Donald Trump accuses Barack Obama’s former Attorney General Loretta Lynch of illegal activity

Ms Lynch served in Mr Obama's second term

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said it was 'important to remember that while crime did increase overall last year, 2015 still represented the third-lowest year for violent crime in the past two decades.' ((AP))

Donald Trump has accused former Attorney General Loretta Lynch of illegal behaviour and of giving special treatment to his Democratic election rival Hillary Clinton.

In one of a series of tweets in which the President also repeated his criticism of the media, Mr Trump said that Ms Lynch, who served as Attorney General during Barack Obama’s second term, had “made law enforcement decisions for political purposes".

“Gave Hillary Clinton a free pass and protection. Totally illegal,” he said.

Mr Trump made his comments on Twitter after the appearance last week of former FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee. During his appearance, Mr Comey said that Mr Trump had “directed” him to drop an investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn.

He also confirmed Mr Trump’s claim that he had told the President that he was not personally under investigation as part of the probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia's alleged attempt to influence the election.

Yet Mr Comey also talked about Ms Lynch, who succeeded Eric Holder as Attorney General. He said that when he was investigating Ms Clinton's use of a private email server during the 2016 presidential campaign, Ms Lynch “directed me not to call it an investigation but instead to call it a matter”.

He said that instruction, taken with a private tarmac meeting with former president Bill Clinton at Phoenix ahead of the FBI's impending decision on whether Ms Clinton may have criminally mishandled classified information, raised Mr Comey’s ethics radar. As a result, he decided to announce the FBI’s findings ahead of schedule.

“That was one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude: I have to step away from the department if we're to close this case credibly,” said Mr Comey said.

He was asked why he had not pushed back on those requests and Mr Comey said he had concluded: “This isn’t a hill worth dying on, and so I just said, ‘Okay’.”