US attorney general Loretta Lynch yesterday said she will accept the recommendations of career prosecutors and the FBI director on whether or not to bring charges against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her e-mail use.
Republicans, including party presidential front-runner Donald Trump, have said a political appointee like Lynch should not be involved in the investigation.
The US’ top law enforcement officer did not go so far as to say she would completely recuse herself from the case, something Republican lawmakers have called for her to do.
“I will be informed of those findings, as opposed to never reading them or never seeing them, but I will be accepting their recommendations and their plan for going forward,” Lynch said while speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.
The move, first reported by the New York Times, came amid an uproar over Lynch’s meeting this week with former US president Bill Clinton while his wife, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the White House, was under federal investigation.
Lynch said she understands how her meeting with Bill Clinton “casts a shadow” over the perception of the justice department’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail use.
The private meeting took place on Lynch’s plane after she landed in Phoenix on Monday night and Bill Clinton was leaving the airport after a rally for his wife earlier that day.
Lynch, appointed by Democratic US President Barack Obama, told reporters earlier this week that she did not discuss the e-mail investigation or other pending matters before the justice department with Bill Clinton, calling their meeting “primarily social.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing Clinton’s e-mail use and whether laws were broken as a result of a personal e-mail server kept in her Chappaqua, New York, home while she was secretary of state, an issue that has overshadowed her campaign.
Clinton last year apologised for using the server, saying that while she did nothing wrong, she should have used two e-mail accounts: one for state department business and another for personal matters.  Representatives for her campaign could not be reached immediately for comment yesterday.
Clinton’s likely rival in the presidential race, Republican Donald Trump, on Thursday called Lynch’s meeting “a sneak” and questioned the judgment of both Bill Clinton and the attorney general.
Trump, in a tweet yesterday, said the meeting showed the US political system was “totally rigged” and that Hillary Clinton had bad judgment. “Bill’s meeting was probably initiated and demanded by Hillary!” Trump said on Twitter.
The justice department, along with the White House, has said the probe should be free of political interference.
The US justice department investigation into former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s email use is being handled completely independently of the White House and President Barack Obama, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said yesterday. Obama and the White House were “not at all involved” in the decision announced by attorney general Loretta Lynch yesterday, Earnest told a daily news briefing.