Obstruction of Justice: FBI and DOJ Collusion Exposed

New documents released by the Department of Justice cast a dark cloud of suspicion over the conduct of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and ex-FBI Director James Comey.  Information buried in the 417-pages raises troubling ethical and criminal issues that have gone unreported by the media.

The materials were released August 2 by Daniel R. Castellano, a DOJ senior attorney, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative, non-partisan organization that promotes transparency and integrity in government.

The heavily-redacted records consist primarily of a flurry of emails between the FBI and DOJ after a Phoenix television reporter revealed on June 27, 2016, that Lynch and former president Bill Clinton secretly huddled on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

The surreptitious meeting stunned legal scholars at the time because Hillary Clinton was under FBI investigation for her private email server. Ms. Clinton was slated to be interviewed by the FBI a few days later. One week after the clandestine meeting, Comey issued Ms. Clinton a get-out-of jail card.

The timing of the controversial sequence of events was too calculated to be dismissed as a coincidence.

A thorough review of the freshly released records, expose the duplicity and unethical conduct after the tarmac meeting.  Here are some of the highlights gleaned from email exchanges:

--  Among the hundreds of emails, there is a single reference that fuels questions about whether the meeting between Lynch and the former president was a chance encounter.  There is a DOJ email to the FBI with this subject line: "Security Details Coordinate Between Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton?" The rest of the email is blacked out. The FBI was present on the tarmac and shooed away reporters who wanted to film the meeting.  Was this part of the advance coordination between the Clinton and the AG security teams?

-- When a local ABC news reporter learned of the meeting, it sparked a tsunami of email exchanges between Carolyn Pokorny at the AG's office and Melaine R. Newman, the director of public affairs at the Justice Department.  Their task was to hastily craft a "statement/talking points" for Lynch. Even Peter Kadzik, a longtime friend of Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta, was included in the draft discussion. The AG was copied on many of the emails in the chain under the alias of Elizabeth Carlisle.  That leads to the question: Why did Ms. Lynch feel the need to use an alias when conducting official government business?

--  The various drafts of the "statement/talking points" were redacted or blacked out from the documents provided by the DOJ under the guise the communications were protected by the "deliberative process privilege."  How can talking points that were designed for public dissemination be protected from disclosure?  The DOJ should be required to reveal the entire contents of every pertinent email.

-- It is clear from the email chains that reports of the infamous tarmac talk reached the highest levels of the FBI.  Yet on October 21, 2016, Comey replied to Judicial Watch's FOIA request by denying there were any available records regarding the Lynch-Clinton summit.  "No records responsive to your request have been located," Comey answered.  The recently released records make it clear Comey was less than forthcoming. It is unlawful to withhold government information in response to a FOIA request.

After the "statement/talking points" were approved, Ms. Lynch faced the media on June 28, 2016. Here is a transcript of what she said: "Actually, while I was landing at the airport, I did see President Clinton at the Phoenix airport as I was leaving and he spoke to myself and my husband on the plane. Our conversation was a great deal about his grandchildren.  It was primarily social and about our travels."  She denied there was any discussion about Ms. Clinton's emails. Interestingly, she did not refer to the meeting as a 'chance encounter' in her original statement.

It strains the bounds of credulity to believe the meeting was not planned in advance; that the timing was incidental just days before Ms. Clinton's FBI interview; or that Comey's decision to defer prosecution was not connected in anyway to Ms. Lynch's discussion with the former president.

Republicans in Congress must stand together and demand the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the crime of obstruction of justice by Comey and Lynch.  The charade has continued too long.  Justice has not only been blinded but she has been gagged and bound since the tarmac talk.