There is "no reason" why Attorney General Loretta Lynch can't step aside and give the final decision over whether to indict Hillary Clinton over her use of a
private email server to Deputy Attorney General Sally Gates, Sen. Tom Cotton said Wednesday.
"I've long ago stated that we should have an independent voice, particularly after Loretta Lynch met with [former President] Bill Clinton, the spouse of the target and the target himself of the FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation," the Arkansas Republican, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told
"CBS This Morning."
"I think she should pass on decision making to the next person in the chain of command."
But the facts that Comey outlined in the case against Clinton were "more damning" than his recommendation against legal charges, said Cotton.
"We now know that Hillary Clinton told repeated lies about her use of an unsecured server, including national or sensitive national security secrets," said Cotton. "This is a long pattern with Hillary Clinton going back to the 1990s and investigations into her husband's administration, into the lies she told to the faces of the families of the Benghazi fallen.
"I just don't think the American people are going to trust her after yesterday to handle our nation's most sensitive secrets and to be the commander in chief."
GOP presumptive Donald Trump has called Comey's decision evidence that the nation's political system is "rigged," and Cotton, who Trump said last month is
"high on the list" of his potential picks for running mate, said he can see that point.
"I would say that suggests the system is rigged if Hillary Clinton face no consequences whatsoever," said Cotton. "Even though he [Comey] did not believe criminal charges were warranted, which is very different from saying no crime was committed, [he said] that any other person would face serious security or administrative consequences."
Meanwhile, Cotton noted that while Trump comes under fire for saying controversial things, but Clinton's actions "exposed our nation's most sensitive national security secrets to foreign adversaries. We know she took her unsecured personal email devices to the territories of hostile powers.
"To give you a sense of how amazing that is, I, as a mere junior senator, never take my personal devices to any country, not even to Canada and much less to adversarial countries."