Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein (Cali.) in an interview with CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Sunday, said that the Senate Judiciary Committee should look into the recently dismissed FBI Director James Comey’s accusations that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to downplay the seriousness of the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
In his testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee last Thursday, Comey said that the former attorney general, who led the Department of Juctice under Obama, told him to call the bureau’s investigation into Clinton’s email scandal not as an “investigation” but as a simple “matter.” According to Comey, the directives concerned and confused him. He also said that the way Lynch asked him to downplay such a matter, made him “queasy.”
On Sunday, CNN’s Brianna Keilar asked Feinstein: “He felt clearly that Loretta Lynch was giving cover to the Clinton campaign. Was she?”
“I can’t answer that,” Feinstein replied. “I would have a queasy feeling too, though, to be candid with you.”
The senator said, “I think we need to know more about that and there’s only one way to know about it and that’s to have the Judiciary Committee take a look at that.”
A ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feinstein pressed that any investigation into Loretta Lynch’s alleged requests to Comey should be kept separate from the probe into Russia’s meddling with the 2016 presidential elections and any collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.
“I don’t think we should mix the two,” she said.