U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, where Republican lawmakers will continue their effort to question her regarding the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server while she was secretary of state.
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Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, accused Republicans of trying to pile on Clinton ahead of their party’s convention.
“It would not be appropriate in my role to discuss the specific facts”, she repeatedly said. Her many decades in politics have amounted to little more than one long exercise in bending the truth, hiding the truth, altering the truth, and denying the truth.
He opened his hearing’s remarks saying that despite FBI Director James Comey’s testimony last week explaining his decision not to recommend charges, “the FBI’s conclusion leaves many more questions than answers”.
“Why did you not see fit to recuse yourself from the investigation?”
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.
That approach irritated committee Republicans.
“It’s clear that, a little over an hour into today’s hearing, Attorney General Lynch has no intention of answering any of our questions regarding the Department’s decision not to charge former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, even the most basic questions about the legal elements the government is obligated to prove in a criminal prosecution”, Goodlatte said in the statement.
Democrats on the committee have their own ideas on what Lynch should discuss. “No conversation in that nature at all”, she said.
She also caused a stir following a meeting with Bill Clinton last month aboard her plane in Phoenix that she said was unscheduled.
Goodlatte then brought up Lynch’s recent meeting with Bill Clinton on a tarmac in Arizona.
Instead, she condemns the deaths of five police officers during a protest in Dallas along with the killings of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana last week.
“As we gather here this morning, that sense of safety has been shaken by the series of devastating events that rocked our nation last week”, Lynch said.
“Listening to individuals who feel, for whatever reason, separated” may resolve the problem of alienation and maintain security in the country, she said.
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Lynch’s revelation of the unprecedented meeting plays directly into accusations that she and the Justice Department have given the Clintons special treatment.
