The Note: Clinton-Lynch Meeting Reverberates

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July 1, 2016

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Clinton-Lynch Meeting Reverberates

Trump Calls Bill Clinton-Loretta Lynch Meeting: 'Something That You Don't Do'

In an interview with ABC News' Tom Llamas yesterday, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump criticized a meeting that took place between former President Bill Clinton and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch at a Phoenix, Arizona airport on Monday. Trump said that the meeting was "just something that you don't do from an ethical standpoint. It's something that is unheard of." He added, "Nobody can even think where there's a precedent," ABC's NOAH FITZGEREL reports. http://abcn.ws/293ZJVu

Lynch Will Accept Whatever FBI Recommends in Clinton Email Probe

Lynch is expected to announce later today in Aspen, Colorado, that she will follow and accept whatever recommendation the FBI and career prosecutors and investigators make regarding whether to bring charges in the Hillary Clinton email probe, a Justice Department official told ABC News. Lynch has decided that she will green light whatever recommendation comes from the FBI and senior career lawyers in the Justice Department, after a months-long investigation tied to Clinton's use of a private email server, ABC's MIKE LEVINE reports. http://abcn.ws/29dziQR

Analysis -- ABC's Rick Klein

What the heck were they thinking? Maybe they weren't – and that's the problem, of course. At the very least, the fact that a private meeting occurred between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton was the product of a series of major errors in judgment. The former president and his team made a massive political error – an utterly unforced one – in not realizing how such an encounter, even a brief one, would be perceived in the summer of an election year. The attorney general and her team miscalculated the optics and perhaps the legality of the situation in allowing any such discussion, when everyone knows the FBI in the midst of an investigation of Hillary Clinton's handling of her emails. Lynch's announcement that she would defer to the FBI's recommendations on the case doesn't resolve anything. (In what scenario would it have been alright for her to insert her judgment for the FBI's?) Donald Trump gets a new and powerful talking point. Bill Clinton again shows how his immense value can easily be outweighed in the other direction. And Clinton campaign staffers in Brooklyn have every right to be as upset with all of this as career prosecutors in Washington.

This Week on 'This Week'

Is the Rust Belt Donald Trump's most likely path to victory? Ohio senator and Clinton supporter Sherrod Brown and former Pennsylvania senator and Trump supporter Rick Santorum weigh in, Sunday on "This Week." And, the Powerhouse Roundtable debates the week in politics with host of NPR's Morning Edition Steve Inskeep, ABC's Cokie Roberts, Wall Street Journal columnist and author of the new book "The Intimidation Game" Kimberley Strassel, and The Atlantic senior editor Alex Wagner.