WASHINGTON — Republicans pounced on Hillary Clinton’s credibility Sunday, in the wake of her holiday weekend grilling by the FBI and her hubby’s controversial meeting last week with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Donald Trump said the Lynch/Bill Clinton huddle was planned “to work out a deal” and provides further evidence “the system is totally rigged & corrupt.”
“Only a fool would believe that the meeting between Bill Clinton and the U.S.A.G. was not arranged or that Crooked Hillary did not know,” Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon.
The former secretary of state has “disqualified herself from Commander in Chief by her cavalier attitude towards our nation’s secrecy laws. And she has been responsible for many of the worst decisions of the Obama administration,” Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Former Sen. Rick Santorum questioned the timing of President Obama hitting the campaign trail with Clinton on Tuesday.
“This is a very cozy relationship between the president and Mrs. Clinton,” Santorum told ABC’s “This Week.” “The fact that he’s going to campaign for her in the face of the looming investigation and potential indictment says maybe he knows something that the rest of us don’t know.”
For his part, GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump was so far quiet on the campaign trail.
But his rumored potential vice presidential choice Newt Gingrich continued to bash Clinton.
“If you think that it’s OK to have a corrupt, dishonest government in Washington, Hillary Clinton is the perfect candidate, because she’s part of the establishment,” Gingrich told John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York. “She gets it. She understands how to lie about virtually everything.”
Clinton sat for a 3.5 hours as the FBI questioned her Saturday at the bureau headquarters in Washington about her private email server she used exclusively as Secretary of State and whether she mishandled classified information.
President Bill Clinton created a firestorm Monday when he boarded Lynch’s plane and Phoenix and talked to her for 30 minutes.
Lynch, who called the meeting purely social, said she regrets the encounter has “cast a shadow” on her department’s investigation in Clinton. Lynch Friday said she’d “fully expect” to accept the recommendation on whether to indict from career investigators.
Meanwhile, a bevy of Clinton potential vice president picks said they saw no evil as they fanned out Sunday to cast the FBI interview as routine.
Sen. Cory Booker said Clinton’s Saturday interview was merely “routine” and an indictment is “just not going to happen” and “not even in the realm of possibility,” Booker told CNN’s State of the Union.
Labor Secretary Tom Perez told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Clinton has “sound judgment” and a “steady hand.”
Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) reiterated Clinton never sent classified material and downplayed findings from the House GOP’s Benghazi committee’s report of Sept. 11, 2012 attack. “Nothing new here,” he said on Fox News Sunday to each of the findings.
And Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown told ABC’s “This Week” he’s “not worried” about any indictment.
Vice President Joe Biden told NPR: “I find it hard to believe that she would do anything intentionally wrong.”
Clinton has acknowledged it was mistake to use a private email server, but maintains she’s done nothing illegal. She turned over more than 30,000 professional emails to the State Department and erased about 32,000 others she deemed personal. The State Department has since determined more than 2,000 emails were classified and 22 of which were “top secret.”
Trump’s rumored potential vice presidential choice Newt Gingrich continued to bash Clinton.