▪Lester Holt Presses Loretta Lynch on Calling Clinton Email Probe a ‘Matter’: ‘What Did You Mean?’▪
Former FBI Director James Comey testified last year that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch requested that he publicly refer to the Clinton email investigation as a “matter,” a request he said concerned him at the time.
Lester Holt had a chance to grill Lynch about that decision, in a full interview with the attorney general airing Monday on NBC Nightly News.
“He said it made him feel — I’m paraphrasing — that it made him feel strange,” Holt asked Lynch. “What did you mean when you called it a matter instead of an investigation?”
“I heard about that testimony,” Lynch said. “And my first response was…what is the issue here? I remember specifically talking with him, as we talked about sensitive things on a number of occasions.”
“And this was a very sensitive investigation, everyone knew. And the issue when he and I sat down at that time, which I think was early in the fall of 2015, was whether or not we were ready as a department to confirm an investigation going on. When we typically do not confirm or deny investigations into anything, with rare exceptions.”
“To the extent though that he noted it, that it bothered him,” Holt pressed, “did he go to you and question your credibility with regard to the Clinton case?”
“We had a full and open discussion about it,” Lynch replied. “And concerns were not raised.”