Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s secret meeting with Bill Clinton on board her airplane was not only unannounced it was unprecedented, she told Congress on Tuesday.
“Have you ever met with anybody else on your plane on the tarmac?” Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold asked Lynch during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
“I have not had occasion to meet with anyone on my plane,” the Obama appointee said of the controversial meeting, which occurred late last month as her plane was waiting on the tarmac of Phoenix’s airport.
The unannounced conclave occurred days before Hillary Clinton was set to be interviewed by the FBI about her email system. Lynch, who declined to press charges against the Democratic presidential nominee for mishandling classified information, acknowledged days after the meeting that it cast a cloud over the investigation. But she said then — and reiterated on Tuesday — that she and Bill Clinton did not discuss the investigation. They talked about his grandchildren and their travels, she said.
Lynch’s revelation of the unprecedented meeting plays directly into accusations that she and the Justice Department have given the Clintons special treatment.
Lynch said that she has met other public figures while traveling, but that she has conversed with them in the airport.
“I have been traveling at the airport and public individuals have asked to come in and say ‘hello,’ and I’ve said ‘hello’ to them,” she said.
WATCH: