Republican lawmakers grilled Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Tuesday over why she chose not to prosecute Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for sending classified data through her private e-mail server when she was secretary of state.

But the Obama appointee refused to answer, saying it would be "inappropriate" to respond to lawmakers' repeated questions.

"While I understand that this investigation has generated significant public interest, as attorney general, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further on the underlying facts of the investigation or the legal basis for the team’s recommendation,” Lynch told the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.

Halfway through the more than two-hour hearing, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the committee's chairman, said that the attorney general's refusal to prosecute and answer questions was an "abdication of your responsibility." Before that, he said Lynch's decision last week not to prosecute "defies logic and the law."

"Were a rank-and-file federal employee to do what Secretary Clinton did, they would face severe punishment, including termination, revocation of security clearances, or criminal prosecution," Goodlatte said.

Goodlatte said that Clinton's "extreme carelessness" likely jeopardized the nation's security and that, if Clinton is elected president, "she cannot be trusted with the nation's most sensitive secrets."

Lynch told the committee that "all the relevant facts were considered and investigated thoroughly" before she accepted the recommendation last week by FBI Director James Comey not to prosecute.

The highly tense hearing came a day after a poll showed that a majority of Americans said they disagreed with Comey's decision, which Lynch said she would accept even before Comey had announced it. Also on Monday, GOP lawmakers asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Clinton committed perjury on this issue.

"Are you aware that Hillary Clinton has repeatedly lied to the public about her e-mails and e-mail servers?" Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) asked. "Are you aware of that?"

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) was unmoved by Lynch's testimony.

"You have a burden, I think, to convince the American public that you don’t have a double standard. You are not meeting the burden," Sensenbrenner said.

Democrats on the committee tried to steer the conversation away from Clinton—to discuss the recent police shootings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana, Philando Castile in Minnesota, and the five police officers killed by a gunman in Dallas, Texas, last week during a rally protesting those shootings.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca.) said, "We're beating a dead horse here for political reasons."

Rep. John Conyers, (D-Mich.) chastised GOP lawmakers for zeroing in on Clinton instead of "gun violence and civil rights."

"Let's be clear," he said, "the criminal investigation is closed. There was no intentional wrongdoing."

Last week, Comey issued a harsh assessment of Clinton's use of a private e-mail server, calling her handling of classified data "extremely careless" and suggesting that it was possible her home-based mail server had been breached by hackers. However, Comey said he was not recommending criminal charges. He concluded that there was a lack of evidence that Clinton had intended to expose or transmit classified data or that she mishandled information in a willful oversight of her responsibilities.