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Why did Loretta Lynch need DOJ Talking Points about a meeting she alone attended?

Why did Loretta Lynch need DOJ Talking Points about a meeting she alone attended?

AG Jeff Sessions should order DOJ to stop fighting the FOIA requests and unmask the talking points

People who tell the truth don’t need to remember which story to tell.

Loretta Lynch apparently needed to remember which story to tell about her secret tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton, whose wife was under investigation for possible violations of national security laws relating to handling of classified information. Lynch was the only DOJ official present with Clinton. (Lynch’s husband also apparently was on the plane, though it’s unclear whether he participated in all of the conversation.)

That meeting preceded by just a few days the FBI clearing Hillary Clinton.

We detailed the history of the secret meeting, how it was discovered, and the DOJ attempt to hide information requested under FOIA in our recent post, Loretta Lynch used alias “Elizabeth Carlisle” to email about Bill Clinton tarmac meeting.

In that post we discussed how emails and “talking points” obtained by Judicial Watch and the American Center for Law and Justice had been heavily redacted. The Free Beacon further reports that a senior DOJ official helped edit the talking points:

One of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s top lawyers at the Justice Department helped edit Obama administration press statements about the infamous meeting between Lynch and Bill Clinton on a tarmac last summer.

The same attorney, Paige Herwig, is now the deputy general counsel for Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. That panel is now investigating whether Lynch played any role in trying to influence the scope or intensity of the FBI’s investigation into the Hillary Clinton email scandal….

Newly released Justice Department emails show that Herwig, whose title was counselor to the attorney general at the time, helped edit the first media statement responding to inquiries about the tarmac meeting….

The emails show that on June 29, 2016, two days after the Clinton-Lynch meeting when the national news media was first learning of the tarmac one-on-one, Melanie Newman, the then-director of public affairs at the Justice Department, emailed her FBI counterpart to “flag” the media stories about the tarmac meeting that she noted were “gaining traction tonight.” …

Additionally, Lynch’s deputy chief of staff contacted Comey’s chief of staff and counselor, Jim Rybicki, July 1 but the email string noting that contact is heavily redacted.

This raises numerous important questions, including this one: Why would Loretta Lynch need others at DOJ to draft talking points about a meeting at which Lynch was the only DOJ official present?

I certainly understand that Lynch may have wanted professional advice on how to spin the meeting, messaging not massaging the facts.

Until we see the unredacted talking points, and all the drafts, we won’t know for sure whether the facts and truth were just messaged, or whether they were massaged.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions should order DOJ to stop fighting the FOIA requests and unmask the talking points.

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Comments

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions should order DOJ to stop fighting the FOIA requests and unmask the talking points.”

Yep. At a minimum. WTF would they fight these FOIA requests…???

    THis si one of the most frustrating things. They shouldn’t even wait for FOIA requests. Sessions should march his a$$ in there and stand there while they pull every relevant record, and then walk out and have a press conference.

    Yes, and the same applies to the State Department slow production of Hillary’s emails.

    puhiawa in reply to Ragspierre. | August 13, 2017 at 1:36 am

    Curious, isn’t it. Because ‘talking points’ are used to distract or cover up something.

My take is there are a lot of Obama holdovers and career Democrats at DOJ and Sessions is allowing the inmates to run the asylum.
IMO He is trying to be a boss that is laid back and not obtrusive .
Trump needs to lite a fire under him

    inspectorudy in reply to dmi60ex. | August 10, 2017 at 12:44 pm

    I agree that it is frustrating but those new DoJ people have to be employed by Trump. They do not require vetting from Congress so it is his fault that the obama crowd is still there. Sessions can only do so much with the forces he has. Same with the State dept, IRS and the EPA. The entire federal bureaucracy is mostly Demorat and therein lies the bigger issue. If they decide that there is no punishment for dragging their feet or actually undermining Trump’s agenda then there is no fix. This has been growing year by year and what the answer is I would imagine would be to throw the book at a handful of these traitors and then maybe it will stop.

    Matt_SE in reply to dmi60ex. | August 10, 2017 at 4:51 pm

    The reality is that we’ll never know what his motives are, and I don’t care. I expect performance; I don’t care WHY he’s failing.

    Ragspierre in reply to dmi60ex. | August 10, 2017 at 5:24 pm

    You’ve forgotten that it was T-rump that poured the water on the fire he’d lit with his “lock her up” boob-baiting chant.

    It’s all T-rump’s show, right down to the clown car.

    Coloradoopenrange in reply to dmi60ex. | August 12, 2017 at 11:22 am

    Trump should fire Sessions in my opinion!Trey Gowdy!Facts!

Connivin Caniff | August 10, 2017 at 12:18 pm

Hey Paige, you can’t be a witness and an investigator, you dummy.

Sessions wants to be a gentleman…not working out so well

*sigh* Allow me to repeat. There is no serving politician in Washington DC who is not firmly within the control of the current Establishment. This includes Sessions.

The only way to have pro-Trump cabinet members is to import them from outside the DC political community. And, even this does insure that any given cabinet member will be independent of the Establishment.

It was the highest priority to get someone like Sessions emplaced as AG. The DOJ is THE agency which investigates criminal violations and has to be controlled by the Establishment. Otherwise, a lot of very prominent Establishment politicians are going to end up going to jail.

Our former Affirmative Action Administration could screw up Liberia.

    Scrollock in reply to Anchovy. | August 10, 2017 at 7:53 pm

    I thought he DID. Wasn’t that one of the countries rampaged by the Arab Spring? I detest how so many of his EOs are still in effect. Could be we’re gonna find out the country is too screwed up to recover. I hope not, but I’m not seeing near as strong a pulse as I’d like. The stock market is just another bubble – think aneurysm. When that sucker pops, it gonna bleed our wallets out bad.

      Milhouse in reply to Scrollock. | August 11, 2017 at 2:43 am

      Um, no, it wasn’t. Where could you possibly have got such an idea? Liberia is not an Arab country, so how could it possibly be affected by the Arab Spring?

        healthguyfsu in reply to Milhouse. | August 11, 2017 at 5:48 am

        Pretty obvious he confused Liberia with Libya…you can’t be that dense.

          Milhouse in reply to healthguyfsu. | August 11, 2017 at 6:09 pm

          Anyone ignorant enough to do that shouldn’t be commenting on current affairs.

          Scrollock in reply to healthguyfsu. | August 12, 2017 at 4:34 pm

          Yep, that’s what I did. From what I’ve read, Liberia is already screwed up, so maybe Obummer was already there. BTW, ignorant people comment on current events all the time. We vote, too.

          Milhouse in reply to healthguyfsu. | August 13, 2017 at 12:41 am

          Which is why we have all the problems we do. Ignorant people shouldn’t vote, and every effort should be taken to discourage them from voting. Bring back literacy tests — honestly administered without distinction by race, sex, or anything else.

          Scrollock in reply to healthguyfsu. | August 17, 2017 at 10:18 am

          Actually, I’m all for that. Also for only letting the people who have to pay for whatever is being voted on do the voting – no conflict of interest voters. These Special Tax Districts (they call them STDs for a reason) that get established, because there’s no one living in the area concerned to vote on it, are a crock. We had one locally that got voted down because, when they drew up the tax district, they accidentally included some college kids, and one of them showed up to vote no. I was proud of her.

Sessions turned out to have more Senator in his bloodline than prosecutor. I didn’t want to believe it but I now believe that Jeff is just too timid for the job.

That meeting preceded by just a few days the FBI clearing Hillary Clinton.

Huh?

Hillary said she was cleared.

The FBI didn’t say she was cleared. Comey considered her safe from prosecution for her crimes, but he had to make up that “intent” thing to do it. That didn’t make the crimes go away.

How does one become the sole participant in a “meeting”? Isn’t that just talking to oneself?

Sessions is an idiot.