Attorney General Jeff Sessions says 'lock her up' at high school leadership event

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said "lock her up" at an event on Tuesday – amid a refrain of calls to jail former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that was often shouted at Trump presidential campaign rallies during the 2016 elections.

Sessions laughed as the gathering of conservatives at a high school leadership summit chanted "lock her up."

"I heard that a long time, over the last campaign," he remarked still smiling after the chant was over.

Sessions has pledged to steer clear of Clinton-related investigations and recused himself "from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way" to Clinton's or Trump's 2016 presidential campaigns.

The Attorney General was speaking at Turning Point USA's annual High School Leadership Summit. Turning Point USA is a conservative group geared toward college and high school students. Other speakers at the three-day long event include Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as well as the president's son Donald Trump Jr.

During his address, Sessions blasted college campuses as not being a place where free speech is welcome and as places where students need to be "coddled."

"Through things like trigger warnings about microaggressions, they have cry closets, safe spaces, optional exams, therapy goats, and grade inflation, too many schools are coddling young people and actively preventing them from scrutinizing the validity of their beliefs and the issues of the day," Sessions said.

Sessions brought up the fact that after the 2016 election they held a so-called "cry-in" at Cornell University as well as other events around college campuses across the country as a way to cope with the results.

"Hopefully they have plenty of tissues for them to cry on," he continued.

Sessions also blasted "snowflakes" at universities.

"Rather than molding a generation of mature and well-informed adults, some schools are doing everything they can to create a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes," he said to a cheering crowd. "We're not going to have it!"

Sessions went through a litany of examples of what he calls a "crackdown on speech."

"Whether you realize it or not, freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack today. Of all places," Sessions said.

The attorney general recanted his own experiences as a young Republican but remarked that he didn't think that it was as hostile as it is now on college campuses.

He urged the crowd not to abandon their values.