Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) grilled Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Tuesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
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However, Lynch on Tuesday refused to discuss details on the federal investigation into Clinton’s email practices despite Congressional Republicans’ request for more details of her decision.
Lynch defended the Department of Justice’s call not to pursue criminal charges against Clinton.
The State Department also revealed in its brief that it has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn over several thousand work-related emails that investigators were able to recover from Mrs Clinton’s server.
Hillary Clinton says she wants to do more to prevent “the tragedy of black men and women and children being killed in police incidents”.
“I accepted that recommendation”.
Lynch, who was sworn in as attorney general on the same day as racially tinged riots occurred in Baltimore, has repeatedly said that one of her top priorities in office is to improve relationships between police and the communities they serve. At one point Goodlatte interrupted the hearing to admonish Lynch for refusing to answer, accusing her of an “abdication of your responsibility”. While I understand that this investigation has generated significant public interest, as Attorney General, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further on the underlying facts of the investigation or the legal basis for the team’s recommendation.
“You have a problem, madame attorney general”, he said.
She told the committee Tuesday that it was a “social conversation”.
Lawyers for Clinton filed a 25-page opposition to that motion Tuesday, stating that the record in the case already answers those questions or makes it clear that Clinton has no personal knowledge to provide.
“Judicial Watch, and other organizations, including Vice, were denied FOIA records in recent months because the State Department said they were part of the ongoing FBI investigation”.
Judicial Watch has asked US District Judge Emmet G Sullivan for permission to question Mrs Clinton as part of a long-running lawsuit.
In response to the FBI’s findings, Chaffetz, the head of the US House of Representatives Government Oversight Committee, along with House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, are pressing for a perjury investigation.
State department officials previously testified that they were vaguely aware that she was messaging with them from a private account, but emphasized that they were unaware she was exclusively using private emails or a private server to conduct all government business.
Comey, when questioned at a hearing of Chaffetz’s committee last week, said the assertion was “not true” before adding there was no evidence that Clinton or her aides meant to violate laws governing classified actions, and therefore “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case.
FBI Director Comey told lawmakers in testimony last week that he would need a criminal referral from Congress to investigate the issue of whether Clinton perjured herself before the Benghazi Committee.
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Information for this article was contributed by Chris Strohm, Ben Brody, Billy House and Andrew Harris of Bloomberg News and by Eric Tucker and Erica Werner of The Associated Press.
