The New York Times and The Washington Post were reluctant to cover last year’s airplane meeting between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton, President Trump claimed on Tuesday, citing recently released emails.
“E-mails show that the AmazonWashingtonPost and the FailingNewYorkTimes were reluctant to cover the Clinton/Lynch secret meeting in plane,” Trump tweeted from Bedminster, N.J., where he is on vacation.
Trump appears to have been citing emails released last week by conservative groups American Center for Law and Justice and Judicial Watch. The groups had sued the Justice Department for emails regarding the June 27, 2016, meeting between Lynch and Clinton at the Phoenix airport.
The 413 pages of emails show Justice Department press office officials hammering out statements and talking points in response to the tarmac meeting. Lynch denied that she and Clinton discussed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s potential mishandling of classified emails. But she did say that she realized that the meeting could be interpreted as a conflict of interest.
Among the emails are exchanges between DOJ press officials and reporters from various news outlets, including The Daily Caller, ABC News, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
As several outlets have noted in recent days, emails sent by Post reporter Matt Zapotosky and Times reporter Mark Landler appear to show the two journalists reluctantly reaching out to the Justice Department for information about the airplane encounter. (RELATED: Emails Show WaPo, NYT Reporters Were Reluctant To Cover Lynch Tarmac Meeting)
As the Washington Examiner first noted, Zapotosky told a DOJ press officer that his editors “are still pretty interested” in the story but that he was hoping he could “put it to rest.”
Landler said that he had “been pressed into service” by his editors “to write about the questions being raised” by the Lynch/Clinton meeting.
Both reporters ended up publishing articles about the meeting.
Lander’s piece was framed in terms of the conservative response to the controversy. It was entitled, “Meeting Between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch Provokes Political Furor.”
Zapotosky’s provided more straightforward coverage of the controversial meeting in his article.
