if that is what they intended.
But, 98% of this administration gives the rest a bad name.