The request by two Obama administration inspectors general to the Justice Department to investigate whether Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton sent classified information over her private email service is "very damning," former New York State Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey told
Newsmax TV on Friday.
"Americans don't trust her," she told "Newsmax Prime" host J.D. Hayworth. The move by the inspectors "will lead many people to believe — well, let me just paraphrase the famous movie 'The Lady Is a Crook,' and that's what many people are going to conclude.
"Inspectors general are not partisan," she added. "They are appointed by the president, and they are believed to be impartial and investigators."
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Attorney General Loretta Lynch has a tough call to make, said former federal prosecutor Bruce Reinhart.
"The Justice Department generally doesn't want to get involved in political investigations, or what they will perceive as political investigations, and they particularly don't want to do that during an election's cycle," he told Hayworth. "The attorney general is going to have to follow up on that, as uncomfortable as that might be."
Clinton's most likely defense will be "layers," Reinhart said, which he described as "the same explanation you get from anyone who's in a high-level position.
"It's going to be: 'I had people for this' and 'I trusted the people I had for this. I personally wasn't reviewing all those emails, but I had given instructions to my people that they shouldn't do something.'
"That's really where she's going to draw the line in the sand," he said. "It's going to be, first, 'It didn't happen.' Then, it's going to be, 'Well, even if it did happen, I didn't know about it — and even if it did happen, it's somebody else's fault.'"
But it won't work this time, McCaughey told Hayworth.
"The buck is supposed to stop with her. She knows it's wrong. Everybody who works in government knows that it's wrong — and it's pretty tough to cover up now. "
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