Andrew McCarthy explains at National Review Online how the U.S. attorney general with Tar Heel State ties could play an important role in the presidential election.

Mrs. Clinton did not set out to damage national security and compromise defense secrets, although she obviously had no compunction about doing so as necessary to serve her higher personal interests. For a generation, she has been a public person whose most intimate companion has been scandal. She knew her State Department stewardship would be no different. Her motive in designing a communication system that circumvented government recordkeeping and disclosure laws was to avoid a day of reckoning as she campaigned in 2016 for the power of the presidency she craves.

And that is where Loretta Lynch comes in.

That would be the same Loretta Lynch who came to prominence in 1999 by being appointed United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York by none other than Mrs. Clinton’s husband. Loretta Lynch, who had a history of significant political contributions to Democratic-party candidates before President Obama reappointed her as U.S. Attorney for the EDNY in 2010, and then elevated her to U.S. attorney general in 2015. Loretta Lynch, who said in her confirmation hearings that she supports the Democratic president’s lawless executive actions and non-enforcement of federal law. Loretta Lynch, who very much likes being attorney general of the United States and would be well positioned to continue in that powerful post in a Hillary Clinton administration. …

… With such neon indicators of serious wrongdoing, it seems highly likely that the FBI, which has reportedly devoted substantial time and resources to the investigation, will recommend prosecution. For all we know, that may have happened already. Once such a recommendation has been made, the ball is in the Justice Department’s court: It will be up to Attorney General Lynch — with whatever direction she gets from her boss, the president — to decide whether to indict Clinton.

An indictment would be devastating to the Democrats’ chances of retaining the White House in the November election. Thus, the conventional wisdom holds that Lynch will decline prosecution, which the executive branch has the unreviewable constitutional power to do, regardless of how damning the proof of crimes might be.