NEW YORK -- Former President Bill Clinton spoke with Attorney General Loretta Lynch during an impromptu meeting in Phoenix, but Lynch said the discussion did not involve the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email use as secretary of state.

Lynch told reporters that the meeting at a Phoenix airport Monday was unplanned and happened while the former president was waiting to depart and walked over to the attorney general's plane after she landed there.

A Bill Clinton aide also disputed the notion that the encounter was "set up," saying Lynch and the former president "caught up after they realized they were both sitting on the same tarmac." The aide noted that Clinton even met briefly with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, when the men happened to be at the same airport earlier this year.

Lynch was traveling with her husband and said her conversation with Clinton "was a great deal about his grandchildren" and their travels. The former president, who recently became a grandfather for the second time, told her that he had been playing golf in Arizona, and they discussed former Attorney General Janet Reno, whom they both know.

"There was no discussion of any matter pending for the department or any matter pending for any other body. There was no discussion of Benghazi, no discussion of the State Department emails, by way of example," Lynch said in Phoenix.

The exchange comes as the FBI is investigating the potential mishandling of sensitive information that passed through the server Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, used for personal and government correspondence as secretary of state.

Republicans have called for an independent prosecutor, saying the Justice Department under a Democratic president should not be investigating a Democratic presidential candidate.

"This incident does nothing to instill confidence in the American people that her department can fully and fairly conduct this investigation, and that's why a special counsel is needed now more than ever," Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said in a statement.

David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Twitter that he takes Lynch and the ex-president "at their word that their convo in Phoenix didn't touch on probe. But foolish to create such optics."

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said on radio's The Mike Gallagher Show that the meeting was "really a sneak," "so terrible" and "so horrible." He also said it was "one of the big stories of this week, of this month, of this year."

"This is terrible and nobody can understand why nothing's happened," Trump said. "And you see a thing like this and, even in terms of judgment, how bad of judgment is it for him or for her to do this, I mean, who would do this?"

Top Senate Democrats defended Lynch on Thursday. Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said her ethics "are the best." Sen. Charles Schumer of New York said nothing discussed was related to the investigation.

Hillary Clinton has not been interviewed by the FBI, but the Justice Department's yearlong probe into the email server appears to be nearing a conclusion. Clinton has said that her decision to rely on a private server was a mistake but that other secretaries of state had also used personal email addresses.

The matter was referred for investigation a year ago by the inspectors general for the State Department and intelligence community after the discovery of emails that they said contained classified information.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest wouldn't say whether the meeting was appropriate, only that Lynch understands that the rule of law is paramount, as does Obama.

"She certainly understands that investigations should be conducted free of political interference and consistent with the facts," Earnest said.

A Justice Department spokesman provided transcripts of Lynch's comments on the matter at public press conferences but declined to comment further. Asked if the meeting might create the appearance of impropriety with regard to the investigation into Clinton's email, Lynch said the case was being handled by career prosecutors and FBI agents, according to the transcript.

Information for this article was contributed by Ken Thomas, Andrew Taylor and Darlene Superville of The Associated Press; by Matt Zapotosky, Anne Gearan and Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post;

A Section on 07/01/2016