Kevin Johnson

USA TODAY

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Friday that she will accept the decision of career prosecutors, investigators and FBI Director James Comey on whether to bring criminal charges in the ongoing investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State.

The unusual public announcement during an event in Aspen, Colo., comes as the attorney general faces a storm of criticism related to an awkward encounter with former president Bill Clinton after the two crossed paths earlier this week at Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport.

"This case will be resolved by the team that has been working on it from the beginning,'' Lynch said, acknowledging that the meeting with Bill Clinton had "cast a shadow'' over the ongoing inquiry.

"I certainly wouldn't do this again,'' she said of the meeting.

Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton meeting raises eyebrows

On Monday, Lynch was arriving in Phoenix in advance of a community policing event as Clinton was departing when the former president relayed through a security detail that he would like to say hello and subsequently boarded Lynch's government plane.

The attorney general said there was no discussion of the investigation involving his wife, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Rather, Lynch said Friday that the encounter was a "social'' visit with the former president who she has known for many years. In 1999, then-President Clinton appointed Lynch as the chief federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, N.Y.

During Monday's 30-minute encounter, the attorney general, who was traveling with her husband, said that the discussion mostly centered on Clinton's young grandchildren.

"What on earth were you thinking?'' asked Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, who moderated the previously scheduled Aspen discussion with Lynch.

"Well, that's the question of the day, isn't it?'' the attorney general responded. "Certainly, my meeting raises questions and concerns,'' she said. "Believe me, I get that.''

Lynch, who stopped short of recusing herself entirely from the matter, did not characterize the status of the ongoing email inquiry, saying that she did not know when the probe would be completed. While she pledged to accept the judgment of prosecutors and investigators, she will continue to be briefed on the inquiry.

For weeks, as the federal investigation has been winding down, authorities have been in discussions on how to present and explain the findings of such a consequential inquiry that has been shadowed by a polarizing political environment.

On Friday, Lynch said that she had been preparing to make a similar decision on how the investigation would be decided, but the uproar related to the Clinton meeting accelerated that thinking.

In recent public appearances, she has repeatedly asserted that the investigation was being managed by career prosecutors and investigators.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that neither the White House nor President Obama had any role in Lynch's Friday announcement.

"I will leave it to the attorney general to describe the role that she will play, and the process that the Department of Justice will undertake as they conduct this investigation,'' Earnest said. "The president's expectation is that this investigation will be handled just like all the others, which is that the investigators will be guided by the facts, they will follow the evidence and they will reach a conclusion based on that evidence. And nothing else.''

The impromptu session with Bill Clinton, however, triggered such a wave of criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, including presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, that she was pushed to act.

"The system is totally rigged,'' Trump said earlier Friday. "Does anybody really believe that meeting was just a coincidence?"

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., called on Lynch to take the additional step of recusing herself entirely from the matter.

"If Lynch is truly concerned about preserving the public's trust in this investigation, she must immediately take the obvious step of recusing herself and appointing a special prosecutor to handle the Clinton investigation,'' Scalise said Friday. "Frankly, Loretta Lynch’s comments today raise more questions than answers — both about her own judgement, and the apparent belief by the Clintons that they don’t need to follow the same rules as other Americans.''

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Thursday re-asserted a call for a special counsel to handle the matter, while David Axelrod, a former political strategist for President Obama, said it had been "foolish to create such optics.''

Contributing: Gregory Korte