"I take [Lynch] & [Clinton] at their word that their convo in Phoenix didn't touch on probe. But foolish to create such optics," CNN contributor David Axelrod said on social media.
Bloomberg News' John Heilemann mused in a panel discussion this week on CBS News, "[N]one of us will never know if all [Clinton] did was just go and say hello. So, I take them for their word it was all perfectly innocent."
Lynch met privately with Clinton in Arizona Monday evening for an off-the-record exchange. Their conversation, which took place aboard Clinton's jet, was first noticed and reported by a local ABC News affiliate, KNXV-TV.
The Attorney General confirmed the exchange Wednesday, but maintained it was purely social.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers have criticized the meeting as inappropriate, explaining it's not a good look for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who is under FBI investigation for her use of an unauthorized and unsecured private email server when she worked at the State Department.
Lynch said Friday that she would go along with whatever recommendation the FBI comes up with in its investigation of Clinton's private emails.
Despite the bipartisan criticism from top lawmakers, however, reporters and media pundits have shrugged at the controversy, with many suggesting that the conversation was indeed nothing more than harmless banter about family.
- MSNBC's Chris Matthews, for example, dismissed the controversy, and suggested Friday that the conversation took place mostly because Clinton is just that friendly.
- The New York Times, which failed to mention the story in the first 24 hours after it broke, echoed Matthews' suggestion that the meetup was the result of the former president's overly-friendly personality.
- ABC and NBC News were also slow to cover the controversy, and made no mention of the issue Wednesday evening (when the story broke) or Thursday morning.
- CBS News touched on the story Thursday morning, but its coverage also involved host Charlie Rose characterizing the meet-up as "innocent." His co-host Gayle King asked, "They are at the airport at the same time … Why can't he just go over and say hello?"
- On Friday, Bloomberg News' Mark Halperin said the easiest explanation for why Lynch met privately with Clinton is that the former president is a "really social guy."
According to the website Hot Air, Sign lays out how the story developed and then he leaves this little nugget:
“The former president steps into her plane. They then speak for 30 minutes privately. The FBI there on the tarmac instructing everybody around ‘no photos, no pictures, no cell phones.'”
However, Larry O'Connor at Hot Air notes:
- First of all, it isn’t the FBI’s job to tell journalists or private citizens they can’t take photographs of a former president and the Attorney General. What were the agents going to do, arrest people for taking a picture or video?
- If there was nothing wrong with the meeting and it was totally innocent, why were federal agents instructed to demand no one take a picture?
- Let’s stop focusing on the fact that this meeting was inappropriate because Clinton’s wife is under investigation by Lynch’s Justice Department. I mean, that’s bad, but it’s actually letting Lynch and Clinton off the hook a bit. By focusing on the appearance of conflict because Hillary Clinton is being investigated, we are willfully overlooking the very real conflict in the fact that Clinton himself is under investigation, as the Grand Poo-bah at the Clinton Foundation. (Fox News)
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