This woman is actually a step down from Eric Holder, which would have been thought inconceivable two years ago.

She’s charged with handling the investigation and potential prosecution of Hillary Clinton for what was a manifestly egregious volume of violations of federal laws on the handling of classified information – if not to be coupled with laws on racketeering and corruption – over the latter’s use of a private e-mail server in an attempt to hide her correspondence as Secretary of State from the public.

Now, most of our readers have zero expectation that Lynch will green-light an indictment or prosecution of the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee. Most of our readers believe such a prosecution would result in such a slam-dunk legal case that the Clintons would immediately be negotiating a guilty plea in exchange for an escape that keeps them out of prison, but an indictment would force her out of American politics – and with no truly plausible nominee (we don’t consider the buffoon Joe Biden or the unreconstructed wannabe communist dictator Bernie Sanders as truly plausible) waiting in the wings, few of our readers believe Clinton and the Democrat Party would be thrown to the wolves in such a manner in the midst of a presidential election cycle.

What is more likely is Lynch and her team will sit on the Clinton e-mail case until after the election, and in so doing give Lynch’s boss Barack Obama, who doesn’t like Hillary, something to hold over Hillary’s head while at the same time Obama hasn’t squashed a prosecution of Hillary and is therefore less likely to be investigated by a Republican president in 2017 (should there be one) for having covered up the e-mail scandal.

Which absolutely, positively ought to happen if Donald Trump or some other GOP nominee were to be provided the opportunity to staff up a new Justice Department. Clinton’s indictment would have to go forward regardless of Lynch’s decision, and if the decision were to be made not to prosecute Hillary then that would be cause to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate whether Obama is guilty of aiding Clinton in both her underlying corruption and the violations of the Espionage Act resulting from the private e-mail server mess.

All of this being a long way around the fact that Loretta Lynch really needs to be careful in how she is to handle this case, particularly if she’s not going to actually prosecute Hillary for legal violations virtually no one else in America could escape severe consequences for.

And what Lynch absolutely cannot be seeing doing is, well, this…

Attorney General Loretta Lynch met with former President Bill Clinton for a half-hour on her government airplane at the Phoenix airport on Tuesday, an Arizona news station is reporting.

The unannounced meeting, which comes as Lynch’s Justice Department is investigating the handling of classified information on Hillary Clinton’s private email server, came to light only when Phoenix’s ABC15 TV station asked Lynch about it during a press conference.

The Obama appointee told the TV station that she and Clinton did not discuss the investigation or any other government business. Instead, she says they talked about Clinton’s grandchildren and golf.

“I did see President Clinton at the Phoenix airport,” she told ABC15.

“As I was leaving and he spoke to myself and my husband on the plane. Our conversation was a great deal about his grandchildren. It was primarily social and about our travels. He mentioned the golf he played in Phoenix.”

ABC15 reported that the meeting on board Lynch’s plane lasted about 30 minutes. The FBI is conducting the email server investigation. Investigators are said to be near the end of their investigation. FBI director James Comey will make a recommendation to Lynch on whether to press charges against Clinton or any of her aides at the end of its probe.

OK, first, if the TV station is correct that the meeting was actually on Loretta Lynch’s government jet, then no – she doesn’t get to say that all they talked about is Bill Clinton’s exploits on the golf course and Chelsea’s kid. Nobody in America will honestly believe that’s what Bill Clinton went on Loretta Lynch’s jet at the Phoenix airport to discuss.

She needs a far, far better lie than that if she’s going to make that conversation on the plane innocuous.

And second, Loretta Lynch needs to be put under oath by a House or Senate committee by the end of the week and she needs to be grilled on this item in detail. What were the circumstances of the meeting, was it put on her agenda, and if so when and by whom, what was discussed. Also what is the status of the investigation where DOJ is concerned, who is involved in the deliberations on whether to prosecute and what is the substance of those deliberations.

Many of those questions will go unanswered, with the excuse proffered that they’re products of executive branch deliberation and therefore privileged communications.

And if Lynch goes that route she ought to be impeached on the spot, because that meeting with Bill Clinton together with an obvious public lie about its subject which is clearly designed to obscure the content of the conversation gives off the stink of a government cover-up of political corruption and high-level illegality that would make Watergate look like a simple break-in.

There is no justification for Lynch to use government property to meet with Hillary Clinton’s husband. Such a meeting should be held officially and with transparency given the circumstances. It was not, and it is now being covered up with lies. If the purpose of the meeting was to map out how best to cover up Hillary’s illegality, the foxes are in charge of the henhouse. We have no assurances that’s not exactly what this was; in fact, what we’re given almost sounds designed to advertise it to us. Golf and grandchildren, indeed.

Congress shouldn’t put up with this. Congress should demand satisfaction from the Attorney General. The frontrunner in the presidential race could (and should) be under federal indictment on corruption charges and violations of the Espionage Act, and the Attorney General is refusing to act on this impending democratic crisis while holding clandestine meetings with the frontrunner’s husband.

Do something, House. Do something, Senate. Don’t sit around and let this go unanswered.