AG defends decision on emails

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Attorney General Loretta Lynch deflected a barrage of Republican questions Tuesday about her decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her use of private email, saying it “would not be appropriate” to discuss the matter in her role as the nation’s top law-enforcement official.

GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee voiced frustration, with the panel’s chairman, Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, telling Lynch her reticence was “an abdication of your responsibility.” The panel’s Democrats tried to change the subject to issues of community policing and gun control in what seemed a warmup for the fall’s campaign season.

Lynch repeatedly referred the committee to last week’s testimony by FBI Director James Comey, who gave an unusually detailed account of the investigation in a nearly five-hour appearance before another House panel and described the rationale for his advice that no charges be brought. Comey is a lifelong Republican who served as deputy attorney general during George W. Bush’s GOP administration.

“I accepted that recommendation. I saw no reason not to accept it,” Lynch testified. “The matter was handled like any other matter.”

Republicans demanded to know how Clinton could have avoided prosecution under a “gross negligence” law when Comey had described her and her aides as “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information. They also grilled Lynch over what she’d talked about with former President Bill Clinton in a June 27 tarmac conversation aboard her government plane.

Lynch said the conversation had been entirely social in nature, and that she’d never discussed Clinton’s email practices with either Bill or Hillary Clinton. Nor had she discussed with them a position in a Hillary Clinton administration, she said.