Loretta Lynch, Meet Craig Livingstone
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
It doesn’t always make sense to apply Occam’s Razor to a problem. Sometimes a problem is too complex, with multiple dimensions and interconnecting causes, for that. (The 14th-century English Franciscan friar, William of Occam, argued that the simplest explanation for an occurrence, the one that requires the fewest assumptions, is usually the best.) But Bill Clinton’s 30-minute meeting with Loretta Lynch on her private airplane on the tarmac at the Phoenix Airport is not one of those exceptions.
The simplest explanation makes the most sense: Clinton was up to no-good. The only question was what technique he employed to achieve his ends. Lynch said that the meeting with Mr. Clinton on June 29 was unplanned, largely social, and did not touch on the email investigation; that Clinton walked uninvited from his plane to her government plane, both of which were parked on a tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
“He said hello and I basically said hello, and congratulated him on his grandchildren, as people do,” she said. “That led to a conversation about those grandchildren.”
Baloney.
Am I saying that Lynch is lying and that Clinton “threatened” her in some way? No. He wouldn’t have to do anything that obvious. Clinton may have talked only about the topics Lynch mentioned. But there was a subtext. And Lynch knows that. Lynch knows about the Clintons’ “war rooms” and that strange collection of soft men with beady eyes who serve as their hatchet men. Clinton knows how to use smiles and small talk to hint at their existence.
(Why do these Clinton attack dogs, like Sydney Blumenthal and David Brock, always look like grown-up versions of the kids who were picked on in high school? Is hardball politics a way for men like this to make up for residual insecurities? Anthony Weiner is an example, too. Do you think he ever screamed at the guys in the New York City playgrounds the way he used to do at Republicans when he was in Congress?)
Lynch may be as honest and ethical as everyone says, but she has moved in Democratic circles her entire adult life. She has heard the scuttlebutt. She remembers Craig Livingstone. It makes no difference that FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 that the FBI decided not to press charges against Hillary. Bill Clinton knew that was going to happen when he met with Lynch.
How do I know that Clinton knew? Because ABC, NBC, and CBS knew. They announced just two days after Clinton’s meeting with Lynch and days before the FBI announcement not to indict, that there would be no charges against Hillary. If the networks were given leaks about the FBI’s intention, so was Bill Clinton.
His goal when meeting with Lynch was to button up the case, to make sure that she would not say anything to cloud the picture that the Clintons wanted the American people to see in the wake of the decision not to indict.
Livingstone, for those whose memory needs refreshing, was the key figure in the Clinton scandal known as “Filegate.” He was the Clinton White House’s director of personnel security who was forced to resign in 1996 when it was discovered that he was in charge of a team that collected FBI files on hundreds of individuals, mostly Republicans. The discovery was a great embarrassment for the White House, arousing suspicions that the Clintons were looking for dirt on people in public life who might stand in the way of their plans.
Livingstone, when announcing his resignation, said he took “full responsibility” for what he had done, absolving the Clintons of any guilt. He denied any intent to use the material as blackmail. “At no point do I believe I betrayed anyone’s confidence,” said Livingstone while being grilled by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. He said he never disclosed any of the information in the confidential FBI reports “for any improper purpose whatsoever, and I have no reason to believe that anyone else in my office ever did so.”
Critics at the time insisted that Livingstone “took the fall” for the Clintons; that low-level White House aides were not likely to undertake an assignment of this magnitude without the consent from the president. The charge was that Livingstone was the “cut-out” in the operation, the fall guy used to give the Clintons plausible deniability if that became necessary.
It worked. Congressional investigators were unable to find the smoking gun to prove that the Clintons had ordered Livingstone to collect the files. The media cooperated by spreading a picture of Livingstone and his team as incompetent and inexperienced bumblers who overstepped their bounds.
The central question, of course, is what happened to the information that Livingstone gathered. Wherever it is, it is likely that the Clintons still have access to it, as well as information gathered in the years since by their operatives. One need not be a conspiracy theorist to wonder how many people in Washington and in the media fear what the Clintons can do to their reputations or the reputations of their loved ones because of what is in those files.
There may be nothing about Loretta Lynch or her loved ones in those files. But she doesn’t know that; she has to wonder about it. She knows more about how these things work than you or I do. Clinton’s visit on the plane reminded her, in case she thinks she and her family are immune now that she is attorney general of the United States.
Does not Lynch’s interview with Washington Post journalist Jonathan Capehart at the Aspen Ideas Festival on July 1 indicate that there is no reason to dwell on this issue? In that interview, Lynch agreed “that my meeting on the plane with former President Clinton could raise questions and concerns” and that she “wouldn’t do it again.” She then promised to “accept whatever recommendations the FBI and career prosecutors make” and that “the case will be resolved by the same team that has been working on it from the beginning.”
Lynch described the questions raised by her meeting with Clinton as “personally painful” for her “because they stained the reputation of the Justice Department.”
Does this not prove that Lynch was not pressured by Clinton? Not in my opinion.
Come on: Keep in mind that Bill Clinton knew that Hillary was not going to be indicted when he met with Lynch on the plane. (I repeat: if CBS got the leak, so did he.) Did he tell this to Lynch in specific terms, or merely shape his conversation with this fact in mind? It doesn’t matter. What is key is that when Lynch gave her assurances to us that she would go along with whatever the FBI recommended, she was assuring us that she would go along with a decision not to indict.
The bottom line: Bill Clinton added her to the chorus proclaiming to the American people that Hillary had done nothing criminal. And he made sure she would sing her part without any hint of reservation. Lynch was made an accomplice to the Clintons’ deception. The only question is how willingly she went along with the scheme.
