Christopher Sign, the whistleblower who exposed Bill Clinton’s 2016 tarmac meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, was found dead in his apartment. According to Alabama police Lt. Keith Czeskleba, his death is being investigated as a possible “suicide.”
Following a 911 report regarding a person down in a property in Alabama, Hoover police and fire officers discovered the body of the 45-year-old news reporter for ABC 33/40 in Birmingham at 8 a.m. on Saturday.
“Our deepest sympathy is shared with Christopher’s loving family and close friends. We have lost a revered colleague who’s indelible imprint will serve forever as a hallmark of decency, honesty and journalist integrity. We can only hope to carry on his legacy. May his memory be for blessing,” ABC 33/40 vice president Eric Land said in a statement.
Sign authored a book exposing the Clinton tarmac story called Secret on the Tarmac.
“The plan was perfect. No cameras, no microphones, no prying eyes and plenty of security. The setting for a clandestine meeting could not have been better. Former President Bill Clinton exited Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s private plane 20-minutes after he boarded. Both thought they got away with it. Both were wrong. Amid a heated Presidential race, federal investigations involving emails and Benghazi and society looking for clarity on the future of the country, the secret tarmac meeting would only complicate things. The secret meeting would have never been revealed if it weren’t for a veteran journalist and a trusted source,” his book synopsis says.
The shocking tarmac story made international headlines because the covert meeting occurred during an election season – and only days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced that the bureau would not recommend prosecution against Hillary Clinton.
Washingtonexaminer.com reports: Lynch said in a July 1, 2016 interview that she would not recuse herself from the Clinton email investigation but that she would accept the recommendation of the career agents and prosecutors who conducted it. This came after she had obtained an ethics opinion from the Departmental Ethics Office that she was not required to recuse herself.
Both Bill Clinton and Lynch claim the email investigation was not brought up during their chat, but Sign, who was a morning anchor at the Phoenix-area ABC15 when he first reported their encounter, said there was more to the story and wrote a book about it, Secret on the Tarmac.
The book “details everything that they don’t want you to know and everything they think you forgot. But Bill Clinton was on that plane for 20 minutes, and it wasn’t just about golf, grandkids, and Brexit,” Sign said on Fox & Friends in February 2020. “There’s so much that doesn’t add up.”
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz examined the tarmac meeting as part of a review of the FBI’s emails investigation. In a report released in June 2018, Horowitz said Clinton was in Phoenix for “several campaign events, including a roundtable discussion with Latino leaders and a campaign fundraiser, and his plane was preparing to depart” when he crossed paths with Lynch, whose plane had just arrived. Horowitz also criticized Lynch for making statements that “created considerable public confusion” about her role in the emails investigation, although he said investigators found no evidence the email inquiry was discussed.
Sign told Fox News in early 2020 his family received numerous death threats since he broke the story about the meeting in the lead-up to the 2016 election. “My family received significant death threats shortly after breaking this story,” Sign said at the time. “Credit cards hacked. You know, my children, we have code words. We have secret code words that they know what to do.”
Tributes for Sign were posted to social media overnight.
Sign is survived by his wife, Laura, and their three sons.
