Attorney General Loretta Lynch steadfastly defended her decision to close the Hillary Clinton email investigation without criminal charges, insisting Tuesday that she simply accepted the unanimous recommendation of career FBI investigators and attorneys.

“I accepted that recommendation. I saw no reason not to accept it,” Lynch told the House Judiciary Committee. “The matter was handled like any other matter.”

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., strenuously criticized Lynch over her decision, charging that it “does not seem to be a responsible way to uphold your constitutionally sworn oath.”

“Secretary Clinton’s ‘extreme carelessness’ possibly jeopardized the safety and security of our citizens and nation,” Goodlatte said. “Her ‘extreme carelessness’ suggests she cannot be trusted with the nation’s most sensitive secrets.”

The election-year hearing played out amid a roiling national debate over police violence, and committee Democrats repeatedly tried to turn the conversation to that issue and others as they criticized Republicans for dwelling on the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee and her email practices.

Republicans were furious last week that the FBI decided not to recommend charges against Clinton over her handling of classified information when she relied on a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

“Rome is burning, there is blood on the streets of many American cities and we are beating this email horse to death,” said Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La.

But Republicans kept the focus on Clinton, trying to draw Lynch out on whether Clinton lied to the public or to Congress, and on a couple of occasions turning the conversation to then-president Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings 18 years ago.

“Are you aware that Hillary Clinton has repeatedly lied to the public about her emails and email servers?” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, asked. “Are you aware of that?”

Republicans on Monday formally asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Clinton perjured herself 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 that FBI Director James Comey contradicted last week.

Comey also said Clinton was “extremely careless” in her handling of classified emails on a private server, but said there was no evidence that she or her aides intended to violate laws governing classified actions, and therefore no reasonable prosecutor could bring a case. Comey testified in detail in his own appearance before Congress last week, and Lynch repeatedly referred Republicans to the FBI director’s testimony, refusing to get drawn into debating Clinton’s conduct or the facts of the case.

That approach irritated committee Republicans. At one point Goodlatte interrupted the hearing to admonish Lynch for refusing to answer, accusing her of an “abdication of your responsibility.”

Lynch did say, in response to questioning from Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, that she had never discussed Clinton’s email practices with either Hillary or Bill Clinton, and she also said she had not discussed with either of them a position in the Hillary Clinton administration. “No conversation in that nature at all,” she said.

She reiterated that a brief conversation she had with Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport last month, after he saw her airplane and asked to board to greet her, was social in nature and “there was nothing about any investigations or any specific cases.” Instead the former president spoke “at length” about his grandchildren, Lynch said.

Goodlatte questioned why Lynch hadn’t recused herself after that meeting. Lynch said there was no need to. But she reiterated that her concerns over how the meeting could be perceived had led her to announce she would accept the recommendation of her investigative team in the Hillary Clinton case.

That decision was intended to remove the specter of political interference, but Republicans argued it the other way Tuesday, charging that the unusual step of announcing ahead of time that she would take her team’s recommendation reinforced the perception of special treatment for Clinton.

“I think your actions made it worse, I really do,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Lynch touched on law enforcement and policing issues including last week’s sniper shooting of five police officers in Dallas by a suspect who said he wanted to kill white officers. That followed police killings of black men near St. Paul, Minnesota, and in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The nation’s “sense of safety has been shaken by the series of devastating events that rocked our nation last week,” Lynch said.

(AP)