‘Meeting Bill cast shadow on Hillary probe’

Attorney-General Loretta Lynch is expressing regret that she sat down with Bill Clinton while his wife is under federal criminal investigation, a chance encounter she acknowledges “cast a shadow” on the public’s perception of a case bound to influence the presidential campaign.

“I certainly wouldn’t do it again,” Ms Lynch said of the meeting.

Ms Lynch hastened to add that she intended to follow the recommendations of career prosecutors on whether to file criminal charges at the close of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. The attorney-general’s remarks at a conference in Colorado were aimed at tamping down concerns that the investigation could be politically tainted or that Ms Lynch, an Obama administration appoi-ntee, might overrule the findings of agents and prosecutors who have spent months looking into the possible mishandling of classified information on the private email server Ms Clinton used as secretary of state. Ms Lynch said she understood that her private meeting with Mr Clinton aboard her plane in Phoenix might be seen as compromising the neutrality of the investigation, even though she said the chat was largely social and her department’s probe of Hillary Clinton was not discussed. The outcome of the investigation is likely to shape the presidential campaign.