Given the chance do it over again, Attorney General Loretta Lynch would have passed on a 30-minute private meeting with former President Clinton this week, she said on Friday.

“I certainly wouldn’t do it again, because I think it has cast a shadow over what it should not, over what it will not touch,” Lynch said at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

ADVERTISEMENT

The unscheduled meeting on Lynch’s plane caused a furor this week, and appeared to reinforce critics’ allegations that the nation’s top prosecutor is unable to fairly oversee the investigation into Clinton’s wife, presumptive Democratic nominee for president Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonJeff Flake: Republicans 'should hold the same position' on SCOTUS vacancy as 2016 Momentum growing among Republicans for Supreme Court vote before Election Day Warning signs flash for Lindsey Graham in South Carolina MORE.

“I understand that my meeting on the plane with former President Clinton would give them a reasons to have further questions and concerns,” Lynch said.

“That’s why I say it’s painful to me, because the integrity of the Department of Justice is important.”

Reports about the incident have indicated that Clinton invited himself on to Lynch’s airplane as the two were crossing paths at the airport in Phoenix. The conversation was purely personal, Lynch has insisted, but critics have said that it nonetheless gave the appearance of impropriety.

On Friday, Lynch made a joke highlighting her regret.

The one thing that former Attorney General Eric Holder Eric Himpton HolderThe Hill's Campaign Report: Trump's rally risk | Biden ramps up legal team | Biden hits Trump over climate policy Biden campaign forming 'special litigation' team ahead of possible voting battle Pompeo, Engel poised for battle in contempt proceedings MORE could have told her, she said, was “where the lock on the plane door was.”

The audience at the elite policy conference burst in laughter at the joke.

During the discussion on Friday, Lynch promised to follow the recommendations of the FBI investigators and federal prosecutors who are pursuing the case in deciding whether or not the press charges. She declined to fully recuse herself from the investigation, however, which would have prevented her ability to review the case.

Lynch claimed to have previously committed to that course of action in private, but was compelled to make her decision public because of the increasing public scrutiny on the meeting.