MSNBC host and NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell was still at it on Friday afternoon lamenting that the Bill Clinton/Loretta Lynch airplane meeting has been “overshadowing” Hillary Clinton’s campaign and surmised that the former President wasn’t looking to “gain some influence” from the Attorney General as her Justice Department and FBI investigate Hillary’s private e-mail server.
Mitchell led her MSNBC show with Lynch’s new comments at the Aspen Ideas Festival and made clear that Lynch “was already contemplating” taking the FBI’s recommendations about Hillary’s fate but only cemented that move because of “the political firestorm over her airport meeting with former President Bill Clinton.”
Only now accepting the meeting as serious a day after she dismissed the chatter as merely a conspiracy theory, Mitchell complained to NBC News Justice correspondent Pete Williams that “[t]his is an uproar because of a meeting that she is now acknowledging shouldn't have happened and that she clearly regrets” to which Williams added that “[i]t was a roar before, now it’s an uproar.”
A few moments later, Mitchell continued the pity-party by wallowing that the meeting “certainly is overshadowing the campaign” of Hillary Clinton in serving as the chief definition for “a self-inflicted wound.”
She quickly made clear to viewers that, based on her decades of knowing Bill Clinton, he certainly didn’t intend to speak with Lynch to put his thumb on the scales of justice:
I got to say, knowing Bill Clinton and having covered him for decades, this is a man if he sees a motorcade and you're on a private part of the airport and sees a government plane, he would say to his Secret Service detail, it's the Attorney General, he'd say, oh, let me say hello. I really do not think that we can conclude that he thought he was going to gain some influence[.]
Of course, Mitchell also emphasized that Bill Clinton has created a scenario in which the Clinton campaign and their allies won’t be able to have the news cycle to promote Hillary rallies next week featuring President Barack Obama in North Carolina and Vice President Joe Biden in Pennsylvania:
[B]ut what he has unintentionally done is made it worse, potentially, because this is now the talk of a week that was supposed to be all devoted next week to President Obama campaigning with her and also Joe Biden now campaigning with her.
The relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports on July 1 can be found below.
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports
July 1, 2016
12:00 p.m. Eastern
ANDREA MITCHELL: Attorney General Loretta Lynch in Aspen just moments ago saying she will leave it up to prosecutors and the FBI director to decide whether to bring charges in the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation and she will not overrule them. A decision she was already contemplating but is making public in a very unusual statement today because of the political firestorm over her airport meeting with former President Bill Clinton. Lynch and President Clinton met for 30 minutes they say this week when they crossed paths at the Phoenix Airport. Lynch called it a social chat they talked about grandchildren and golf, but critics are saying it is a conflict of interest since Hillary Clinton's private server is under investigation.
(....)
12:01 p.m. Eastern
MITCHELL: This is an uproar because of a meeting that she is now acknowledging shouldn't have happened and that she clearly regrets.
PETE WILLIAMS: It was a roar before, now it's an uproar. Because there were already calls for her to take herself out, she's an appointee of the president, a Democratic president, and they — several Republicans were saying that she should have an independent council, but this meeting only made it much worse. So what she said today is that she, as you just heard that she fully expects to accept the recommendation, but then twice after that, she said I will accept the recommendation. Now she also says, and this is what we've been told by Justice Department officials earlier, is that this was — she was going to do this anyway and there is some support for that because if you look at her comments just two weeks ago, she was on all the Sunday morning programs after the shootings in Orlando. And she said it on Meet the Press. She said it on Fox News Sunday that she will let the career prosecutors make the decision and she didn't explicitly say at that time that she would accept their recommendation, but that was the pretty strong suggestion of what she was going to do, but you're right, quite candid, if I had to do this over, I certainly wouldn't do it.
(....)
12:04 p.m. Eastern
MITCHELL: It certainly is overshadowing the campaign and if there were ever a self-inflicted wound, Bill Clinton getting onboard her plane with a judgement call for both of them and I got to say, knowing Bill Clinton and having covered him for decades, this is a man if he sees a motorcade and you're on a private part of the airport and sees a government plane, he would say to his Secret Service detail, it's the Attorney General, he'd say, oh, let me say hello. I really do not think that we can conclude that he thought he was going to gain some influence, but what he has unintentionally done is made it worse, potentially, because this is now the talk of a week that was supposed to be all devoted next week to President Obama campaigning with her and also Joe Biden now campaigning with her.
