The FBI is reopening its search for documents related to the secret tarmac meeting between former President Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch in June last year.
Lynch met with Bill Clinton at the same time the department she headed was conducting a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton.
Some of the emails pertaining to the meeting became public on Aug. 4, when the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) released a batch it obtained from the Department of Justice (DOJ) through a lawsuit.
Those emails showed that Lynch used a secret email for communications. They also showed that the DOJ worked with media outlets to downplay the story, that the White House was involved, and that some of the same officials who were involved in the coverup are now charged with investigating the meeting.
The FBI has previously denied having any documents related to the matter in response to a Freedom of Information document request filed by ACLJ.
But the emails received from the DOJ on Aug. 4 exposed that FBI officials were directly involved in the tarmac meeting coverup, and that the FBI lied about not having any documents.
On Tuesday, just a week after ACLJ publicly accused the FBI of lying, ACLJ received a letter from the FBI, which stated that the bureau now believes that “records potentially responsive to your request may exist.”
“While we appreciate that the FBI has reopened the case file and is now searching for documents responsive to our duly submitted FOIA request from more than a year ago, it stretches the bounds of credulity to suggest that the FBI bureaucracy just discovered that ‘potentially responsive’ records ’may exist' on its own accord,” Jordan Sekulow, the president of ACLJ, wrote in a statement.
Among the most significant findings in the Aug. 4 documents is a three-page email of talking points that was completely redacted. ACLJ is working to receive the contents of that email through legal means.
One of the lawyers mentioned in the redacted email was counsel for Lynch at the time of the tarmac meeting. That same lawyer is now the deputy council to the minority ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the tarmac meeting, which presents a clear conflict of interest, Sekulow said on Fox News.
Compounding the issues revealed in the emails so far is former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony that Lynch attempted to influence the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton. Lynch told Comey to call the investigation “a matter.”
The tarmac meeting was the deciding factor for Comey to act of his own will and update the public about the Clinton investigation during the 2016 presidential race.
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