AG Lynch defends decision on Clinton email inquiry

WASHINGTON (AP) - 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" 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 to 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 a detailed account of the investigation in a nearly five-hour appearance before another House panel and described the rationale for his advice 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 she'd never discussed Clinton's email practices with either Bill or Hillary Clinton. Nor had she discussed with them a position in the Hillary Clinton administration, she said.
She reiterated her announcement she would be accepting the FBI's recommendation was an attempt to remove the specter of political interference from the case, after the chance meeting with Clinton raised a perception problem.
But Republicans suggested Lynch, a Democratic political appointee, only worsened the perception that Hillary Clinton was getting special treatment and had been wrong to announce ahead of time she would be accepting the investigative team's guidance for the former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate.
"I think your actions made it worse, I really do," said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
Despite the prodding, Lynch wouldn't budge in her refusal to discuss the investigation and the decision-making process.
"I refer you to Director Comey's discussion for that," she said at one point. "It would not be appropriate in my role to discuss the specific facts," she said at another.
That irritated committee Republicans already angry Clinton would not face charges over her handling of classified information when she relied on a private email server for government business during her tenure as secretary of state.
After failing to get Lynch to answer his questions, Rep. Trent Franks, of Arizona, remarked on "your prodigious dissimulation skills" before withdrawing further questions.
Goodlatte, the panel's chairman, said Clinton's carelessness with classified information "suggests she cannot be trusted with the nation's most sensitive secrets if she is nevertheless elected president."
Republicans asked the Justice Department Monday to investigate whether Clinton lied under oath in earlier testimony to a congressional committee investigating the Benghazi, Libya, attacks that killed four Americans while Clinton was secretary of state. Clinton has said she did not send or receive emails marked classified when she sent them, claims Comey contradicted last week.
But Comey also said there was no evidence that Clinton or her aides intended to violate laws governing classified actions, and therefore no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case.