Attorney General Lynch has some advice for Trump: Use facts

Attorney General Loretta Lynch has a message for President-elect Donald Trump: Facts are your friend.

While largely declining to discuss the incoming president’s proposals during an event hosted by Politico on Thursday morning, Lynch did appear to offer subtle criticism of Trump’s tendency to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and false information. 

“Every administration is going to have to find their footing on these issues. I’ve always found facts to be great help in doing that,” she said, to chuckles from the audience in Washington.

“The benefit of actually being in office is you do have access to a great wealth of information and I would hope that whoever’s going to be in my chair — or any of the chairs — would take advantage of that.”

{mosads}Trump and his team have been criticized for making claims that aren’t necessarily true.

Earlier this year, for instance, Trump claimed that “inner-city crime is reaching record levels.” In fact, violent crime has declined significantly over the last 20 years.

The fact-checking service PolitiFact rated 71 percent of Trump’s statements as “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.” Just 15 percent of the reviewed statements were rated as “true” or “mostly true.”

Lynch on Thursday also declined to discuss her thoughts about Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican whom Trump will nominate to succeed her as attorney general. The two know each other through Sessions’s position on the Senate Judiciary Committee, from which he oversees the Justice Department, but are not close, Lynch said.

She did suggest, however, that Sessions should carefully consider his actions at the department, seemingly out of concern about his plans in a Trump administration.

“I’m not really here to speculate about which way he’s going to take the department,” she said.

“Every attorney general is going to have to be held accountable for how they lead the department.”