"The Justice Department will not bring federal charges against a New York City police officer in the death of Eric Garner, ending a yearslong inquiry..."

"... into a case that sharply divided officials and prompted national protests over excessive force by the police, according to three people briefed on the decision....  A state grand jury declined to bring charges against Officer Pantaleo in December 2014.... But a federal investigation into Mr. Garner’s death proceeded, sharply dividing the Justice Department under four attorneys general and two presidents.... The attorney general at the time of the death, Eric H. Holder Jr., said that evidence strongly suggested that the federal government should bring charges against Officer Pantaleo.... While career civil rights prosecutors agreed with Mr. Holder, prosecutors under the United States attorney in Brooklyn, Loretta E. Lynch, sharply disagreed.... After Ms. Lynch succeeded Mr. Holder in April 2015, officials... worked to convince her that the officers had used excessive force and had likely violated Mr. Garner’s civil rights.... But the case stalled again after Mr. Trump won the presidential election and appointed Jeff Sessions as his attorney general. Civil rights division prosecutors recommended that charges be brought, and they asked the deputy attorney general at the time, Rod J. Rosenstein, about indicting Officer Pantaleo. But Mr. Rosenstein did not allow the department to move forward on an indictment, and many officials said they believed that there was a good chance that the government would lose the case should it go to trial...."

From "Eric Garner’s Death Will Not Lead to Federal Charges for N.Y.P.D. Officer/The decision came five years after Mr. Garner’s dying words — 'I can’t breathe' — became a rallying cry" (NYT).

"Democrats and the media are turning the AG into a villain for doing his duty and making the hard decisions that special counsel Robert Mueller abdicated."

"Mr. Barr's Wednesday testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee was preceded late Tuesday by the leak of a letter Mr. Mueller had sent the AG on March 27. Mr. Mueller griped in the letter that Mr. Barr's four-page explanation to Congress of the principal conclusions of the Mueller report on March 24 'did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance' of the Mueller team's 'work and conclusions.' Only in Washington could this exercise in posterior covering be puffed into a mini-outrage. Democrats leapt on the letter as proof that Mr. Barr was somehow covering for Donald Trump when he has covered up nothing.... Mr. Barr has since released the full Mueller report with minor redactions, as he promised, and with the 'context' intact. Keep in mind Mr. Barr was under no legal obligation to release anything at all. Mr. Mueller reports only to Mr. Barr, not to the country or Congress.... Contrast that to the abdication of Loretta Lynch, who failed as Barack Obama's last Attorney General to make a prosecutorial judgment about Hillary Clinton's misuse of classified information. Ms. Lynch cowered before the bullying of then FBI director James Comey, who absolved Mrs. Clinton of wrongdoing while publicly scolding her.... [The Democrats are] shouting and pounding the table against Bill Barr for acting like a real Attorney General."

From "A Real Attorney General/Bill Barr gets smeared for refusing to duck and cover like Loretta Lynch" by the Editorial Board at The Wall Street Journal.

"And I remember at that point saying, well, you know, thank you very much kind of thing, and he sort of continued chatting and, and said, and made a comment about his travels he was headed on."

"And I said, well, we’ve got to get going to the hotel. And I said I’m sure you’ve got somewhere to, to go. And he said yes. And I forget where he told me he was going. He was flying somewhere, but...I’ve forgotten where. He said I’m going to wherever I’m off to. And then he made some comment about West Virginia. And I do not know if he was headed to West Virginia. I just don’t know...if that was the reference to it. And he made a...comment about West Virginia and coal issues and how their problems really stem from policies that were set forth in 1932. And he talked about those policies for a while. And, and I said, okay, well."

I have read part of the IG's report. I read pages 202 to 211, about Bill Clinton's weird, extended intrusion onto Loretta Lynch on the tarmac in Phoenix on June 27, 2018. Could you please read that section and tell me what you think Bill Clinton was doing and the extent to which Loretta Lynch understood it and when in the 20 minutes or so she realized it was a problem?

The Executive Summary (page v) says "we found no evidence that Lynch and former President Clinton discussed the Midyear investigation or engaged in other inappropriate discussion during their tarmac meeting" but there was "the appearance problem" and Lynch made "an error in judgment" by not "tak[ing] action to cut the visit short."

We could talk about how narrowly the statements in the Executive Summary are framed. There's a lot of talk of finding no evidence, often tied to a particular issue, like whether Lynch and Bill Clinton discussed the Midyear investigation or another topic that they shouldn't have discussed. But I'd like to talk about the evidence that that the IG did find and the inferences that can be made from that evidence. There is a lot of evidence on pages 202 to 211, and I wish you'd read it before I tell you the inference that came through loud and clear for me.

My inference, from the evidence, is that Bill Clinton intended to cause Loretta Lynch to believe that she would be shown favor in a Hillary Clinton administration and to think that she was a front runner for the empty Supreme Court seat. Bill did not need to talk about the Midyear investigation. In fact, he needed to avoid it as he made himself at home on the plane, sitting down and staying far too long. In this interpretation, talking about the grandchildren made sense...

Well, after he was sharing with us his story about how...they introduced the two grandchildren to each other, which involved a toy...and that was green, and just, again, the family issues...

... because it created an aura of friendly closeness — a toy... that was green — and was meant to lodge in her mind that she was indeed a good friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton's.

At some point, after two or three minutes, President Clinton turned around. I had my tote bags on the bench seat of the plane, because I had put them there when he came on board. I had been holding them. I put them down. He picked up my tote bags and moved them, and then he sat down. So he sat down, and my husband and I were still standing in front of him having the discussion. And...he sort of sat heavily, and...I didn’t know...how he felt, so I can’t say one way or the other. But he sat down and started talking about, you know, the grandkids and how they introduced them to each other. And so, and ultimately, because this went on for a little but, my husband and I sat down also, and, you know, had that discussion about his family and the kids[.]

He moved her tote bags! He used bodily movements to convey the idea that this is a sit-down session that is going to last, to draw her close and give her time to feel that something will come her way if she returns the good, warm, close feelings. I don't know if she ever got the idea: He's trying to say without saying that I will get the Supreme Court nomination. Or at least: Is he trying to make me think I'll get the Supreme Court nomination? And then, if she thought that, what next? Of course the IG has no evidence of what she thought, but I assume that the idea of getting the nomination flashed through her head. And when it did, what did she think?

I imagine that Lynch thought he's trying to make me think I've got a lot to gain if I treat Hillary Clinton well and that Lynch wanted what Bill Clinton was implicitly offering but also knew what he was doing was horribly wrong and had more potential to hurt her reputation than to get her the prize he was dangling.

ADDED: Bill moved the tote bags to create room "on the bench seat." Here, Loretta. Here's a seat on the bench. Won't you sit down?

ALSO: Did Lynch have reason to think she was a major contender for the empty Supreme Court seat?  Yes. She was enough of a contender at the time when Barack Obama was trying to be the one to fill the seat that she publicly withdraw her name for consideration (in early March of 2016):

“While [Lynch] is deeply grateful for the support and good wishes of all those who suggested her as a potential nominee, she is honored to serve as Attorney General, and she is fully committed to carrying out the work of the Department of Justice for the remainder of her term,” [said a  Justice Department spokeswoman].

There is speculation that Lynch did not want a long, drawn-out confirmation battle, which is almost assured given that congressional Republicans have said that they will not confirm any nominee put forth by the president—but especially one who might tip the court to the “left.”

It's easy to infer that she knew the odds were much better to wait for Hillary Clinton to win. Of course, Bill Clinton knew all this when he approached Lynch in June on that tarmac.

And here's an article in The Washington Times from about a month before the election about Hillary Clinton's possible nominees:

Mrs. Clinton, unlike Donald Trump, hasn’t released a list of names she would recommend to the court, saying only that Congress should confirm President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. That’s the politically correct thing to say right now — but if Mrs. Clinton wins in November, there’s no doubt she’ll name her own, more liberal choice to the bench. There’s been some speculation that Loretta Lynch, the attorney general of the Department of Justice, could be on Mrs. Clinton’s short-list....

"Former FBI Director James Comey 'deviated' from bureau and Justice Department procedures in handling the probe into Hillary Clinton, damaging the agencies’ image of impartiality..."

"... even though he wasn’t motivated by politics, the department’s watchdog found in a highly anticipated report. 'While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part, we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice,' Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in the report’s conclusions, which were obtained by Bloomberg News."

ADDED: The NYT reports:

[T]he report paints an unflattering picture of one of the most tumultuous periods in the 110-year history of the F.B.I.... The report criticizes the conduct of F.B.I. officials who exchanged texts disparaging Mr. Trump during the campaign. The officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, were involved in both the Clinton and Russia investigations, leading Mr. Trump’s supporters to suspect a conspiracy against him. Many of those text messages have been released, but the inspector general cites a previously undisclosed message in which Mr. Strzok says the F.B.I. “will stop” Mr. Trump, according to two of the officials.

The inspector general said that, because of his views, Mr. Strzok may have improperly prioritized the Russia investigation over the Clinton investigation during the final weeks of the campaign. The F.B.I. officials “brought discredit” to themselves and sowed public doubt about the investigation. But the report did not cite evidence that Mr. Strzok had acted improperly or influenced the outcome of the investigation, the officials said....

The findings sharply criticize the judgment of Mr. Comey....

ALSO: CNN:

The report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that the prosecutorial decisions in the Clinton case were "consistent" and not affected by bias or other improper actions. But it said that senior leaders' handling of the Clinton case cast a cloud over the bureau and did lasting damage to the FBI's reputation.

"The damage caused by these employees' actions extends far beyond the scope of the Midyear (Clinton) investigation and goes to the heart of the FBI's reputation for neutral factfinding and political independence," the report states.

A key finding: Comey erred in his decision not to coordinate with his superiors at the Justice Department at key moments in the Clinton email investigation. Horowitz said that Comey was "extraordinary and insubordinate," and did not agree with any of his reasons for deviating from "well-established Department policies.",,,

The report found that the Strzok and Page texts "cast a cloud" over the credibility of the investigation, although they found no evidence "that these political views directly affected the specific investigative decisions that we reviewed."...

The report faults Lynch for her meeting with Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac. But it says there was no evidence that Lynch and Clinton discussed the investigation into Hillary Clinton or any other inappropriate discussions.

Trump has 4 tweets on Comey.

I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies. His “memos” are self serving and FAKE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018

Comey throws AG Lynch “under the bus!” Why can’t we all find out what happened on the tarmac in the back of the plane with Wild Bill and Lynch? Was she promised a Supreme Court seat, or AG, in order to lay off Hillary. No golf and grandkids talk (give us all a break)!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018

The big questions in Comey’s badly reviewed book aren’t answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didn’t they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabe’s $700,000 & more?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018

Unbelievably, James Comey states that Polls, where Crooked Hillary was leading, were a factor in the handling (stupidly) of the Clinton Email probe. In other words, he was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job. Slimeball!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018

1. "Wild Bill" — is that a new nickname? I don't remember seeing that one before.

2. I see he's now spelling "slimeball" as one word. I assume he did not read my post commenting on his 2-word spelling the other day: "I'm utterly certain the correct spelling is 'slimeball,' although forevermore I will pause before writing 'slimeball' and think of Trump and feel that it would be an allusion to Trump to write 'slime ball.'"

3. "...  Comey... how come he..." How Comey. How Comey of Comey, how come he...?

4. I love the rhetorical technique — so Twitter — of inserting a second, more cynical voice in paretheses: "how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail)...." Trump keeps it simple but also trusts the reader to understand the extreme compression. We get that "(jail)" is a second, more devilish Trump, heckling. It's like he's his own Silk.

5. These tweets are well-timed to force the Sunday shows to take notice and to make it hard for them to keep up (especially since so much of the time that would have been devoted to Comey had to be reapportioned to the Syria story).

"Was Lynch coordinating with Comey in the Clinton investigation?"

Asks Sharyl Attkisson (at The Hill).

Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew well in advance of FBI Director James Comey's 2016 press conference that he would recommend against charging Hillary Clinton, according to information turned over to the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Friday.

The revelation was included in 384 pages of text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and it significantly diminishes the credibility of Lynch's earlier commitment to accept Comey's recommendation — a commitment she made under the pretense that the two were not coordinating with each other.

And it gets worse. Comey and Lynch reportedly knew that Clinton would never face charges even before the FBI conducted its three-hour interview with Clinton, which was supposedly meant to gather more information into her mishandling of classified information...

Read the whole thing.

"These new FBI documents show the FBI was more concerned about a whistleblower who told the truth about the infamous Clinton-Lynch tarmac meeting than the scandalous meeting itself."

"The documents show the FBI worked to make sure no more details of the meeting would be revealed to the American people. No wonder the FBI didn’t turn these documents over until Judicial Watch caught the agency red-handed hiding them. These new documents confirm the urgent need to reopen the Clinton email scandal and criminally investigate the resulting Obama FBI/DOJ sham investigation."

Said said Judicial Watch President Tom Litton, quoted in "Judicial Watch Releases 29 Pages of FBI Clinton-Lynch Tarmac Meeting Documents Previously Withheld by Justice Department."

Why didn't Senator Cornyn close this circle?

When James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week — here's the transcript — Senator Cornyn questioned him about how he handled the Clinton e-mail matter after the disclosure of Loretta Lynch's meeting on the tarmac with Bill Clinton:

CORNYN: [Y]ou clearly were troubled by the conduct of the sitting attorney general, Loretta Lynch.... And, under Department of Justice and FBI norms, wouldn’t it have been appropriate for the attorney general, or, if she had recused herself — which she did not do — for the deputy attorney general to appoint a special counsel? That’s essentially what’s happened now with Director Mueller. Would that have been an appropriate step in the Clinton e-mail investigation, in your opinion?

Comey answers that it was "a possible step." Cornyn says that "on multiple occasions," he had asked Lynch to appoint special counsel for the Clinton matter, and Comey says that he knew "members of Congress had repeatedly asked" her to do so. If everyone knew at the time that appointing special counsel was a way to deal with Lynch's problem handling the Clinton matter, why did Comey decide that he needed to take on the role that Lynch couldn't credibly perform?

COMEY: Yes, sir. I can — after the — President Clinton — former President Clinton met on the plane with the attorney general, I considered whether I should call for the appointment of a special counsel, and had decided that that would be an unfair thing to do, because I knew there was no case there. We had investigated very, very thoroughly. I know this is a subject of passionate disagreement, but I knew there was no case there. And calling for the appointment of special counsel would be brutally unfair because it would send the message, aha (ph), there’s something here. That was my judgment. Again, lots of people have different views of it. But that’s how I thought about it.

CORNYN: Well, if the special counsel had been appointed, they could’ve made that determination that there was nothing there and declined to pursue it, right?

COMEY: Sure, but it would’ve been many months later, or a year later.

The timing would have been inconvenient — that's how Comey explained his decision to take on the role himself.

Now, yesterday, when talking to Jeff Sessions — transcript — Cornyn brought up a "written policy from the Department of Justice... entitled Election Year Sensitivities... the prohibition of the Justice Department making announcements or taking other actions that might interfere with the normal elections." This was in the context of asking about the memo from Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, detailing the reasons why Trump should fire Comey:

CORNYN: Well, let me [read] just an excerpt from a memo from the attorney general... It says "Law enforcement officers and prosecutors may never select the timing of investigative steps or criminal charges for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party. Such a purpose is inconsistent with the department's mission and with the Principles of Federal Prosecution." Do you agree with that?

SESSIONS: Essentially, yes.

CORNYN: So what essentially the deputy attorney general said is that former director Comey violated Department of Justice directives when he held a press conference on July the 5th, 2016. He announced that Secretary Clinton was extremely careless with classified e-mail and went on to release other derogatory information, including his conclusion that she was extremely careless but yet went on to say that no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute her. That is not the role of the FBI director, is it? That is a job for the prosecutors at the Department of Justice. That's what was meant by deputy attorney general Rosenstein when he said that director Comey usurped the role of the Department of Justice prosecutors. Is that right?

SESSIONS: That is correct, and former attorney general Bill Barr wrote an op-ed recently in which he said he had assumed that Attorney General Lynch had urged Mr. Comey to make this announcement so she wouldn't have to do it, but in fact it appears he did it without her approval totally and that is a pretty stunning thing....

Yes, I agree, stunning. But there's one more stunning thing, and I was sure Cornyn was going to say it. Wasn't the rejection of a special prosecutor in the Clinton investigation a matter of timing inconsistent with the Principles of Federal Prosecution described in the Election Year Sensitivities policy? Cornyn thinks Comey "usurped the role of the Department of Justice prosecutors." Comey seemed to think he had to step into the role because there wasn't time to bring in special counsel, but timing wasn't supposed to be taken into account under the Principles. We should have had a special counsel! The argument against it is an argument for violating the Election Year Sensitivities policy.

I was sure that's where Cornyn was going. Did he run out of time or am I missing something? I'd like to hear from Loretta Lynch. Is it true that she didn't ask Comey to take over the announcement, and why didn't she appoint a special counsel in the Clinton matter? Was it because it would take too long and absolving Clinton needed to be timed to the election? Doesn't that violate the Election Year Sensitivities policy?

This Washington Post article — "How a dubious Russian document influenced the FBI’s handling of the Clinton probe" — is extremely hard to read.

I needed to read it out loud with Meade and discuss it sentence-by-sentence and almost word-by-word. It took me at least 10 minutes to get past the first 2 sentences.

So I don't have the time or patience to parse through this entire thing, and I encourage you to read it carefully and try to figure out what the Washington Post is trying to pump up or minimize, who's lying or stretching the truth, and whether the underlying story in the document has any element of truth to it. Why did 3 of the 4 key characters named in the document flatly deny everything and one refused to speak?*

If everyone always thought the document was unreliable,** why is it being held up now as having had an effect on Comey's decision to go public in July? There's an idea that he was afraid that the Russians would be able to dump this story after Lynch took a position, undercutting her authority. But why did it help for Comey to go public first? The story could still have been dumped on him, undercutting his authority (though it wasn't).

It seems that Comey just knew about a (fake?) story that the Russians could dump if and when they wanted. What exactly was he afraid of and why are we hearing about it now? And how do I know the story wasn't true? It sounds like something that could have happened... in which case, why tell us about it? What's the motivation to leak a story about a fake story if everyone always thought it was fake? Is it that the story is true and they're trying to get out ahead of it with some sort of reason why we should perceive it as fake?

We're told that several of the "people familiar with the Russian document" — anonymous people who aren't supposed to talk about it — are — in the words of the Washington Post — "concerned that revealing details now about the document could be perceived as an effort to justify Trump’s decision to fire Comey." So, there's a document that might help Trump, but they want to make sure that it's only used to — to what? — help Comey? Why are they revealing it when they're not supposed to? We're told these people support Comey, but then shouldn't it be clear how this document explains why Comey did what he did last July? It's certainly not clear. It seems to have had more to do with protecting Loretta Lynch and helping the Clinton campaign, and I don't know who it helps now. If it doesn't help the people you want to help, why are you leaking?

The more labyrinthine it feels, the more I lean toward accepting the story that Debbie Wasserman Shultz really did write that email. And in the current manner of doing political analysis — when it's aimed against Trump — I could say let Wasserman Shultz prove she didn't do that.

And this really puzzled me:

While it was conducting the Clinton email investigation, the FBI did not interview anyone mentioned in the Russian document about its claims. 

Why not?! We're supposed to believe that the document had a big effect and 3 of the 4 people named in it would flatly deny what it said, but they were never asked? Why not? Either it's just a crap document that no one ever believed or it needed to be checked out. The only other option seems to be that they didn't want to know whether it was true. Why not?

I feel as though I have to try to unravel the WaPo report because I cannot trust WaPo to do anything other than to try to hurt Donald Trump.*** I have to take it apart and put it back together in some guess at what might be a straight story.
_____________________

* The document says that there is email from Debbie Wasserman Schultz (then DNC chair) to Leonard Benardo (of George Soros's Open Society Foundations) saying that Loretta Lynch had assured Amanda Renteria (a senior Clinton campaign staffer) that — as WaPo puts it — "the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter." Wasserman Schultz, Leonard Benardo, Amanda Renteria all deny, and Loretta Lynch won't talk about it. And yet we are told that Lynch did meet with FBI officials, and that she told them — in what was not a formal interview — "I don’t know this person [Renteria] and have never communicated with her." If that is correct, why wouldn't she acknowledge as much when WaPo tried to talk to her for this article?

** I'm assuming that there is a document and that it's from the Russians, but that's just what the Washington Post tells me its unnamed sources are telling them.

*** I'm thinking about what I heard Bob Woodward say this morning on C-SPAN:

“There is this kind of sense of too many people writing things like—when is the impeachment coming, how long will it last, will he make it through the summer, and so forth. No, there may be stuff that comes out, but it has to be hard evidence. I worry for the business and I worry for the perception of the business by people, not to just Trump supporters, but people that see that kind of smugness that they are talking about.”

"The Chicago police have systemically violated the civil rights of residents by routinely using excessive force, a practice that particularly affects African-Americans and Latinos..."

"... the Justice Department said in a scathing report released on Friday, unveiling the findings of a 13-month investigation into the city’s police department," the NYT reports.

We're told that Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch "raced to complete the investigation before the end of President Obama’s term" and "negotiat[ed] an agreement with Chicago to fix the problems." I presume that means negotiated an agreement with elected Democratic Party officials in Chicago.

The NYT says that Trump's AG pick Jeff Sessions "has said he believes that many of the police department overhauls sought by the Obama administration went too far and unfairly maligned officers" and "has also spoken out against the court-enforced settlements, known as consent decrees, that usually result from investigations like the one in Chicago."

The NYT channels amorphous fears about the incoming administration, but it doesn't mention the Democratic Party, which has run the city of Chicago for as long as anyone can remember.

"... Democrats close to Mrs. Clinton say she may decide to retain Ms. Lynch, the nation’s first black woman to be attorney general..."

Oh?!

Sometimes the prosecutor offers the accused a deal and, on rare occasions, the accused offers the prosecutor a deal.

But offering it right out in the open like that? It's as ballsy as a former President strutting across a tarmac in 107° heat, fueled by a raging desire to talk about his grandchildren.

Cory Booker wants CNN's Brianna Keller to think that she's "frustrating" voters by "parsing" the Hillary email story over distinctions "with barely a difference."

Booker is there with his talking points, but Keller is dogged. She says: "Back in 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the Valerie Plame case, this was because of his longstanding relationship with Karl Rove, and he wanted to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Why doesn't the same standard apply here?"

Booker's answer: "You're going far back into history with a case that I'm not truly familiar with. I can't make a distinction there."

So Booker pushes Keller back for making distinctions without a difference, and then he shows a woeful inability to make distinctions: 2003 is "far back into history." 2003!

"Nobody knew this was coming... There was no planned meeting. It was just chance contact. The fact is, [Bill Clinton] just started walking over."

"I don’t think it was pre-arranged. He just started walking over and [even {Loretta Lynch's} security] can’t tell him, 'you can’t do that.' He walked in her plane for at least 20 to 25 minutes and the FBI is standing face to face with the Secret Service and just chatting on the hot tarmac like, 'what the hell.'... Then her detail finally got her off the plane, now much delayed, and departed for her day’s events. She had a series of visits planned for Tuesday.... I don’t agree with her politics and all that, but I knew from the beginning that she got caught off guard and her staff was already talking about it that it’s going to be a political problem for her. Her staff was flipping out. We didn’t think about the political part until we saw her staff flipping out. For the security guys, it was more of a 'I’ve got armed guys coming into my perimeter' problem. But the staff guys saw right away that it was a political problem. After Clinton got off, they were like, 'that wasn’t good.' And I know from others who were in the actual car with her that her people knew immediately the political ramifications of it and were very upset."

That's the inside picture as portrayed by an unnamed security person quoted in The New York Observer. (The principal owner of the Observer is Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law.)

After intense criticism about her meeting with Bill Clinton, Loretta Lynch will announce that she will accept whatever the F.B.I. recommends about prosecuting Hillary Clinton.

The NYT reports, based on a "Justice Department official" "on the condition of anonymity because the internal decision-making process is normally kept confidential." Normally, but not this time. The info needed to escape.

I'm impressed by what looks like quick move to expunge what was at least an appearance of impropriety, but maybe this is what would have happened anyway:

The Justice Department had been moving toward such an arrangement for months — officials said in April that it was being considered — but a private meeting between Ms. Lynch and former President Bill Clinton this week set off a political furor and made the decision all but inevitable....

The meeting [with Bill Clinton] created an awkward situation for Ms. Lynch, a veteran prosecutor who was nominated from outside Washington’s normal political circles. In her confirmation, her allies repeatedly sought to contrast her with her predecessor, Eric H. Holder Jr., an outspoken liberal voice in the administration who clashed frequently with Republicans who accused him of politicizing the office. 

Holder, the Times reminds us, reduced the charges against David Petraeus to a misdemeanor after the F.B.I. recommended felony charges. And: "That decision created a deep — and public — rift."

Ms. Lynch has said she wants to handle the Clinton investigation like any other case. Since the attorney general often follows the recommendations of career prosecutors, Ms. Lynch is keeping the regular process largely intact.

Often... largely... It seems to me discretion is discretion. Even if you rarely use it, the ability to use it changes the the process. To give up the discretion before you see what you'll be asked to do is very different indeed. But Lynch could have given up her role much earlier in this process, and she chose to wait until now to give it up, now, after the secret meeting with Bill Clinton came to light. That doesn't look terrible lofty and disinterested, but at least she moved quickly to extract herself from the political storm.

How that storm hits Hillary, we shall see.

"So we are supposed to believe here that Bill Clinton, a 70-year-old man with a history of heart trouble played golf in Phoenix where it was 108, 110 degrees..."

"... maybe he played on Sunday when it was 108, I don't know. And then he's on the way to the airport to leave, is told that Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, is soon due to arrive, delays his departure, goes to a vacant private jet on the tarmac where she happens to be. He delays his departure to go have the meeting at which they discuss their grandchildren and their travels.... I try to envision that and it just doesn't work for me. It just doesn't work for me. So what else might have been going on at this meeting?..."

Rush Limbaugh applies his skeptical mind to the Bill-meets-Loretta story.

In case you think Second Amendment is standing in the way of banning semiautomatic weapons...

The Supreme Court just declined to review a Second Circuit decision upholding a Connecticut law banning some semiautomatic guns — things some people call "assault weapons."

It has been eight years since the Supreme Court recognized an individual right to keep guns at home for self-defense in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down parts of an exceptionally strict local law. Since then, the justices have said almost nothing about the scope of that right.

It's just not much of a right under the current workings of the law.

I got that phrase "current workings of the law" from Loretta Lynch, the Attorney General, who was on TV yesterday talking about denying access to guns to people the government has put on its list. As I said yesterday:

The current workings of the law... what a phrase! What does it mean? I, a law professor, think it means: We'll meet the standards the courts impose, but we're part of the process of defining those standards, and if we can get a bill through Congress, we expect the courts to interpret the Due Process and the Second Amendment in a suitably responsive manner.

And now, today, we see more evidence that — whatever fans of the Second Amendment may think or hope it means — in court, it doesn't mean very much. But Heller did win his case, so it means something.

Hillary knows all this of course. That's why she's able to be completely cagey about whether she's out to destroy the Second Amendment, depending on whom she's talking to.

"But we have to get control over this Internet propaganda that is poisoning the minds of the United States."

Said GOP Congressman Michael McCaul,  on ABC's "This Week."

Let's put his quote in context. He is asked what to do about the threat of future ISIS-inspired attacks in the U.S., and he says:

Well, the threat is pervasive on the Internet. Radicalization, not only foreign fighters coming back, but radicalization over the Internet which may have been the case here. They call it in law enforcement losers to lions that radicalize over the Internet. It's so pervasive -- 200,000 ISIS tweets a day, 1,000 investigations in all 50 States. It's really hard to stop all of it. But we have to get control over this Internet propaganda that is poisoning the minds of the United States.

Losers to lions? I'd never noticed that expression before. But here's something from last February, and McCaul is doing the talking:

From “Losers to Lions” a term coined by some officials for people taking extreme measures and joining terrorist groups, in an effort to try to become something greater than themselves.... “They are usually not doing well in their lives, and are vulnerable to this sort of radicalization process and then they become what they think is a lion pulling off an act of terror,” said Congressman Michael McCaul who also serves as Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.... “They want to become part of something bigger, and they think this is an adventure. ‘What's this Isis stuff all about?’ And they go on the Internet and they look at the videos,” Rep. McCaul said.

Those trying to leave the country to join Isis are not what is really concerning federal law enforcement as they can usually get them before they leave; it's those on U.S. soil in their homes. Christopher Combs is a Special Agent in Charge for the FBI in San Antonio. “Now with self-radicalization, with this home grown violent extremism, that's the kid in the basement who's doing it himself and wakes up one day and decides today is the day.  That's hard, that's really hard for law enforcement to get in front of,’ he said.

"We're not going to be... rebroadcasting his pledges of allegiance. We're trying not to revictimize those who went through that horror."

Loretta Lynch, speaking this morning on ABC's "This Week," where the moderator, John Karl, is very much helping her keep the focus on gun control and off ISIS and Islamic extremism.

Why is the government not going to be rebroadcasting Mateen's pledges of allegiance to ISIS?

Because they do not want to revictimize those who went through that horror.

Because they want to keep the focus off ISIS/Islam and on gun control.

Both.

Neither.

 

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ADDED: Lynch also appeared on "Meet the Press," where she said that the government will be releasing partial transcripts of Mateen's negotiations with law enforcement. Asked what's being left out — why only partial transcripts? — Lynch said: "What we're not going to do is further proclaim this individual's allegiance to terrorist groups and further his propaganda."

AND: When questioned about gun control, Lynch spoke of adhering to "due process and the current workings of law." The current workings of the law... what a phrase! What does it mean? I, a law professor, think it means: We'll meet the standards the courts impose, but we're part of the process of defining those standards, and if we can get a bill through Congress, we expect the courts to interpret the Due Process and the Second Amendment in a suitably responsive manner. 

"The scenario that the left would most favor and the right most fears would be the selection of a barrier-breaking nominee who could spur liberal support and turnout in November."

"The name most frequently discussed in this situation is Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who would be the first black woman to serve on the court. A former United States attorney and Harvard Law graduate, she drew the votes of 10 Republicans when she was confirmed as attorney general."

From a NYT article "Obama’s Options for a Supreme Court Nominee, and the Potential Fallout."

I don't understand the Loretta Lynch idea. Don't we need an attorney general? Why would you vacate that position and set up another appointments problem in an election year? Why would you make a political football out of her when she's doing important work that we rely on continually?

An excellent discussion of the latest Hillary Clinton email problem on "Fox News Sunday."

This is a bit long and starts slow, but the different commentators bring different perspectives that I'll try to highlight, so stick with me:

CHRIS WALLACE:   In 2011, when an aide was having trouble sending her material by a secure fax, she sent these instructions: "If they can't, turn into nonpaper with no identifying heading, and send nonsecure." Bob Woodward, why is this important?