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House Panel Questions Loretta Lynch on Hillary Clinton’s Emails House Panel Questions Loretta Lynch on Hillary Clinton’s Emails
(about 9 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Under fire from Republicans for closing the investigation on Hillary Clinton’s emails, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch told lawmakers Tuesday that she was “extremely proud” of the yearlong investigation, but she frustrated her interrogators by refusing to talk about the investigation’s details or conclusions. WASHINGTON — Republicans wanted to talk about Hillary Clinton’s emails on Tuesday. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and her Democratic defenders wanted to talk about almost anything else.
The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, “has chosen to provide detailed statements” on the investigation, Ms. Lynch noted tersely as she testified before the House Judiciary Committee, but she would not. Again and again, she deflected questions about crucial details that went into the decision not to bring charges in the case. And in the end, after nearly five hours of parrying, dodging and weaving, Ms. Lynch appeared to emerge unscathed from a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing that dwelled at length on her decision last week to shut down the yearlong investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails on the recommendation of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey Jr.
She also defended her decision not to recuse herself from the case — even after her meeting on a tarmac in Phoenix with former President Bill Clinton. She deferred to the F.B.I. and experienced prosecutors, she said, and saw no need to step out of the case completely before accepting their recommendations. Republicans, on the other hand, were exasperated and at times furious over the steadfast refusal of the nation’s top law enforcement officer to discuss many details of the investigation, the decision-making process or the legal rationale for closing the case against the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Republicans were not swayed. While no charges were brought, Mr. Comey’s remarkably public comments last week on Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified material on her email server, said Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, amounted to “a public indictment of her conduct and character.” While Ms. Lynch said she was “extremely proud of the tremendous work of the dedicated prosecutors and agents” on the politically tense case, she deferred repeatedly to the remarkable 15-minute briefing that Mr. Comey gave reporters last week about his decision not recommend charges.
Ms. Lynch heard sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers not only about the decision to close the investigation, but also about her meeting days earlier with Mr. Clinton. If they wanted to learn more about the substance of the investigation, Ms. Lynch told Republicans, they should look to the F.B.I. director’s statement, which concluded that Mrs. Clinton was “extremely careless” in her handling of classified material but did not “intend” to break the law.
She had previously acknowledged that her unscheduled 30-minute discussion with Mr. Clinton aboard her airplane at the Phoenix airport two weeks ago was a mistake that cast a cloud over her impartiality just as the Clinton investigation was winding up. House Democrats were more blunt.
Ms. Lynch said after the meeting that she would accept whatever recommendation the F.B.I. and her career prosecutors made in the case. Just days later, James B. Comey Jr., the F.B.I. director, said at a dramatic news briefing that he was not recommending any charges because there was no clear evidence that Mrs. Clinton had intended to violate the law, and Ms. Lynch closed the case the next day. “This is over with, this controversy about emails from Hillary Clinton,” said one exasperated Democrat, Representative Hank Johnson of Georgia.
The decision infuriated congressional Republicans, who have used the case for months to attack Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. They accused the Justice Department of giving Mrs. Clinton preferential treatment, saying that her mishandling of classified material warranted charges. Mr. Johnson and other Democrats tried to veer the conversation to almost anything other than Mrs. Clinton’s emails: gun violence, police shootings, voting rights, immigration, even copyright protections for songwriters.
In a letter on Monday, House Republicans asked the Justice Department to mount a new investigation to determine whether Mrs. Clinton perjured herself last fall when she testified before Congress about her use of the private email system. Democrats denounced the latest tactic as another meritless attempt to drag out the email case. Ms. Lynch’s performance was not purely obfuscation. Mr. Comey did not notify the attorney general or her aides before making his briefing, and her approach to the hearing on Tuesday suggested friction between the F.B.I. and the Justice Department over the public way he announced his findings, although officials in both offices have denied any tension.
Explaining her reluctance to answer many of their questions, Ms. Lynch told Republicans tersely that while Mr. Comey “has chosen to provide great detail into the basis of his recommendations,” she did not think it was “appropriate” for her to do so.
“I know that this is a frustrating exercise for you,” Ms. Lynch acknowledged after another in a string of brief responses.
Indeed, as Ms. Lynch sidestepped one question after another, Republican committee members became increasingly agitated. One accused her of “stonewalling.” Another called it a “hear no evil, see no evil performance.” A third said he had directed aides to tally the times she declined to answer a question directly (74, by his count).
At one point, the committee chairman, Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, interjected to tell Ms. Lynch that her “refusal” to answer many of the committee’s question was “an abdication of your responsibility.”
The hearing provided further evidence of Republicans’ eagerness to keep the email controversy alive as Mrs. Clinton’s general election campaign begins in earnest against Donald J. Trump.
Just a day earlier, Mr. Goodlatte and Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who leads the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, had asked the Justice Department to mount a new investigation to determine whether Mrs. Clinton perjured herself last fall when she testified before Congress about her use of a private email system. They cited apparent contradictions between what Mrs. Clinton told Congress about the email server and what the F.B.I. found.
Republicans attacked Ms. Lynch at the hearing not only for her decision to sign off on closing the email investigation, but also for an unscheduled 30-minute meeting just days earlier with former President Bill Clinton aboard her plane at a Phoenix airport.
Mr. Goodlatte and other committee members said they found the timing of the meeting suspicious, but Ms. Lynch said it was merely a social meeting.
“The former president indicated he wanted to say hello, and I agreed to say hello,” she said. “We had a social conversation. Nothing of any relationship to the email investigation was discussed, nor were any specific cases or matters before the Department of Justice discussed.”
She defended her decision not to recuse herself from the case after her meeting on the tarmac. She said she had deferred to the F.B.I. and experienced prosecutors, and saw no need to step out of the case completely before accepting their recommendations.
Republicans questioned Ms. Lynch several times about whether she hoped to remain as attorney general if Mrs. Clinton was elected. She refused to speculate, saying that she was focusing solely on finishing out her current term.
Mr. Trump and other Republicans have suggested that Mrs. Clinton could use the enticement of another term as attorney general to curry favor with Ms. Lynch in the email investigation. Ms. Lynch said she had not discussed any future positions with Mrs. Clinton or anyone else.
By the end of the hearing, nerves on both sides of the aisle were beginning to fray. As upset as Republicans were over Ms. Lynch’s nonresponses, Democrats were equally angry over the unyielding focus on Mrs. Clinton’s problems at the expense of other national issues like the attacks in Dallas and Orlando, Fla.
“We have mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting,” complained Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, “yet this hearing has been about email.”