Nancy Pelosi Contorts Herself Into A Pretzel
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tied herself in knots this week trying to explain how the meeting between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and President Bill Clinton was different from Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ previous meetings with the Russian ambassador.
Pelosi was asked by a reporter on Thursday if she was being consistent in her call for Sessions “to step aside” given the meeting that took place between Lynch and Clinton. Pelosi responded that “there couldn’t be a starker difference.”
“Attorney General Lynch had a social encounter, serendipitous, some might say, that the former president of the United States came by to say hello and they discussed their grandchildren,” Pelosi explained.
The unpopular congresswoman added that Lynch was not a campaign surrogate for Hillary Clinton; Sessions, on the other hand, was a major surrogate for Donald Trump. Pelosi then falsely claimed that Sessions had lied about his contacts with the Russians.
“This couldn’t be more stark in terms of relationship to the campaign and who the attorney general was speaking to,” Pelosi said. “No, they’re completely different, day and night.”
Pelosi’s spin suggests that she’s either completely out of touch with reality or a terrible liar. The notion that the meeting between Lynch and Clinton was pure happenstance is demonstrably false; in fact Clinton reportedly made sure that his flight was delayed so he could talk to Lynch in-person. It’s truly hard to believe that they only talked about grandchildren and golf days before FBI director James Comey announced he wouldn’t recommend indictment charges against Hillary Clinton. Comey’s rationale even suggested that the Department of Justice was a driving force behind his decision.
It may be true that Lynch was not a public campaign surrogate for Hillary Clinton, but there was a conflict of interest there given that Bill Clinton appointed Lynch at the behest of Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY).
In the case of Sessions, he didn’t lie about his prior meetings with the Russian ambassador since his statement in context is more reasonably interpreted as meaning that he didn’t meet with the ambassador as a campaign surrogate. In fact, it has been reported that Sessions met with the ambassador as part of a program initiated by the Obama administration.
There is simply no way that the Sessions’ “nothingburger,” as Ted Cruz put it, is worse than the Lynch-Clinton, despite Pelosi’s logically challenged spin to the contrary.
(H/T: The Daily Caller)
