FBI Director James Comey testified Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the airport tarmac meeting between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton last June showed the Justice Department could not credibly investigate Hillary Clinton's email practices.

Clinton and Lynch met privately in Phoenix after both of them realized they were on the same airport tarmac, immediately raising questions about the independence of the Justice Department that was in the process of investigating then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

"Our conversation was a great deal about grandchildren, it was primarily social about our travels and he mentioned golf he played in Phoenix," Lynch said last June, defending her meeting with Clinton.

Comey was concerned with the meeting regardless of Lynch's defense, and said that he lived his whole life caring about the credibility and integrity of the criminal justice process.

"A number of things had gone on which I can't talk about yet, that made me worry that the department leadership could not credibly complete the investigation and decline prosecution without grievous damage to the American people's confidence in the justice system," Comey said.

"And then the capper was–and I'm not picking on the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, who I like very much–but her meeting with President Clinton on that airplane was the capper for me, and I then said, you know what, the department cannot, by itself, credibly end this," he said.