It’s not just Donald Trump who is under scrutiny by Congress. On Friday, reports emerged that bipartisan group of lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee are also looking into former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s handling of the F.B.I.’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server, which became highly politicized in the months leading up to the 2016 election. According to ABC News, the committee is looking for details on Lynch’s communications with former Clinton campaign aide Amanda Renteria, as well as whether the F.B.I. itself ever investigated the reported communication.
The committee asked Lynch for information about an email, first reported by The New York Times, in which former D.N.C. chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz informed an official at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations that Lynch had assured the Clinton campaign that the investigation into the presidential candidate “would not go too far.” It was this e-mail, many believe, that caused former F.B.I. director James Comey to leave Lynch out of the loop before he ended the investigation, because he was afraid such a letter would compromise the integrity of the investigation.
The Times described the letter as “a document written by a Democratic operative that seemed—at least in the eyes of Mr. Comey and his aides—to raise questions about her independence.” Lynch declined to comment at the time. The Washington Post later reported that some in the intelligence community had concerns that the document, which was leaked by the Russians, may have been unreliable or even fake.
The committee, made up of Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, Ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein, and Senators Lindsey Graham and Sheldon Whitehouse, is questioning Lynch and Renteria, as well as Open Society Foundations’ Leonard Benardo and its General Counsel Gail Scovell. Their inquiry is part of the ongoing investigation on Comey’s dismissal, which Trump initially claimed was based on the former F.B.I. director’s mishandling the Clinton e-mail inquiry.
This article has been updated.
