On the Clinton-Lynch meeting.

Robert Reich
7.2.2016

Why did Bill Clinton have a private meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the Phoenix airport last week, just when the Justice Department is likely nearing completion of its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server for her emails as Secretary of State? Washington Post Columnist Dan Balz (below) blames it on Bill Clinton’s “foolish indifference or plain foolishness.” I don’t think it’s either. Bill Clinton wasn’t indifferent, and he’s hardly foolish. I attribute it to a sense of entitlement. Bill Clinton simply felt he was entitled to visit Lynch on his own, when the plane he was riding in touched down on the tarmac near Lynch’s government plane.

He was wrong, of course. And the visit (which I assume was innocent) has only served to undermine public confidence in the neutrality and impartiality of the Justice Department’s probe – as Lynch herself recognized. “The fact that the meeting that I had is now casting a shadow over how people are going to view that work is something that I take seriously, and deeply and painfully,” she said later.

Bill Clinton is one of the most talented politicians of our generation, and I feel privileged to have served with him in Washington. But I find his sense of entitlement deeply frustrating.

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